Beckstianity 101–Social Justice is un-American

Now I don’t like to knock a guy twice in the same week. Not that I think it’s unfair, but it always strikes me as a lack of imagination on my part. Surely there’s someone ELSE you can lampoon, Greg. Oh, of course there is–and stop calling me Shirley. But Glenn Beck, bless his pointy little head, has managed to do so.

Of course, last Thursday’s cartoon wasn’t really a mock on der Beckstein (although the text was ). Getting Eric Massa on his show SEEMED like a good idea at the time. How was Beck supposed to know that a Democrat might not be disloyal to President Obama? Or that he would think that male-on-male tickling orgies might be misconstrued as sexual in nature? Or that he would take little Glennie to task for the alacrity with which right-wing commentators and Teabaggers call everyone they don’t agree with Nazis or socialists?

OK so his counterparts on Fox News all told him so. Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?

But he also managed not only to reveal that he never actually listened to the lyrics to “Born in the USA”. I guess for the last 25-and-a-half he’s been looking at the FRONT of the album cover with The Boss’s tight-jeaned butt smiling at the camera in front of a flag, head-banging along and singing BORN IN THE USA every time it came around. Yeah, Baby, Born in the USA! And for 25.5 years he never actually “listened” to the lyrics to find out what Bruce Springsteen had to say. Well, I can understand that, sometimes even us boys from Jersey find it hard to understand New Jersey. But to ADMIT IT, as if he just found out something everyone in America already KNEW! that just boggles the mind.

Only to be topped by his warning to the faithful. Now if you thought 25+ years of cluelessness was bad, check out the evidence of a LIFETIME cluelessness. He told his audience that if they heard the words “social justice” in their churches, they should run away as fast as possible to find some other church that did NOT believe in “social justice”, because “social justice” was nothing less than a codeword used by Nazis and Socialists! Now I’ve commented before on the peculiar form of Christianity some people espouse, the Calvinist belief that the poor are miserable, not just because they deserve to be, but because they WANT to be. Because if they didn’t “want” to be poor, why they’d just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make a Horatio Alger success of themselves. So any talk of “social justice” actually allows them to go along, living off unemployment and welfare. This he says, in the middle of a recession where 1 out of 6 people of working age is either unemployed or underemployed. Way to go Glenn!

But the corker is that hitherto, lots of church leaders thought Glenn was the bee’s knees. Now, they’re up in arms–because if there’s one thing that Christian churches have in common, it’s preaching charity, helping your fellow man, fighting for social justice, because their founder, that #$%^&* liberal Jesus Christ, said it was important. More important than praying as a matter of fact. Even the Mormons, who most people figure on being iffy Christians–and Glenn Beck, having been raised Catholic, converted to Mormonism in his adulthood. Looks like SOMEBODY hasn’t been paying attention in church for a long long time. I mean, we all try to not listen to sermons, but usually some of what was said sinks in after a few decades of repetition. But it’s just like Born in the USA. Glenn Beck just doesn’t pay attention. He’s off in his own little world, dreaming dreams no man ever dreamed before, because they’re too #$^&*( crazy to begin with.

Well, Glenn’s finally “clarified” his statements–I think now he says he meant Big Government instead of Nazis–and apologized in the standard approved format and his faithful congregation have returned to the fold, knowing that Glenn didn’t really mean what he said, even though he did when he said it. But myself, I’ve got to wonder–does this man even HAVE an attention span?

Carrie Prejean to donate tapes as educational aid!

Readers, I have never been one to minimize the importance of self love. In fact, I’d say there was no one in the world I had more respect for than myself…and I will even respect myself in the morning, which is one of the advantages of a dissociative personality. It goes without saying that if you don’t love yourself, you cannot love anyone else, so I won’t say it, no matter how hard I force myself.
Woody Allen explained in Love and Death that the reason he was such a great lover was because he practiced so much when he was alone. Which brings me to my next topic. It seems the Extramadura region of Spain has developed a program to educate young teens in the practice of “self love”. And by “self love,” they don’t mean “positive thinking,” although it is claimed the practice will certainly perk up your self-esteem, along with certain other parts of your anatomy! Although the BBC article doesn’t mention it, I’m sure two of the reasons for touching on this topic are that it will reduce teen pregnancies and slow the spread of STDs, not to mention that it will serve in later years to maintain prostate health. After all–aren’t we talking about the safest sex there is? And you don’t even mind if your partner is unfaithful–more power to it! What I want to know is–does it take more than one class to explain it? Are there be special techniques which must be explained and explored? Use of magazines and the internet? Perhaps an advanced class on “self love à deux”? What about lab sessions? And just what will the homework be like?
Naturally, the Catholic Church and conservative political groups in Spain have exploded over this immoral class, spewing heated pronouncements about the dire effects of using those body parts for fun instead of producing babies. No one, as far as I can tell, has suggested that perhaps if priests had practiced more self love, there would be fewer altar boys with problems sitting down. Perhaps nuns would be less likely to bring out the old yardstick after a few self confidence sessions.
Which brings us to our favorite model of morality and former beauty pageant queen, Carrie Prejean. Carrie, you will remember, is so honest that she felt she had to state her convictions at the Miss California pageant that gay marriage is sinful and immoral because it says so in the Bible. Carrie is not prejudiced against gay people–some of her best friends, including her hairdresser, are gay and she’s heartbroken that so many nice people are going to burn in hell for the rest of eternity. And she is honest–after all, she owned up about her boob job after California pageant officials demanded she repay them for it for breaching her contract. Having your own boobs filling out a bathing suit is so passé–only in California would you be judged honest by admitting you had a boob job when the evidence is right out in front of you–sort of like Sean Hannity admitting his production staff doctored the tapes of the other week’s Michele Bachmann Tea Party only after he’d been caught by Jon Stewart (and then tried to explain that it was inadvertent–as if you could accidentally mix up tapes from one day with coverage of an event almost two months before–obviously they’d both been shot on the same VHS cassette).
Now, Miss Prejean has argued vehemently that the Bible says NOTHING against having a boob job–my suspicion is that it never occurred to Moses since silicone hadn’t been invented, although he might have thought it violated the false witness commandment in that Carrie’s boobs were bearing false witness against themselves–and so Carrie counter-sued the Pageant, only to drop everything when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, it became known that Carrie had made a little sex tape for her then boyfriend–nothing too serious, just a spot of driving Miss Daisy–not even a threesome or girl-girl action! She settled quickly and, when she thought the old lecher was asking her about it, she nearly walked off the set of Larry King during an interview. Suffice it to say, she said that making that tape was the worst decision she ever made in her life. Not counting the other 7 tapes she made, which must have been the seven other worst mistakes in her life. Or the 30 topless mistakes she also sent him.
Now you may think this is just a tempest in a teapot, and you’d be right! After all, I have nothing against pretty naked girls (darn it!) and if any wants to send me any pics or videos of herself, please, go right ahead–just send me an email. I promise it will NEVER get out of my hands–so to speak. But I also think that Carrie should offer some amends for having diddled the skittle about her lily-white honesty quotient. If just to provide us with the moral example we so obviously need from her. Therefore, I call upon her to send her tapes to Extramadura to serve as study aids! And let THAT be a lesson to them!

And Another Thing–Why Are All These Books About Jews Anyway?

Conservapedia–the online encyclopedia that shows you the RIGHT way to think about things!–has come up with a new project: the translation of a CONSERVATIVE Holy Bible! Even though conservative preachers have been going great guns with that old perennial, the King James translation, Conservapedia has decided that it is much too liberal. After all, those Jacobeans who hung severed heads of criminals on prison gates were just too bleeding heart (bleeding heads don’t count). Convinced that not only have certain passages been mistranslated, but that the original texts contained politically correct interpolations, they have asked readers to help in retranslating the Bible to illustrate conservative principles. After all, it shouldn’t take too long–there’s only about 8000 verses, that could take one person only a year–think how fast it could be done with lots of people. They will also be editing the text to weed out suspicious passages, like “Father, forgive them…” Forget about–give away all your goods and follow me–obviously a later interpolation. The New Testament will probably get cut to about a page and a half but you can be sure we’re gonna get that old story about the “Eye of the Needle” gate to show that rich people really CAN get into heaven.
Now granted some recent translations have taken pains to introduce PC language–but nobody likes these translations anyway–up until the late 20th century, translators took pains to produce translations of greater and greater literal accuracy. Words change over a couple of thousand years–some Biblical vocabulary has shifted meaning and there are other words that nobody knows WTF they meant in the first place! So every translation and retranslation was intent on correcting errors made by the LAST translators because nobody speaks ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew anymore. There are entire SCHOOLS devoted to Biblical criticism–that’s right, I mean YOU, Tübingen! So where TF do these guys come off thinking they can figure out what the Bible really means and WTF is really in it? One of their justifications is “Well, Thomas Jefferson did the same thing and everyone knows what kind of bleeding heart liberal HE was.” Oooo, oooo, oooo, oooo, oooo! Got me THERE! Well, Thomas Jefferson only did that with the Gospels and he wasn’t attempting to thrust it down anyone’s throats, but was just doing it for his own intellectual curiosity, not a political screed. But I forgot–the editors of Conservapedia have opinions, not intellectual curiosity.
NONETHELESS, in a spirit of co-operation, We have decided to lend Conservapedia a hand and deliver our own conservative version of a short passage. Conservapedia is free to include this passage (as long as they footnote an attribution to Greg Uchrin, Intravenous Caffeine LOL):

The Eight Beatitudes

And Jesus said:
“Blessed are the poor in mental capacity, for they shall cast votes…
“Blessed are the mean, for they shall possess everything…
“Blessed are they who mourn, for the inheritance tax shall be abolished…
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for theirs is the hand on the switch…
“Blessed are the merciless interrogators, for they shall be called patriots and let off scot free…
“Blessed are the pure of blood, for they shall be called white folks…
“Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall shoot six…
“Blessed are those who reap incredible profits from astute political contributions, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”

(For additional info, see Conservatizing the Bible. And check out TheColbertReport for instructions on how YOU can help add Stephen Colbert to the Conservative Bible )

ABOUT MEH

Cartoons and text by Greg Uchrin (aka Gregorius alexandrinus), with the able assistance of Fred and Bert Squirrel, with special appearances by George Dymme. Published once a week on Mondays.

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