Then there’s the modern American shit-kicking Christian who hates pretty much everybody. Think Ted Nugent.
Remember when people used to wear those goofy WWJD bracelets? More and more nowadays I find myself looking at these self-described Christians on television, listening to their nasty nationalistic message of exclusion (and fake victimhood) and wonder: What would Jesus do?
(You know, assuming he was a real guy and half as big a sweetheart as his fans claim.) Would he be proud of these assholes?
In the summer of 2014—when Israel was busy killing more than 500 babies in Gaza with the weapons, political support and indeed the blessing from our Christian nation—protests erupted along the U.S.-Mexico border as news began to spread about record numbers of incoming immigrants, mostly unaccompanied children, fleeing increased violence in Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and especially El Salvador.
And by violence, I mean ISIS-like stuff: dismembering and beheading an 11-year-old school boy who refused to join a gang, for instance. And David de la O was not the exception.
Some of the literate protesters had probably read Ann Coulter’s latest book “Adios, America!,” or, ironically, enjoyed TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting."
Many of the seething crowd, no doubt, would describe themselves as Christians doing God’s work, just as their parents’ generation did when George Wallace battled the Kennedy brothers alongside KKK terrorists to try to keep Alabama school children segregated “forever” in Jesus' name.
Is this the same Jesus who advocated for poor people? We tell the world’s worst off seeking shelter and compassion in our famous melting pot nation of immigrants to fuck off and that’s Christian?
We do understand what the the Statue of Liberty symbolizes, right?
My people had to flee here because we ran out of potatoes, for fuck's sake! They weren't welcomed either and now we're as ingrained as a blood stain. Just good ol' American jerks like everyone else.
That being said, I don’t go to church or subscribe to a religion but I know for sure that hurling insults at desperate, helpless refugees fleeing death is not nice behavior. I mean, what would Jesus do?
Deuteronomy 15:11 says, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”
Which brings us to Christianity’s latest culture war hero, Kentucky bumpkin Kim Davis.
On Tues., Sept. 8, the Rowan county clerk who had been jailed for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples was released. It had only been five days, but at her televised victory lap, complete with "Rocky III" theme song, Davis acted like she hadn't seen the sun in ages. And from the looks of her, she hadn't.
Anyway, graceful it was not. But it was timely because former Arkansas governor and Fox News bloviator Mike Huckabee had already organized a rally for that day to capitalize off of Davis, whom it was assumed would still be incarcerated at the time, giving Huckabee the spotlight and opportunity to tell evangelicals and sympathetic morons how afraid to be of a tyrannical government that wants to take your guns and your Bible.
It’s ironic because none of these people have any love for Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, yet here they were using the exact same playbook as the notorious “race hustlers.” I suppose one might call these gentlemen Jesus hustlers inspired by their hero, “Reverend” Sharpton.
Just because the Western world is quickly catching up with modern times like a subduction zone fault line suddenly snapping back and releasing hundreds of years worth of accumulated pressure, some Christians feel, as Fox News likes to put it, “under attack” by inevitable American social progress. (Nevermind that even the Pope said "Who am I to judge?" when asked about gay people in 2013.)
Some of these folks, like Fox News' Bill O’Reilly, are so sensitive to their perceived victimhood that they go apeshit every Christmas when they hear of fellow Americans wishing each other “Happy Holidays!” in order to incorporate New Year’s and Hanukkah, etc. into a generic one-size-fits-all greeting.
Of course, one could simply view that as the most efficient way to cover all the bases and kindly not exclude anyone, but to conservatives, it’s a full-on assault on their most sacred beliefs.
“War on Christmas,” they call it. It’s adorable.
These anti-gay, anti-women, so-called “family values” Christmas crusaders are desperate to be taken seriously, yet their representatives in government are parading around to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” with the likes of Davis and taking thousands of selfies with former reality TV star, Family Research Council lobbyist, child molester and adulterer, Josh Duggar.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines hypocrisy as “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.”
Take Davis. She’s allegedly fighting to protect marriage, although it could be argued she’s really fighting to deprive other Americans of their rights. But if we take her at her word, who is she to defend the sanctity of this most holy of unions that she just so happens to have desecrated four times in a row?
This woman has been married and divorced several times and even had twins from an adulterous relationship with what I can only assume is the scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz."
But nevermind all that. Davis could have given a 10-minute soliloquy about the wonders of welfare and no one would have batted an eye as long as she gave props to her guy Jesus.
As for Duggar, he found fame on his ever-growing family’s reality TV show, the mission of which was to spread the word of God via the airwaves to millions of unsuspecting sinner-chumps.
Which is beyond creepy when you consider what these people believe should happen after a woman is impregnated by her attacker.
And that brings us to Huckabee. This fat turd. Here’s a guy who promotes hypocritical anti-human “family values” like all the rest of them.
I’d ask why, but we know why.
Some of her lyrics aren’t “wholesome.” She’s married to that crack dealer Jay Z. But most worrisome, Bey & Jay are American Royalty, which outrages people like Huckabee who associate royalty with whiteness. The American social status quo and power structure has been “flipped, turned upside down” as The Fresh Prince might say, and some of these old-school honkies do not like it, to say the least.
Likewise, Madonna humped a stage in a wedding dress on live TV thirty damn years ago. She simulated sex—in a wedding dress!—before we even knew what AIDS and gay people were because of our refusal to acknowledge reality thanks to our lingering uptight 1950‘s Christian derp culture.
Oh, but I suppose Beyonce’s exposed skin is brown. Suspicious!
I admit rap music and misogynism aren’t exactly strangers, but the same can be said for the latter and Huckabee's GOP. Like it or not, hip-hop has been the driving force behind American pop culture for at least the last twenty five years. Take it up with the white ad executives who use that music and culture to move product. It’s not going anywhere; it’s mainstream business.
You want to try to control music in America, Mike? In the land of free speech? You’d have better luck trying to reroute the mighty Mississippi out to the Pacific.
And what about that Constitution thing conservatives are always stumbling over themselves to pretend to defend? They want the first black first lady to try to control what music Americans listen to? A black woman dictating to all these rednecks from the White House?
What if she called out Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” for being obscene? That might upset some people like Hickabee—excuse me, Huckabee—who claim to be offended by rap music.
Huckabee seemed to particularly enjoy when ‘The Nuge’ sang the following part like a sex-crazed pervert who hangs with Josh Duggar:
Well, I make the pussy purr with the stroke of my hand
They know they gettin' it from me
They know just where to go when they need their lovin' man
They know I'm doin' it for free
O-M-G!! But what about the children?!?!?!
Oh, lordy. An opportunistic bastardized-Christianity pimp warning about "obnoxious and toxic mental poison?" This guy's irony detector must be broken.
Beyonce and the first lady will have more of an impact on the future than Huckabee could ever dream of having, even if he prints out a million moronically-titled pamphlets trying to guilt gullible people into his silly, ancient belief system until the day he croaks.
If the Obamas are bad parents for not overly-policing their teenage daughters’ musical consumption, then so is everyone whose kids ever listened to Elvis. Because if you remember, the old folks thought he was an agent of the devil too, if not Lucifer himself. Ditto for the world-changing Beatles.
Ask yourself this, Mike: What is more responsible for unnecessary death and destruction in this world—pop music song lyrics, or religion? The Bible or Beyonce? Because one is definitely mental poison.
She's so sweet when she yanks on my meat
Down on the street you know she can't be beat
What the hell
For the record, that wholesome morsel is from Nugent's "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang."
The very idea of parents being able to control what music their kids listen to in the era of the Internet, mp3 players, tiny ear buds and, you know, children occasionally leaving the home to mingle with influential heathens at school, work, church, etc. is laughable, let alone trying to sway an entire nation of adderall-snorting teens to abstain from music deemed unwholesome by some supreme leader. It’s ridiculous and wholly unAmerican.
If we’re going to do that, we might as well have mandatory prayers five times a day and outlaw pornography. Where would it end—Sharia Law??
But, of course, it’s not primarily about the music—it’s about the people making the music.
And not just "uneducated" rappers. Nugent has also said Harvard's President Obama is a “subhuman mongrel.”
By now you should be sensing a theme about these "Christians."
Here’s the thing I don’t understand about folks like Huckabee, Duggar and Davis. If they believe that we are all sinners, that includes them, so why are they preaching to the rest of us? Why do they feel it is their job to play God if they have such strong faith in such an infallible deity who’s going to sort everyone out in the end anyway?
Speaking of family values hypocrites, Duggar allegedly used two Ashley Madison (adultery match-making Website) accounts to violently fuck porn stars in D. C. while away from his dingbat wife who was comforted in the belief that her sweet, devoted husband was just working hard lobbying for Jesus and smearing loving gay people he’d never met at every opportunity.
Yet he was a great guy nonetheless and immediately forgiven by his flock—including, of course, and most notably, Huckabee, who wrote in a lengthy (post-molestation/pre-prostitute news) Facebook defense of Duggar that he was just another victim of “today’s blood-thirsty media.” Blame the messenger—Fox News 101.
“Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family. Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, 'inexcusable,' but that doesn’t mean 'unforgivable,'” Huckabee pleaded online, adding that even “good people” do “disgusting things.”
Which is a sentiment that one might think would also apply to homosexuals (designed the way they are by God, to use Christian lingo) and not just a serial sexual deviant like Duggar, but, oddly and predictably, no.
Hilariously, Huckabee’s “underage teen” defense evaporated just a few weeks later when adult Josh Duggar made news yet again when his Ashley Madison accounts were revealed.
But, presumably, Duggar was “good” to begin with because of his awesome faith in Jesus Christ, and the gays are somehow irredeemable evil spawns of Satan who willingly chose an unrighteous, icky path.
Then, on Dec. 23, Huckabee surprisingly reversed course and threw his old church buddy under the bus, feeding Iowa radio host Simon Conway a little sample of Arkansas horseshit.
"I really didn’t support Josh," Huckabee farted into the microphone. "I supported his parents, if you’ll go back and look at what I said. There’s no support for what he did."
No?
"He did some things that totally defy everything he supposedly stood for."
No shit??
Best of all, while Huckabee was railing against homos and shaming parents (namely, the Obamas) who let their kids listen to Beyonce’s music—not to mention taking enough selfies with Duggar to fill a child rapist’s jail cell—he’s the guy who raised his son David, in God’s bright forgiving glory, to be a dog torturer.
So, in 1998, Huckabee’s then 17-year-old son was kicked out of an Arkansas Boy Scout camp for allegedly killing a dog with another teenager. But it gets worse. According to a news article citing young Huckabee’s accomplice’s father, the dog was at one point “hung over a limb and choking.”
According to anonymous witnesses, after hanging the dog, David and his buddy slit the helpless creature's throat before stoning it to death. Huckabee’s cover story, as he told Larry King in 2007 while running for president, was that his son, the good boy that he was, was just trying to put the poor dog out of its misery.
He didn’t mention the hanging.
But, of course, that act of humanity doesn’t jibe with his son being kicked out of Scout camp.
Marcal Young, scout executive of the Caddo Area Council that operated the camp where the dog was killed said David was kicked out because he violated a Scout law: "A Scout is kind," leaving little doubt that this was more of a Jeffrey-Dahmer’s-early-days situation than the merciful act of an animal lover or self defense.
And instead of praying to God to make it all work out, Governor Huckabee subsequently covered it all up, firing the director of Arkansas’ state police for refusing to write a letter denying the local prosecutor’s request for an animal cruelty investigation.
In 2007, Newsweek quoted the former FBI chief in Little Rock, I.C. Smith, as saying, “Without question, (Huckabee) was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son.”
Just like Jim Bob Duggar. And in the same state. Wow, what a small world! No wonder their families are so close; they have so many cute crimes and cover-ups in common!
Just to be clear: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wants millions of parents whose teenagers enjoy Beyonce’s music to do some kind of moral inventory, yet he raised a malicious little maniac who spent a beautiful day at Boy Scout camp torturing a poor dog to death. Man's best friend.
And who knows what kinky skeletons the former governor has in his closet. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that these self-imposed morality police for Jesus always turn out to be the sickest of us all. By far.
Here’s the thing. This isn’t Yemen. The reason our founding fathers went to all the trouble of building this paradise in the first place was to create a secular society based on freedom of religion and a separation of church and state. That is the point of the whole premise: Freedom.
Yet we’ve backslid to the point where you can’t even run for president unless you tout your Christian bona fides, no matter how exaggerated or fictional they are. Muslims are unofficially banned from the White House by the same disingenuous twats who are whining about religious freedom as a way to discriminate against gays.
Take Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.
Hey, what can you say about Dr. Carson? The man loves rhetoric.
And a few months after Carson said he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," Cruz repeatedly stumped to small crowds all over Iowa, saying, "Any president who doesn't begin every day on his knees isn't fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation."
Insert (get it?) blowjob joke here -->.
American kids have to pledge allegiance “under God” before starting school everyday, Muslim American kids have no hopes of ever being president and we’re supposed to believe Christianity is under attack in this country?
Societies that are rigidly ruled by old-timey religious goons whom their subjects resent are called theocracies. It’s what they have in Iran and Saudi Arabia, that part of the world we claim to despise, yet hardcore Christians more and more aspire to be.
Conservatives always whine about the perceived loss of American exceptionalism, yet the sexy cultural things that make America unique compared to our enemy nations— gays and trans people free to be, women who are free to work, earn money, drive cars, take birth control, wear whatever they want, have promiscuous sex (like men), etc.— are precisely the things conservatives want to get rid of.
They pine for O’Reilly’s idyllic 1950‘s Man’s World America where womens’ role is that of submissive sex slaves and cooks, which is more or less what radical Muslims like ISIS believe, ironically.
I’ve been saying this forever: Christianity and Islam are opposite sides of the same coin. Proponents of each want to return us to a simpler, much more deranged time and both enslave the human mind.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently pointed out this similarity, and, not surprisingly, conservative Christians were a little peeved about being compared to their mortal enemies—even though they clearly have so much nonsense in common.
I don’t even care for Hilldog, but that was dead-on and it took some lady-balls to say it.
Bill Maher made the same point on his HBO show on what happened to be the fourteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, noting, “If you say, as Kim Davis and her ilk, and Ted Cruz and all those people say that actually ‘I can ignore the rule of man because the rule book of God said’—then you are Iran. Then you are Saudi Arabia. Then you are Sharia law.”
Boom! Roasted. Thank you, Mr. Maher.
Everyone, especially Christians, are worried about the Islamic caliphate that ISIS is trying to build in the Middle East. But they’re just jealous. They don’t want America to be free. They want a Christian caliphate to lord over us all and Biblically dictate all of our lives, even the non-believers. Especially the non-believers.
I don’t get it, hateful Christians. Aren’t we all God’s children? You may hate the gays, but they are our brothers and sisters. In his Facebook Duggar defense, Huckabee wrote, “It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness.”
That’s great and all, but it doesn’t make sense to hold gay people who haven’t committed any crimes against children, or anyone, to a higher standard than child-molesting predators.
If you use your religion to protect child molesters while pretending to defend wholesome family values while simultaneously attacking pop music artists for behavior that is frivolous compared to the criminal deeds committed by your own friends and family, or label immigrant groups that share your same religion as subhuman criminals, you might be a Christian American. Sorry to steal your bit, Mr. Foxworthy.
Case in point: At the tail end of a bitter political campaign summer in the U.S. that saw Republican candidates competing to outdo each other in the xenophobia category after Trump set the tone with his verbal assault on Mexicans, Pope Francis blew into town drawing a stark contrast between what Jesus allegedly taught and what fake-Christian politicians preach. He was the anti-GOP.
“I would like to express two sentiments for my Muslim brothers and sisters,” Francis said in what might as well have been Latin as far as most American Christians are concerned. “My sentiments of closeness in the face of tragedy that they suffered in Mecca. In this moment, I give assurance of my prayers. I unite myself with you all.”
And that classy humanity, that unfamiliar grace, is precisely why many American conservatives think that even the Pope is a dope—just like minorities, immigrants, poor people, young people, women and liberals. Because after nearly a decade of constant Defcon Obama Fox News freakout, the only language many conservatives understand is that of fear and rage.
It’s the same reason they’ll never forgive presidential candidate Jeb Bush for having the cajones to say that most illegal immigrants’ journeys to this country are motivated by “love.” Which, of course, is common sense to most people, including the pope.
Trump talks about desperate immigrants as criminals, and of building a massive Israeli-occupation-style wall on the Mexican border, which would primarily serve as a "bigly" expensive “Fuck You!” to our friendly southern neighbors.
Francis, on the other hand, offers them hope. The Pope sounded an actual Christian message of compassion and understanding that could not contrast more with the cynical rage of American Christians, especially conservative pundits and politicians and, of course, amateur politicians.
“Many of you have emigrated to this country at great personal cost, but in the hope of building a new life,” the pope said at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall on Sat., Sept. 26. “Do not be discouraged by whatever challenges and hardships you face.”
Here's the thing. Conservatives are fetus-obsessed and I’d respect that if they had as much respect for life outside of the womb, but very few are as fired-up about homelessness, poverty, capital punishment, gun violence, war and the resulting human crises like waves of refugees that we spit on and shoo away like flies.
In other words, all the issues and people Jesus would be concerned about.
That’s why this cool new pope turned down a fancy lunch at the White House during his first ever trip to the U.S. to dine with bums in D.C. instead. Because unlike the Huckabees of the world, Pope Francis keeps it real. He is an actual good person, not just pretending to be one.
The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah made this point on the heels of yet another American gun massacre on Oct. 5, saying of the paradoxical “pro-life” anti-gun-control crowd, “They’re more like comic book collectors. Human life only holds value until you take it out of the package, and then it’s worth nothing.”
Even hardass Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently echoed that sentiment in front of a town hall crowd in New Hampshire.
“I’m pro-life and I think that if you’re pro-life, you gotta be pro-life for the whole life, not just the nine months they’re in the womb," Christie said firmly. "It’s easy to be pro-life for the nine months they’re in the womb; they haven’t done anything to disappoint us yet. They’re perfect in there. But when they get out, that’s when it gets tough. The 16-year-old teenage girl on the floor of the county lockup, addicted to heroin: I’m pro-life for her too. Her life is just as much a precious gift from God as the one in the womb.”
Wow. Granted, Christie was just pandering to a crowd from New England, which has been ravaged by heroin addiction, but, regardless, that is not the message conservative faux Christians like Huckabee, Carson, Duggar and Davis preach. Speak of the devil, The pope warned us against people like them during his U.S. visit.
Amen.
I don’t believe in God, but maybe I do, because I know that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Or multiverse.
Huckabee and friends, on the other hand, probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about outer space or the possibilities of what exists out there. Because for them there is no mystery. There are no possibilities, no other worlds, other creatures. God created us all, but just us, and he’s gonna kill us all when we piss him off with enough gay activity, abortions and Beyonce performances.
But that’s not to say there are no decent Christians out there. I’m sure there are plenty. We just never see them on TV because there’s no conflict (ad revenue) there.
My buddy Fernando and his family are a great example. Their faith is their life, yet they judge no one. They named their thriving taqueria after Saint Joseph who is basically The Man in the Mexican town they hail from. He’s the saint of the local church there, or however that all works. These people abhor abortion just like the jingoistic hateful Christians do, yet they live like Jesus in that they are sweet to everyone. They even give free coffee to homeless people who come in off the freezing street in winter.
They mind their business, work harder than anyone I know and go to church on Sunday—their one free day. Yet, the Kim Davises and Donald Trumps of this country, these embarrassing self-righteous slobs, want these real Christians from Mexico to take a hike?
Good God!
One day, about a decade ago (during “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush’s utterly pointless and tragically stupid Iraq War experiment) my college roommate and I were admiring the Montana sunset when we invited a small church group on to our porch. And it wasn’t long before they made it clear that my friend and I were lousy bums for, get this, drinking beer.
We hadn’t molested any of our sisters, tortured any animals, or bombed any civilians.
But once they found out we didn't share their beliefs, it didn’t matter how sweet or hospitable we were, they just wanted to judge us and tell us all about our impending trip to Hell. They even sent us a postcard a week later to hammer home the point and get one last jab in—to finish us off, so to speak. (Hey, if Davis can have an epic boxing theme, so can I!)
Which means we've come full circle-jerk, America.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Hell as yourselves.” Matthew 23:15
