Re: Christ Killing Jew Ignores Gods Direct Messenger
blueveinedthrobber wrote:
Blue, I think part of the confusion is your post "Betty Bowers is furious" but the article you posted was not about "America's greatest Christian."
It was about Sharon and Bush. I get and enjoy Betty Bower's newsletters so I was confused, but maybe its because I'm getting old.
Perhaps Betty Bower's latest tongue in cheek screed would help readers understand your great sense of humor:
Dear NRA and Culture of Life® Member:
Well, the Pope's death extravaganza has confirmed as truth several suspicions of mine. First, Italian morticians clearly did not escape the sirenical vortex of Tom Ford era Gucci envelope pushing. I am, of course, referring to the Pope's edgy post-life appearance we were all treated to every time we turned on our television. The Lord may be forgiving, but daylight is not. Honestly, if one is going to be lying about idly in public, aubergine lipstick is a rather aggressive choice. (And, frankly, this goes for even those blessed with the more forgiving complexions enjoyed by the breathing.)
Another thing we all learned this week is that the American media's canonization procedure makes even the Catholic Church's most giddily expedited ascensions to sainthood seem rather languidly reluctant in comparison. Instead of the niggling requirement of a purported miracle (such as, say, witnessing Jennifer Lopez singing on pitch), cable news only requires one thing for instant beatification: the death of someone popular with people the network wishes to pander.
As anyone with a television now knows (after the most numbing repetition since our strenuously serene First Lady started repeating the word "teacher" like history's most monomaniac Tourette's sufferer), Pope John Paul II was quite conveniently without reportable fault. This fact is all the more remarkable since he blithely presided over an enterprise of child molestation so vast and industrious that it makes Munchausen Syndrome spokesperson Michael Jackson's notorious undertakings in this same regard seem quaintly amateurish. Nevertheless, everyone from ABC to Fox News graciously washed away all papal sins, including his particularly untenable habit of being an antiwar peacenik. As any Republican Christian will tell you, this particular teaching of Jesus' ("turn the other cheek if someone strikes you") is particularly galling to those of us more Christian than Christ.
Nor did anyone on television seem particularly inclined to spoil the national keenathon by pointing out that the King of the Mary Worshippers' last decision here on Earth only served to underscore to all of us Culture of Life® protestants just how lackadaisical and self-serving was the Pope's so-called embrace of our death-penalty-and-war-loving Culture of Life® (which, oddly, promotes none of one and little of the other). You see, it is all well and good to have a Vatican spokesperson condemn Terry Schiavo's husband's decision to honor his wife's outrageous decision not to be kept fresh in the medical equivalent of Tupperware, but you don't need to know Latin, swing a censer or light a candle to know that when a seriously ill man says, "I don't want to go back to the hospital" what he is really saying is "I want to die."
While alive, Pope John Paul II was one of Catholicism's most devout promoters of a goddess called Mary. And that, of course, is saying something! Indeed, judging from the most prevalent choices of graven images throughout Latin America, it appears that the Catholic Church has successfully promoted Mary over Jesus as the "go to" divinity when in need of a new car, coca crop or other financial blessing. In fact, the Pope was such an ardent Marian that he even suggested that the woman best known in the Bible for braying for free wine at wedding parties and failing to cook her son a lovely hot home-cooked meal for his Last Supper on Earth be designated as humanity's "Co-Redeemer." Apparently, Heaven's HR department posted that there is a new way to qualify for this position that doesn't involve the inconvenience of climbing up on a cross, news that came as a source of both shock and annoyance when I told Jesus.
Odd, how a seemingly omnipotent pope will turn to a woman for guidance and inspiration -- but only if she lives in a suitably remote formation of cumulus clouds. Even the church's belated, catty review of "The Da Vinci Code" was fueled solely by the Cardinals' rather peculiar fear of parishioners seeking advice from clergy of a gender actually born to wear red dresses. In this way, I think of the Catholic clergy as much akin to the most stereotypic homosexual Nancy boys: worshipping the idea of woman in Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, but almost imperceptivity recoiling when a real female crosses their paths.
America's obsessive bemoaning that a man -- finally -- accomplished what he had supposedly devoted his long, full life to doing (meeting the mercurial Lord) only helped to spotlight our nation's disconcertingly needy relationship with death. For a so-called Culture of Life®, we certainly have an unseemly preoccupation with death. America is a country where the discussion of "s letter-after-d x" is verboten (don't tell me you didn't realize that in GOP America "Abstinence Only" refers to voting -- and "No Child Left Behind" is simply a result of our condomless teen pregnancy problem). Hence, our only acceptable form of self-stimulation now arises from obsessive, prolonged public grieving triggered by the death of someone we never actually met. This professionally orchestrated emotional masturbation hit its stride with Princess Di, but is a pastime flexible enough to adapt to both king (Ronald Reagan) and commoner (Laci Peterson).
Pandering to such periodic bouts of collective lamentation provides 24-7 cable channels a welcome and expeditious alternative to the laborious, passé tasks of research and reporting. It is a given that only one death, trial or scandal at a time will snare our stingy attention, all significant events that actually affect us usually failing to romance us sufficiently to muster interest. That is, of course, until everyone is distracted by the next fickle obsession. Our tendency for intense, serial-obsessions is what Terry Schiavo's parents were recently stunned to discover as they watched cameras briskly snap shut and local news vans squeal out of their neighborhood in what, they mistakenly thought, was going to be their golden moment of news cycle penetration.
In closing, Jesus, still peeved about the whole "Co-Redemtrix" thing, has asked that you not hector Him with your more tiresome requests this week. The prayer queues for both Cadillac Escalades and Grammies are full as of 10:13 this morning. And while He assures you that He had every honorable intention of sorting through the recent flurry of prayers for "papal health," by the time He checked that box it all seemed rather moot and pointless.
So close to Jesus, He's letting me roll the Holy Dice on Judgment Day,
Mrs. Betty Bowers
America's Best Christian
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