When Worlds Collide: Pajama Boy And Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson

When Worlds Collide: Pajama Boy and Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson 

Alan: In ordinary times -- and touching upon ordinary issues -- I agree with Steyn. But these are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary issue. The world is finally confronting its ongoing oppression of gay and lesbian people, just as 19th century abolitionists - all of them committed Christians -- confronted slavery. In both cases, "Christian truths" had been preached from the pulpit in support of "divinely-ordained" slavery and "divinely-ordained" heterosexuality. When basic principles of human dignity are in play, it is appropriate that "the offended" come out swinging. It is not a question of "tiptoeing around on ever thinner egg shells." It is a matter of taking thunderous stands that will shatter every eggshell in sight. Ironically, the dwindling minority of American Christians who believe in heterosexual superiority are damaging their own "brand." Clearly, absolutists feel ennobled by "martyrdom" - even when self-inflicted. But if conservative Christians hope to vivify Christianity enough to capture the world's imagination, they might wisely repeat Pope Francis' words, "Who am I to judge?"

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Pope Francis Links

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/pope-francis-links.html

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"The Core Conflict Being Ignored In The Duck Dyansty Debate"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-genuine-conflict-being-ignored-in.html 

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Comments

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Mark Steyn 

Look, I’m an effete foreigner who likes show tunes. My Broadway book was on a list of “Twelve Books Every Gay Man Should Read.” Andrew Sullivan said my beard was hot. Leonard Bernstein stuck his tongue in my mouth (long story). But I’m not interested in living in a world where we have to tiptoe around on ever thinner eggshells. If it’s a choice between having celebrity chefs who admit to having used the N-word in 1977 (or 1965, or 1948, or whenever the hell it was) and reality-show duck-hunters who quote Corinthians and Alec Baldwin bawling out some worthless paparazzo who’s doorstepping his family with a “homophobic” slur, or having all of them banished from public life and thousands upon millions more too cowed and craven to speak lest the same fate befall them, I’ll take the former any day.

Alan: Steyn, like most conservatives, is not (as he pretends) offended by the debate, but by the results of the debate which have jeopardized The Quack's advantageous position in the Capitalist marketplace. Whatever Capitalism may be, rank-and-file water carriers do not want "profitability" compromised by the workings of Capitalism itself. "Free Markets" are supposed to oppress people -- are supposed to create inequality -- not contribute to "leveling" equality. My God! Heterosexuals and homosexuals on equal footing? Equal treatment before The Law? Democracy, be damned!

Because the latter culture would be too boring for any self-respecting individual to want to live in, even more bloody boring than the current TV landscape where, aside from occasional eruptions of unerotic twerking by sexless skanks, every other show seems to involve snippy little Pajama Boys sitting around snarking at each other in the antiseptic eunuch pose that now passes for “ironic.” It’s “irony” as the last circle of Dante’s cultural drain; it’s why every show advertised as “edgy” and “transgressive” offers the same pitiful combination of attitude and impotence as a spayed cat humping.

Alan: Margaret Mead's husband, Gregory Bateson -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson -- observed that the greatness of the Catholic Church was grounded in its "ironic distance." American "conservatives," especially American "Christian conservatives," are so swept away by the incandescent passions of the alarmist moment that they despise irony as if it were the imminent prospect of Miley Cyrus' ordination. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html This absence of irony is the seed bed of our National Lunacy. For many American Catholics who feel we have finally "gotten our church back," Pope Francis is perpetrating the fastest institutional revolution in human history. And he is working this unprecedented miracle "on the back" of Irony. After centuries of curial arrogance and knee-jerk disdain for the identifiably "damned," Francis -- with a wave of his crozier -- says, hey, "Who am I to judge?" On the other side of the ecclesial aisle, there is not a fecal fleck (much less a stray cell) in the composite body of conservative Christianity that sees fit to renounce the coveted (and probably existential) consignment of "others" to an eternal lake of unquenchable fire. 

Such a pansified culture is going nowhere. I hasten to add I don’t mean “pansified” in the sense of penetrative sex with other men, but in the Sarah Silverman sense of “I mean ‘gay’ like ‘retarded.’” Miss Silverman can get away with that kind of talk because she’s a Pajama Boy–friendly ironist posing as a homophobic disablist. Unless, of course, she’s a homophobic disablist posing as a Pajama Boy–friendly ironist. Maybe we should ban her just to be on the safe side.

Alan: Perhaps Steyn would be happy with a San Francisco version of Treme, in which the underlying motif would be preparation for -- and participation in -- the annual Gay Pride Parade. No "pansies" in that plot line.

How do you make a fruit cordial?

Be nice to him. Or else.

Alan: "How do you make a bigot cordial. Be nice to him or else.

The Etymology of Bigot

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bigot

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn