I’m pleased to see that you’ve transitioned from porcelain iconography to religious iconography. Perhaps a combination of the two is in order.

There’s a lot of virgin birthing going on in the Catholic Church.

Almost sounds like a small town in Arkansas.

Liberal … believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, … how many times they’ve been married.

Don’t they realize the Godly thing to do is divorce your first wife on her sickbed?

I found the Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons to be such dreck I threw the novels away after the first chapter, but….didn’t Angels & Demons precede Da Vinci?

If he gets that part wrong, why bother reading further?

Cross-posted
teh lulz

He’s working in the same genre as Harlan Coben and James Patterson, but his real competitors are ideologues like Ayn Rand, and spiritual gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. He’s writing thrillers, but he’s selling a theology.

Dude, he’s just a mediocre novelist (I kinda liked Angels & Demons the book, though the film is utter crap) who found a good schtick in religious mythology.

True, his depiction of the Roman Church’s past constitutes a greatest hits of anti-Catholicism

The Vatican has no problem with the film. You should go check with them, I think unlike the douchebag Catholics on the teevee in America, they’re also aware of real problems in the world, and don’t spend so much time whining about persecution from their palatial city-state.

I’m pleased to see that you’ve transitioned from porcelain iconography to religious iconography. Perhaps a combination of the two is in order.

Huh. Good idea, but how do you execute it?

Shit Moses? Maybe the Virgin Mary suspended in jism? No, wait, it’s opaque.

Damn, this is difficult. I guess this is what we’re paying Sadly for.

Apparently the movie Angels & Demons is a sequel. Given that they’re an inheritor of the old pulp adventure stories, it doesn’t really matter which order you read them in, but in fact that is central to my point.

Is there some reason why if you’re a wingnut you can’t even get basic GRAMMAR and syntax correctly, esp when you’re supposedly “edited” by the New York freaking Times?

The movie treatment of his novel, “Angels and Demons,” is cleaning up at the box office this week. The sequel to “The DaVinci Code,” due out in November, might buoy the publishing industry through the recession.

I mean that’s the FIRST paragraph. It makes it seem like Angels and Demons is the sequel to The Davinci Code. Sheesh.

It just gets more nutty and bizarre from there. Dan Brown’s competition is Ayn Rand? Really? Sheesh. This is like reading a really nerdy 5th grade composition. I’d be surprised if the original draft of Douthat’s essay wasn’t written in crayon.

mgn th trg f n thr wrt bk crtcl f slm. Thr wld b wd sprd trg frm th lft nd mhmmdn fntcs wld b prtstng n th strts chntng thr sl htfl slgns.

Th nly grps t s pltclly crrct t ttck tdy t sms r Whts, Chrstns nd Jws. Bt Gd-frbd f smn ttcks slm, gys r ny thr mnrty grp.

t sms t m tht pltcl crrctnss s mrly tl sd by th lft t cntn thr sslt gnst Wstrn Cltr.

Dan Brown’s competition is Ayn Rand? Really? Sheesh.

Well, I think it’s an apt comparison. They’re both crappy books, and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

I don’t think Douthat (or Bill Donahue) get the fact that 99.99999% of Catholics don’t give a flying fuck.

Wht’s th mttr tntn. r y frd f th ppstn? Yr cnstnt rprssn f my psts jst g t shw m wht cwrd y rlly r.

Y knw y cn’t wn gnst m n pltcl dbt, thrfr y rprss my psts.

r y frd yr’r rdrs mght hv t ng n crtcl thnkng nstd f ctng s mnd-nmbd rbts s y wld hv thm t?

Could we please trade the troll for a Wishnik?

A&D was written before The DaVinci Code, but the studio is calling this a “sequel” so he’s not wrong.

He’s writing thrillers, but he’s selling a theology.

My comment on the NYT website (first to make it through moderation in months!):

“Dan Brown is writing fiction. Ross Douthat is selling a theology.”

Jeebus.

If Ross D. read Bart Ehrman, his head would explode.

Ah, and here is why:

Director Ron Howard chose to treat Angels & Demons as a sequel to the previous film, rather than a prequel, since many had read the novel after The Da Vinci Code. He liked the idea Langdon had been through one adventure and became a more confident character.[5] Howard was also more comfortable taking liberties in adapting the story because the novel is less popular than The Da Vinci Code.[6] Producer Brian Grazer said they were too “reverential” when adapting The Da Vinci Code, which resulted in it being “a little long and stagey”. This time, “Langdon doesn’t stop and give a speech. When he speaks, he’s in motion.”[7] Howard concurred “it’s very much about modernity clashing with antiquity and technology vs. faith, so these themes, these ideas are much more active whereas the other one lived so much in the past. The tones are just innately so different between the two stories.”[6]

I don’t think Douthat (or Bill Donahue) get the fact that 99.99999% of Catholics don’t give a flying fuck.

Sure they do: why else would they know to jump into the spotlight (conspicuous lipstick marks in the Pope’s shade and all) as soon as circumstances threaten to allow any other Catholic to be heard?

It’s a useful trick they adapted from Baptist dominionists (who use it as part of a wider campaign to redefine ‘Christian’ within the narrow canon of their sect, already largely successful in exporting their geopolitics and bigotries) and neoconservative Jews (who like to force out of the discussion anyone who doesn’t shout incoherently about beating Ha’aretz with demographics whenever they climax). Lets ’em pretend to be much more influential than they actually are on a reasonable astroturfing budget.

Of course, they wouldn’t have that problem if, like certain bloggers and leaders of the Republican Party, they worked in an industry where advertisers, fundraisers, and venture capitalists have enough of other people’s money to risk that they’ll go ahead and believe any idiot has an audience of twenty million. But you know what they say about the army you have.

You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can’t have both.

Who is this Jesus Brown guy?

The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — jealous, demanding, apocalyptic — may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he’s the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.

You have to fill the pigs with demons only to the dotted line or they spill over and get in the chickens.

Who is this Jesus Brown guy?

Wasn’t he the one that was badder than ol’ King Kong, meaner than a junkyard dog?

Who is this Jesus Brown guy?

Round-headed messiah kid wearing a robe with a zigzag pattern around the middle. Always trying to kick the football, but St. Lucille keeps pulling it away. Once killed a little Christmas tree, but it rose from the dead three days later.

Who is this Jesus Brown guy?

Either Foxy Brown’s father, or the key ingredient in Jesus Brown Betty.

Dr. Venture: So you see, by applying the basic principles of the scientific method to the matter, we learn very quickly that the myth of the Chupacabra is just that, utter crap. Now, if you apply the same principles to Catholicism, an interesting thing occurs…

I am infinitely more plausible than the concept of Immaculate Conception.

Doesn’t “chupacabra” mean “goat-sucker”?

Well, Mickey Kaus exists. QED.

“But if you want to sell a 100 million, you need to preach as well as entertain — to present a fiction that can be read as fact, and that promises to unlock the secrets of history, the universe and God along the way.”-

Harry Potter is my Jesus

Harry Potter is my Jesus

See also pyrokinetic teenagers, evil hotels, rabid dogs.

“But if you want to sell a 100 million, you need to preach as well as entertain — to present a fiction that can be read as fact, and that promises to unlock the secrets of history, the universe and God along the way.”

Porn is my Jesus.

See also pyrokinetic teenagers, evil hotels, rabid dogs.

Stephen King of Kings and Lord of Lords?

re. Jesus Brown – thanks! Thanks especially for giving it a gospel theme, you know, with different versions of the truth.

Fun project: read the excerpt from Hte Gay and imagine the same scene with the observant, curious, and amicable pastor replaced with

a) Ross Douthat
b) Pastor Swank
c) Any wingnut will do, but suggestions include, oh, Megan McArdle, Max Boot/Bill Kristol, and Glenn Reynolds.

And if we’re doing Reynolds we mustn’t forget what trailblazing techno-libertarian geniuses like Eric Odom or Ray Kurzweil might think of these noble savages. But they ain’t got I Have No Mouth And I Must Heh-Indeedy going for them, so caveat caprofellator.

“Engage in critical thinking”?

Egads. And here I thought it was all about the poop jokes.

Stoopid punk bitchiz! Jerry Garcia is Jesus. The beard and long hair is your first clue. The god-given talent is your second. And then of course there are all the miracles he performed back in the 70’s.

Porn is my Jesus.

“Oh my GOD” is indeed something you hear quite often from that corner, isn’t it?

I liked the film, a lot. But even if it’s all nonsense, it’s unlikely that someone like Douthat is going to see a more complimentary portrayal on the big screen of the Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy than in this movie.

I guess they’re happier when they’re jacking off to watching Jesus get the shit beat out of him for an entire 2 hours.

“Oh my GOD” is indeed something you hear quite often from that corner, isn’t it?

I’ll try to keep it down in the future.

“And the Lord Jesus Brown spoke, saying You pull that motherfuckin ball away again Lucy and I kick your skanky ho ass next time,

Porn is my Jesus.-

Now thats transubstantiation I can get behind.

“And the Lord Jesus Brown spoke, saying You pull that motherfuckin ball away again Lucy and I kick your skanky ho ass next time,

That explains why Bill O’Reilly was expecting someone to scream about “muthafuckin’ ice tea” at Sylvia’s. He was having a religious experience.

Now thats transubstantiation I can get behind.

I think it will be more fun for both of us if you get in front.

keep in mind that these are the same folks who took Michael Crichton seriously as a climate scientist…

Isn’t “transubstantiation” partially-hydrogenated vegetable Jesus? I’m pretty sure its use has been outlawed here in New York.

…keep in mind that these are the same folks who took Michael Crichton seriously as a climate scientist…

Well, it wasn’t Crichton’s fault that he didn’t know that a really bad thunderstorm would hit just as the guy was stealing the dinosaur DNA off of Jurassic Park’s island and the gates would fail and the tyrannosaur would get loose.

The real controversy, though, is why in Raiders of the Lost Ark does God let the Nazis get away with killing millions of His chosen people (the Jews) but he melts them instantly when the Nazis open his arc.

Oh wait — maybe this makes God a libertarian who thinks it’s the Jews’ personal problem to deal with the Holocaust and no one wants Big God interfering with free will, but, man God does respect Private Property.

Isn’t “transubstantiation” partially-hydrogenated vegetable Jesus?

Indeed

The real controversy, though, is why in Raiders of the Lost Ark does God let the Nazis get away with killing millions of His chosen people (the Jews) but he melts them instantly when the Nazis open his arc.

They stepped on his blue suede shoes.

I’m looking forward to a lot more RD columns on the comparative validity of various religions, especially when included in works of fiction as plot devices. How about Judaism and “Ben Hur”? The Episcopal Church and and “Miracle on 34th Street” I also hope that RD will expand on the notion that some religious texts might provide a “persuasive alternative to the New Testament.”

I think Douthat does make a great point, though. We need a thriller about a hidden conspiracy behind Islam. Let’s see. There’s a coded message in the tiles of an ancient mosque that tells about what happens if you bring together the Black Stone of Mecca, the storied “red stone” that was the deity of the south Arabian city of Ghaiman, and the “white stone” in the Ka’ba of al-Abalat (near the city of Tabala). They are all ancient meteorites that are REALLY pieces of alien technology that will create a source of infinite energy when connected in a specific way. The red stone and white stone must be located through a series of clues in ancient art and architecture and the Black Stone must be heisted! Naturally there are tons of imams who have mastered secret martial arts lining up to kill the searchers. And heisters! What a blow to Islam if their Black Stone is only an alien artifact!

I think Douthat is correct that no publisher would touch it. Look what’s happened with “The Jewel of Medina” which is sympathetic to Mohammed and Islam.
Publisher Firebombers Found Guilty

Though Gibson House initially claimed that they would go ahead with the publication, it has yet to appear (it’s listed on Amazon, with a release date of October 2009). Twenty years after the publication of the Satanic Verses smudged the line between free expression and causing offence, what Noam Chomsky once called “self-censorship” is the default mode in publishing. In 1989, those involved in the Rushdie novel’s publication were indeed damned, with copies burned and translators murdered. In 2009, as Kenan Malik put it in his recent book From Fatwa To Jihad: “the fatwa has effectively become internalised.”

I suspect Douthat would really prefer that anything unfavorable to religion, especially Catholicism, were prohibited, rather than that publishers and producers were less intimidated by Muslim violence. He is more envious than disapproving of Muslim power over the media.

How about Judaism and “Ben Hur”? The Episcopal Church and and “Miracle on 34th Street”

Zoroastrianism and Lillies of the Field.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Heh-Indeedy

That might be the funniest thing I’ve ever read here.

Too bad Ellison will sue you now.

Isn’t Brown’s next target Freemasonry? D.M. Nation is a Mason, and I’m 100% in the WGAS camp.

Isn’t Brown’s next target Freemasonry?

Speaking as someone who’s never read the books or seen the movies, WTF is up with forgetting the Freemasons in your silly conspiracy book?

BREAKING: “Shitty Columnist Discusses Shitty Movie” (Update x 4)

[I win DKos]

“Lamb of Douchehat” is a good band name.

actor212 said,
May 19, 2009 at 18:04

Isn’t “transubstantiation” partially-hydrogenated vegetable Jesus?

Indeed

I got a bag of Nacho-Cheese-Flavored Doritos once that were kind of anemic and tasteless, and then in the bottom of the bag was a big spherical glob of orange cheese powder. Was that a religious experience?

a big anti-Catholic reveal…That terrorist plot against the Vatican was actually launched by an archconservative priest!

So… any plot that features a Catholic as a villain is anti-Catholic, even if the villain is a Catholic plotting against other (or, for that matter, the vast majority of) Catholics. Got it. Small wonder that Ross looks like a character actor who would be well-cast as one of the minor apostles who would have underbid Judas if he’d been given the chance.

Isn’t Brown’s next target Freemasonry?

Odd Fellows. And Woodworkers of the World.

WTF is up with forgetting the Freemasons in your silly conspiracy book?

He didn’t. They come up as a sidelight in DaVinci, the book, with respect to Rosslyn Chapel.

Comparing the Da Vinci Code to biblical fact/history is like comparing Star Wars to Dungeons and Dragons.

You people really need to work on shortening your shorters. Somewhere, Elton Beard is shaking his head and sighing.

Here’s how it’s done

Dungeons is factual????

He didn’t. They come up as a sidelight in DaVinci, the book, with respect to Rosslyn Chapel.

Well that’s kind of a rip-off.

He’s not even Catholic anymore, he dumped Mother Church for Eastern Orthodoxy. Why doesn’t he wait until somebody does a movie in which all the clues are in icons before he pitches a fit?

Actor212, the fact that Dungeons is factual is central to my point.

He’s not even Catholic anymore, he dumped Mother Church for Eastern Orthodoxy.

Wasn’t that Dreher?

The Catholic Church and Black Narcissus

Maybe you’re right, RB; I guess I really can’t tell the players without a scorecard.

My worry is that this recent flurry of wingnuttery will give fuel to the fire of the theorists who posit that we are reaching “peak wingnut.”

Me so holy!

Not to worry, Legalize. DougJ over at Balloon Juice has come up with a corollary positing the emergence of the Wingularity.

FYWP.

AND NONE OF YOUR BACKCHAT THIS TIME.

“[V]irgin birth of the Virgin Mary”?? Um, no. The Immaculate Conception is the belief that Mary was born without Original Sin. She was born as the result of…well, you know…

Actor212, the fact that Dungeons is factual is central to my point.

Hey, those kids died in those steam tunnels to absolve your sins.

This Douhattery reminds me of the uproar over BHO appearing at Notre Dame. The right-wing Catholic contingent wants to obscure the fact that liberal Catholics exist.

Now thats transubstantiation I can get behind.
I think it will be more fun for both of us if you get in front.

vade retro me, Christos!

My worry is that this recent flurry of wingnuttery will give fuel to the fire of the theorists who posit that we are reaching “peak wingnut.”
Don’t worry. Wingnut is a self-replicating resource. So much so, in fact, that some have theorized that the recent flurry of wingnuttery may lead to grey wingnut goo, also known as wingnutophagy.

vade retro me, Christos!

What did I tell you people in Foucault’s Pendulum? Not everyone who brings up the Templars is a loony, but every loony will, sooner or later, bring up the Templars.

And by the way, the degrees of Masonry are apprentice, journeyman and master. Anything else is LARPing for people too wimpy to read about how all four Crusades ended in disaster and defeat and too squeamish to think about East Jerusalem being reduced to rubble as a necessary part of The Rapture.

You may leave when you snatch the brannock from my hand.

The real controversy, though, is why in Raiders of the Lost Ark does God let the Nazis get away with killing millions of His chosen people (the Jews) but he melts them instantly when the Nazis open his arc.

And so I speak unto thee the words of our Lord and Father:

DUDE, DO NOT TOUCH MY STUFF, OKAY?

Yea, that was me, ??????, Metatron.

Verily do I say: FYWP.

So in what way does Metatron differ from plain ordinary Tron? Are there extra levels?

cur said,
May 19, 2009 at 19:48

Comparing the Da Vinci Code to biblical fact/history is like comparing Star Wars to Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the essence of religiosity. I find myself nodding sagely and intoning “Hmmm, yeah”.

Mebbes it’s because I’ve not even had my first cup of tea yet (I dinnae drink coffee – I’d probably spontaneously combust).

Oh, and I luuurrrve the “I have no mouth and I must Heh-indeedy”. I remember the days, youngster (says she, gesticulating with a walking stick) when ol’ Harlan was considered the Angry Young Man of the New Wave of sci-fi writing. He must be about 98 by now, although probably still angry.

You little buggers get off my lawn.

“I have no mouth and …” is an internet tradition around these here parts.
Incidentally, in the picture, why is Do-that Jesus pressing the burning beetroot on his t-shirt? Does it produce a comic sound effect?

And the beetroot sez: Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim bus stop F’tang F’tang

If the ‘Tickle-Me-Elmo” had not appeared on the market just in time to grab all the publicity, my “Nail-Me-Up-Jesus” doll would have made a fortune.

And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, and did resemble a chunky Reese Witherspoon, when she knew Saint Douthat lay in bed at the friend’s parent’s house, brought an alabaster box of birth control pills, and lay beside him giggling, and began to smother his face with spilling boobage, and did whisper in his ear, and anoint him with lust.

Jeebus with a mullet AND a face mullet. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA! My EYES!!!!!!!!!!

Next week, I’m writing a column on the Immaculate Conception, which most people incorrectly think refers to the virgin birth of Jesus but which instead refers to the virgin birth of the Virgin Mary.

Everyone makes this error; it makes me lose my patience.

— Sister Mary Ignatius

You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can’t have both.
I think this means he wants Dan Brown burned at the stake, but I’ll have to consult with my priest first.

The Talmud relates that Elisha ben Abuyah, also called Acher, (???, “other”, as he became an apostate), entered Paradise and saw Metatron sitting down (an action that in heaven is permitted only to God Himself). Elishah ben Abuyah therefore looked to Metatron as a deity and said heretically, “There are indeed two powers in heaven!” The rabbis explain that Metatron was allowed to sit because of his function as the Heavenly Scribe, writing down the deeds of Israel (Babylonian Talmud, Hagiga 15a).

“… the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 ‘strokes with fiery rods’ to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.” -[3

Shorter shorter:

“We shouldn’t waste time contemplating laughably untrue mythological notions, instead of the mainstream story history of Jesus.”

Damn, this “shorter” stuff is hard— it took a surprising amount of effort to get it down to a single line.

Metatron sitting down (an action that in heaven is permitted only to God Himself)

You’re not allowed to sit down in Heaven? What’s up with that?

Is this a common belief, and is that why R.L. Burnside called one of his albums “Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down”?

“… the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 ’strokes with fiery rods’ to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.”

O children of the Lord, inquire not into the hobbies of angels. What the Host does in its spare time is none of thine business and between consenting Seraphim.

We will refrain from commenting on your ass and where you put it, O servant of the Lord.

Doesn’t Metatron turn into a Pontiac Firebird or something?

I KNEW I’d seen that name before! I recently saw an interview with Carlos Santana where he claimed to be receiving career guidance from an angel named Metatron. Clearly I was born too late to have tried the really good acid.

@J Neo Marvin–

“You’re not allowed to sit down in Heaven? What’s up with that?”

Oh, won’t you sit down?
Lord, I can’t sit down.
Oh, won’t you sit down?
Lord, I can’t sit down.
Oh, won’t you sit down?
Lord, I can’t sit down–
Cause I just got to Heaven, gotta look around.

Was going to link to a performance of this, but all that Youtube has is middle-school renditions that are too painfully white-bread for my ethnic tradition to take. (7/8 Northern European plus one Spaniard in the works; high school in the 1950s in a school which when I arrived had one Filipino in the student body and later acquired one actual Negro! And learned the song in a summer day camp, similar racial constitution, but the counselors had at some point heard Spirituals sung.)

(That’s musically white-bread, not racially, which makes it all the worse. Wish I could send them all back to the huge music festivals I attended back then, to sing in the enormous unwieldy chorus directed by Jester Hairston, surely the first Black person from whom most of them (us) had ever taken direction, and unanimously adored by the kids, who learned at least someting about singing that sort of music, and, of course, ate it up.)

(BTW the Hairston family was one of the biggest land-owners and slave-owners (but I repeat myself) in South Carolina. Apparently there are now huge Hairston reunions, happy biracial affairs that surely would have made the antebellum Hairstons quite sick. This actually can inspire me to momentary positive thoughts about South Carolina.)

(Note to fellow codgers: Did you sing “Hell, no” back in The Days, to the tune of A-men, arranged and popularized by Jester Hairston?)

No other blog can combine American music and Jewish mysticism like Sadly, No!

Signed,

Epstein’s Mother

Now I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure he’s saying Dan Brown can’t speak at Notre Dame.