I See Dumb People

satanlesbian.jpg

Above: Then again, sometimes it applies to paperbacks.


Sometimes you really can judge a book by its cover. Or more accurately, by the publisher-generated copy on the inside dust jacket. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to paperbacks.

But it does apply to the latest sticky mess of smarmy insubstantiality to be spun like candied Jesus floss from the saccharine loom of grinning, serial life-fucker-upper Joel Osteen. No doubt ‘Become a Better You’ has pride of place on many an intellectually thin suburban bookshelf. Next to the Bible and in front of the stash of gay porn vids, one imagines.

But it need not find its way, dear reader, into the Amazon algorithm for book pages you once glanced at to mock. I am here to spare you that embarrassment. Because, you see, the book in its entirety can be ridiculed with a brief study of the first few lines of copy on the aforementioned dust jacket:

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!”

It would probably be too kind to suggest that ‘Become a Better You’ be retitled ‘The Demonstrably False, Insipidly Stated.’ That’s just one phrase that springs to mind upon reading the two sentences above, and really, it leaves out a strong sense of the core incoherence at the heart of that soul-draining arrangement of letters and words. Seriously, what in the living fuck does “God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!” even mean?

Let’s break it down:

Assume that “you” is used in the all-inclusive sense to mean all of us. The whole of humanity. That may sound like an odd thing to do, but consider that supreme Christian egotists like Osteen tend to believe it’s their mission to convert every last person on Earth to their brand of God-bothering. You know it’s true.

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Above: Created to suck seed.


So now we’re left with the statement that “God didn’t create any human being to be average.” The word ‘average’, of course, implies some sort of mathematical range. And the next sentence gives us a fixed point in that range that is above average, ‘to excel’.

Here’s where it gets tricky. The copy writer doesn’t give us a numerical value for ‘to excel’, so we’re just going to have to make one up for the sake of dragging this deconstruction of minutiae to truly absurd lengths. Let’s say that the range of possible human performance in the eyes of God goes from 0 — representing ‘total failure’ — to 100 — representing ‘Jesus’. At around 50 we find ‘average’ and at some other percentile, let’s say 83.764, we find ‘to excel’.

Now according to Osteen’s flack, God created us all to hit that magic 83.764 number. In His eyes it would really be the bee’s knees if all of us sinners managed to pull it off. But if we ever did it, if all of us actually clocked in at 83.764, then by the internal logic of mathematics, something that God also presumably created, WE WOULD BY DEFINITION ALL BE AVERAGE. If you added up all our God scores, then divided that number by the amount of people in the world, ‘average’ would equal 83.764.

But Osteen’s nameless leg-humper can’t possibly mean to say that “God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to be average!”

So maybe ‘to excel’ is just the floor on the scale of God-intended human goodliness. Maybe God only gives a shit that you hit 83.764, but He lets the real suck-ups shoot for like the 97.509th percentile (which would be where Joel Osteen would score, keeping in mind that we’d better keep a couple of positive integers between the Greatest Mortal Being the World Has Ever Known and Jesus, if only for form’s sake).

In this more nuanced interpretation, God just wants us to knock the cover off life to the tune of an 83.764 rating or above. And while there will still be an ‘average’ score on the God chart, let’s say 85.421, that potential pitfall is avoided by phrasing the copy a little differently:

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to score between 83.764 and 97.509, the acceptable range of ‘excelling’, just so long as you don’t hit 85.421 on the nose, because that would be average, so fuck you Christ killer! Godtotallyruleshellyeah!”

That gets rid of a lot of ambiguity in the marketing of Joel Osteen (and if I may be so bold, of God). But it’s a bit clunky. So alternately, instead of adding all that stuff, maybe we just make a few strategic cuts to the original copy:

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to[.] Excel[sior!]”

There ya go, Joel. First one’s free. Fire that snot-nosed kid who writes your jacket copy and have your people call my people.

 

Comments: 58

 
 
 

Slow news day?

 
 

Borders value rack browsing after work.

 
 

Kegger, I’d say. Less than two hundred years ago, this dude would be fighting and dying in Nauvoo for Joseph Smith. A new-age Martin Harris, really.

 
 

Too wordy, DA. Osteen is humping the particularly saccharine American flavor of Calvinism where God appoints good people wealth, happiness, an improved sex life, and the ability to find a parking space within easy reach of the main mall entrance. His readers are supposed to believe that improving their relationship with Osteen’s God will somehow unlock a hidden font of Goodness within themselves which will be expressed, in front of their boss and all the neighbors, as an abundance of money, beauty, and other desirable talents. His book is just the jeebus-flavored version of such bargain-bin perennials as “How to Win the Lottery” and “Make a Million in Real Estate”.

 
 

So, I was at Walden yesterday, and I saw that Stephen Colbert was at #2 and Ann Coulter was at #19, and I thought, Why are the think tanks and their various sock puppet organizations buying so few copies of Ann’s book in its third week? Why are they giving up so early?

The other thing that caught my eye was O’Reilly’s spanking new book: Kids Are American, Too!

WTF? Are conservatives under the impression that kids are Canadian or something, and O’Reilly is trying, desperately, to set tham straight?

 
 

Maybe O’Reilly means that ALL kids are American, even foreign ones. But when they turn 18, they become enemy combatants.

 
 

D: I think you’re vastly overestimating O’Reilly. All kids are American, up to the point where they cease being white.

 
Johnny Coelacanth
 

Osteen’s book has a prominent display at the local Walmart. I never ventured so far as to read the dust jacket, but I figured it was of a piece with that “Purpose Driven Life” crapola that’s trendy right now. As a genre, “Christian self help” is pretty much an oxymoron. But I’m biased.

 
 

Yes, but with O’Reilly it might be more like: “All kids are American, up to the point where they cease being members of Neilsen families.”

 
 

“Purpose Driven Life” … man. Remember when that tweaker woman got that escaped felon to go on a three-day meth-fueled rampage through the pages of that fucking book and everybody was like, ‘Yay, God!’

That was hilarious.

 
 

I totally remember that. My suspicion, personally, was that the dude’s conversion to Jesusism was more related to the police surrounding him than any heartfelt belief that Rick Warren is the newfound prophet of teh Lawrd.

Incidentally, I feel great shame that I actually remembered Rick Warren’s name.

 
Johnny Coelacanth
 

“the dude’s conversion to Jesusism was more related to the police surrounding him than any heartfelt belief that Rick Warren is the newfound prophet of teh Lawrd.”

Oh, I don’t know. Three days of tweaked out conversations that seem really meaningful, the reinforcement of the passages from the book and the pressure from the cops… I imagine it was very heartfelt, until he got a few hours sleep in him.

 
 

Off thread: I hope Gavin’s failure to report on the Great Park Street DFH Takeover, aka Deval *hearts* Obama, means that it was so wonderful the crowds are still staggering home from the afterparty…

 
 

I’m pretty certain you’ve earned yourself a vicious smiting. And all your booze will probably be spontaneously transformed into Bud Light.

The horror…

 
Herr Doktor Bimler
 

And all your booze will probably be spontaneously transformed into Bud Light.
That happens to me, too!
Then I flush.

 
 

God, in fact, did make “you” to be average. Individual people might be able to “excel”, but by definition the inclusive you will be, on average, average.

 
 

My wife loves Osteen (or Cap’n Blinky as I call him) and all his happy sunshine jeebus prattle. She works as biostatistician, and more or less told me, “I’m trained as a scientist. I know christianity isn’t real. But believing makes me happy, and going to church brings me peace”. So who am I to judge.

And if Herr Doktor ever offers you a beer, make sure its unopened before you take it.

 
 

I thought he was saying God wanted me to use spreadsheet software.

As Cake put it, “sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell”.

 
 

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!”

I was confused by this statement because it seemed obvious, till I realized that I was misreading it as “God didn’t create you to be a beverage.”

 
 

God didn’t create you to be average

He’s absolutely right, just not in the way he intended.

 
 

Excelsior?

Joel Osteen’s actually Stan Lee?

 
 

The fact is, liberals would do well to have more moral values and support God, then they would do better finabcially and socisally, and give up the marxist class war that is so tiresome and unproductive, work harder instead of sceem to take money away from those who have earned it, like all redistributionaist envyiou class warfare artists who contribute nothing.

 
 

Hmmm…. I’m calling drunk fake Gary! The misspellings are too numerous for it to be real.

 
 

And they complain about the liberal schools emphasizing self-esteem?!?! WTF! Shorter Joel Osteen: I can make a lot of money by convincing people that they are chosen and everyone else is the other and thus teh lame…Oh, did I say that out loud?

 
 

Um, you wouldn’t happen to be finished reading that copy of “Satan was a Lesbian” by any chance, would you?

 
 

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!”

I’m still confused. Let’s take it as a given that God didn’t create us to be average. The next sentence tells me we were created to excel, but it doesn’t say who created us to do so. Why the switch? Why not just write “God didn’t create you to be average. God created you to excel!”

So either:

God created us to be teh suck and some other being stepped in and said “No, no YHWH, I want them to excel,” and took over the creation business.

or

God roughed out a sketch and someone else did the fine detail, including the insertion of an Excel program.

Either way Mr. Happitalk seems to hint that there is a spirit more powerful than God, which sounds pretty damn blasphemous to me.

Where’s my stoning hat?

 
 

I spot him every now and then doing infomercials before the Discovery Channel kicks in with actual programming. The first time I saw him I almost mistook the glurge for morning sickness. He’s like Fred Savage, made out of treacle.

 
 

“Satan Was a Lesbian”? What’s he now?

 
 

Osteen falls into the category of “harmless”. I am sure he really believes this stuff because it works for him. He believes and makes lots of money and gets good parking spots. So you can, too! Whatever. If all the Christian preachers were like him we would all be a lot better off.

 
 

Alternate title:

I Am Jesus (And So Can You!) (But Not Really)

 
 

Gbarry,

Id oesnt knowbu inf thist matter, btu teh innertoobs aar god far cheking your sbelllllllllling. Remesmer, Gode wans yoo too xceel, so uz thetool at yours dsposal.

And hopefully I just contributed to your learning, so yay me–I’ve exceeded your stereotype.

 
 

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!”

I took this to mean that (a) God didn’t create me; and (b) someone or something more excellent created me.

Oh, and Fake Gary. Pretty good one, but definitely fake.

 
 

I guess Osteen ran out of self tanning lotion before he could put it on his hands and match them to his face. Maybe he’s trying to illustrate some parable.

 
 

“I thought he was saying God wanted me to use spreadsheet software.”

There may be something to that. Compare the relative status of Buddhism and Lotus 123.

 
 

I think “You” refers to a subset of the population (self-righteous Christians) and “average” refers to the whole population, including the dirty hippies, atheists, and islamo-fascists. Since this target group is being told that they will surpass average, it implies that as a group, the wingnuts are currently not above the average of those liberal/hippie/atheists. Assuming a normal distribution for each group, this implies that the right-most tail of the righteous christian subset is still to the left of the mean, on other words, the average of the subset is below the population average.

In essence, I think he is saying that God grades on a curve, and currently, the wingnuts are bringing down that curve and in that sense, I agree with him.

 
 

To be contrary(I didn’t get enough sleep. Bite me.), if everyone excelled at one or two things, different things for different people, and sucked at a couple other things, and did OK at the rest, wouldn’t that work out to average overall while still excelling on a certain-tasks-per-person basis? Still, the book about Satan looks better.

 
 

sceem

By coincidence (?) I watched ten minutes of Osteen the other day. It’s not just “self-help.” It’s MATERIAL self-help. He went from general Jebus-based uplift to talking about acquiring the real estate next to his home. And *that* became the heart of the lesson: acquisition thanks to God, who “wants” to give you things.

 
 

work harder instead of sceem to take money away from those who have earned it,

Yep. I’m busted. I just sit around and sceem. Some people say I’m a sceemer. And that my sceems lead to scams. I once sceemed to scam the skool. As a sceem, it excelled, but as a scam, it sucked.

Y’know, Fake Gary hits the nail on the head. That’s what’s wrong with america today. Too much sceeming. To me, at least, it seems that reams of sceems are obscene, gene. But it’s too late for me, I can’t stop the sceem, I can’t fight the dream, I’m all out of vaseline. C’mon, don’t be mean…

mikey

 
 

That is one maniacal fucking grin on Joel. Scary.

 
 

I’d rather you buy my book, titled “Be Better Than Me: One key to improving your life every day.” Hint: the key to improving your life every day is to make each day better for you than the day before was. I hope I haven’t given away too much.

 
 

“Satan Was a Lesbian”? What’s he now?

Cured, of course! Now he’s a gospel singer for Barack Obama!

Yep. I’m busted. I just sit around and sceem.

You may say I’m a sceemer. But I’m not the only one.

Some people say I’m a sceemer

And some people call you Maurice.

 
Sadly, Cambridgeport
 

You are forgetting that those who read the inside cover are a self-selecting sample that skews way to the smartness. “You” doesn’t mean “everyone”, it means “anyone who is reading this right now”.

Think of all of the people who are less likely to “excel” (in Osteensian terms) than the average potential buyer of his book. Plenty of people are illiterate. Many, man more don’t read. Ever. Not even a self-help book in the special display case at Wal-Mart with a photogenic white guy on the cover. Also, many not-white non-customers may face higher-than-average financial hurdles than his key demo (unrelated to their failure to appreciate Joel’s pearls of wisdom). Tack on people who can’t afford to shell out $25 for “literature”. Finally, I am sure that he would tell you that 90% or people, regardless of their material success, are abject failures because they are not TrueChristians.

You know, I started out being sarcastic, but I ended up convincing myself. Now I’m depressed.

 
 

self-help book in the special display case at Wal-Mart with a photogenic white guy on the cover

Huh, that word obviously doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.

 
 

I saw this smarmy asshole on Larry King with his wife and Larry was in full kneeling service mode.

And Tom-this guy is not “harmless”. His brand of material goodness…”If you worship my God he will keep you happy, healthy and wealthy”…is a TOTAL MISREADING of the real message of Jesus, which is “Love your neighbor as yourself”

 
 

It’s actually possible for most people to be above average.

Imagine you have 1 person who is a 0, and 9 people who are 55s.
The average person is a (1 * 0 + 9 * 55)/10, or 49.5. At that point, 90% of people are above average. Throw in a few -10^5 wingnuts, and you find that almost everybody excels by comparison.

(You could also make a legitimate point that striving to excel is important, and finding your niche where you are above average is part of that. Don’t mush all humanity into a single 0-100 global range.)

 
 

Everyone could be above average if God is considering demons or ghosts or things that count as negatives. Or maybe just Ann Coulter? Also God could be using special God mathematics?

 
 

Also God could be using special God mathematics?

And a titanium SPORK!

mikey

 
 

“Satan Was a Lesbian”? What’s he now?

Madonna.

(Sorry.)

 
 

D. Sidhe said,
October 24, 2007 at 19:49

“Satan Was a Lesbian”? What’s he now?

Madonna.

(Sorry.)

Oh, so no diff, then.

 
 

Is Rick Warren going to file a copyright infringement suit? Just wondering.

Also, just have to say, apropos of nothing, Osteen has always set my gaydar off, big-time. You know, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

 
 

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!”

I”m sure this has been mentioned before, but, if everyone were to excel, then excellence would become, by definition, average.

 
 

wagonjak, he is harmless because unlike your typical TV preacher he isn’t saying that the “message” of Jesus is about how gays suck and anyone who doesn’t believe is a piece of shit bound for hell. Watch another preacher and their audience gets real excited about the idea of beating the crap out unbelievers. Osteen’s crowd gets real excited about picking out a new BMW. Harmless.

 
 

Thank you dear herr doktor. That was funny.

 
 

A couple of things:

But it does apply to the latest sticky mess of smarmy insubstantiality to be spun like candied Jesus floss from the saccharine loom of grinning, serial life-fucker-upper Joel Osteen. No doubt ‘Become a Better You’ has pride of place on many an intellectually thin suburban bookshelf. Next to the Bible and in front of the stash of gay porn vids, one imagines.

And this would be wrong, how, exactly? Other than owning a Bible. Or, “Become a Better You,” for that matter. Besides, there’s no way that those two books could camouflage my gay porn–they just aren’t big enough, even faced out!

And, why the hell is this dude, Osteen, teh spitting image of Tim Allen? It just gives me the heebie-jeebies! :::::shudder:::::

 
 

Suppose that you play poker with a moron. You increase the stake by a dollar, he puts down two, you double the stakes, he folds, and you refuse to show him your cards — “it is more exiciting that way, but I think you were right”. You had but a pair, but you could predict his reaction.

Yet, he was free to match the stake, or to raise it, or to fold. He had better cards. He was “created to win”. It is his exercise of free will that doomed him. Unfortunately, he was so predictable that you could win with a weaker hand.

Here is the conundrum of free will. God created you in His image, hence, to excel. You were dealt good cards. But it is up to you exercise of free will to excel, be happy and get the bonus (eternal bliss) or to be unhappy and go to Hell.

God is also smart, and He knows what you will do, so in some sense he knows if you are doomed to fail. That you will see Rev. Osteen’s book on display, with a credit card in your pocket, and that rather than jump to the occasion, raise the stakes, buy the book, cherish it, buy all publications of Rev. Osteen in hardcover and on CDs, double the stake, memorize the words of Rev. Osteen, double the stake, change your life as Rev. Osteen sagely advise, be happy, and get the bonus, yes, you can do all of that but nooooooooo!

You just open the book’s jacket and you crack some idiotic joke. You fold. You loose. You exercised your free will badly. Collect the penalty (go to Hell).

Another example how you can improve yourself. According to ad I have seen in the waiting room of my dentist, for mere 3k you can have front teeth that are as even and as white as Joel Osteeen. Matering his creepy smile seems more difficult.

 
 

piotr is my new cryptic hero.

 
 

It may have been a verbal message that was written down wrong. Looking at my waistline, I wasn’t created to be average, I was created to be XL.

 
 

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