Friday, January 20, 2006

The fury of the fundies.



My job is to comment on the antics of the clowns that make up organized religion especially the species known as Boobus Fundustheologica. You can tell them apart from the rest of the species by the small brain, drab feathering, and the constantly fearful look over their shoulder as they waddle down the road.

Because I comment on the religious nut cases it may appear that this blog is now dedicated to Brokeback Mountain alone or at least dominantly so. That is not the case. But the success of this film has so rattled the American Taliban that they are having theological fits all over the place. And the fits are getting worse as the success of the film grows and grows and grows.

Those infested by the virus of fundamentalism live in a fake world of their own creation. One aspect of that faux reality is that they convince themselves that they speak for all Americans. Rubbish. Sure Americans seem particularly prone to religious infections but that doesn’t mean that most Americans are fundamentalists. Most polls shows that the “moral agenda” of the white sheeted Christians is a minority viewpoint. And the bad news for them is that it is a declining viewpoint not an ascending one.

They are just emboldened in their bigotry and viciousness because the head Boobus Fundustheologica besmirches the White House with his presence. And considering some of his predecessors you would think that besmirching the White House any further would be a difficult thing to do. On the other hand I’m not full convinced that any resident of that building had much going for him since Thomas Jefferson retired to Monticello.

I read the blogs. I read the mainstream press. I even read the publications of the American Taliban. And it is clear that this film has totally unnerved them. Their vendetta against it will increase and increase and increase. If they could they’d burn down a few cinemas to make their point. But the typical fundamentalist is, at heart, a coward. He is too afraid to engage in the violence himself so he fantasizes in a deity who will do his violence for him. But given half a chance they clamour for a goverment as malignant and merciless as they are themselves. That is why the worship the ground of that vile barbarian in Washington, DC.

When this little film first appeared on the scene it was only shown in 5 cinemas. They it went to 43, then to a couple of hundred, then to almost 700, and this weekend it practically doubles distribution. When you open in five cinemas there is no way in hell you are going to pull in millions. But this film was pulling in around $30,000 per screen and that was very impressive. But the totals being earned were modest and the Christians leapt on that fact alone, in total isolation to the rest of the story, to comfort themselves that the American people are as petty and small-minded as are the Bible bigots.

But the interest in the film kept growing and growing far faster than even the film’s producers dared to hope. Now the rabid Right is really rabid. That people across the US and even the so-called “Middle America” are going to see this film. Outrage is all these befuddled baboons can feel.

One particular odios oaf of the Right is L. Brent Bozell who makes sues we knows he is really L. Brent Bozell the third! What a horrifying thought! Isn’t one more than enough? He writes for a trashy publication called Human Events. I should note that Human Events wasn’t always as trashy as it is today. Some of its early founders like Felix Morley and Frank Chodorov were pretty decent fellows. But like the conservative movement in general Human Events has jumped into the fanatical fever swamp of fundamentalist bigotry.

So this trashy rag screams out a headline “LIberal Hollywood Conspires to Promote ‘Brokeback Mountain’”. See it’s a plot. And if we can’t really go around talking about Jews and international bankers lets create a “conspiracy” of Hollywood and gays. Bozell the Boob whines about Brokeback winning some Golden Globes and points out that the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation,which gives out the award, is a small group. Duh! That is pretty well known and always has been. No one has complained about the size of its membership before. But now it’s ominous.

But if that is ominous wait until you hear that not only is the group smal but “many of them [are] Europeans.” You can feel the Boobus Fundustheologica shaking in fear at this tiny cabal of Europeans. Bozell, who is Alzheimer’s age, is horrified that these Europeans are pushing the “decadent culture of Old Europe, in love with illicit sex, drugs, dysfunctionality -- and even anti-Western political weirdness.”

Now I contend that is not the case at all. The difference between Europe and America is that Europe is not rushing back to the Dark Ages with the Holy Trinity as cheerleaders. Europe went through the Age of Enlightenment. America was founded by such men, advocates of reason and sanity. But when America found Jesus it threw out reason and it threw out limited government. Contrary to the lying “truths” of the Religious Right the US was not a religious country. It only found Jesus in the late 1800s and only in the 1940s did church attendance rise above 50 percent.

Bozell says that Brokeback is evidence of “European sexual decadence”. See there really is no such thing a full blooded American homosexuals. They are all Europeans at heart. Like the typical Know Nothing of the American Right Bozell has not seen this film or any of the others he is trashing. He admits so much when he says that people “who’ve actually seen these movies are a better judge” as to their quality.

And Bozell has to insist that it’s really only those crazy liberals infected with Europeanism that are going to the cinema to watch it. He says the films profit comes “largely in the large blue-state metropolitan areas with devoted gay audiences.” Well, the film started there but it’s not ending there. And press reports showed it was selling well in places like Grand Rapids and Salt Lake City. These are not large blue-state metropolitan areas with devoted gay audiences.

But the illusion has to be kept up that no one from Middle America will see this film. And since he’s an obsessed Catholic he can’t mention Brokeback without mention that tribute to grotesque torture The Passion of the Christ. Here was a vile, vicious, violent film that depicted the most exaggerated form of torture available and the lunatic Christians flocked to see it. It was a piece of crap based on the demented visions of some nun out of the Dark Ages.

But to Bozell the fact that the nut case Mel Gibson didn’t win awards for that film is proof “that these awards are not based on merit as much as on decadent cultural politics.” It never occurred to this man that the one film is winning awards because it is a good film while the other didn’t win them because it was trash. Hell, the story was badly done and the main character is not even believable.

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