Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Me, Friday:
Because, now that I give it another think, I see we have a variation here that is newer than that other ancient one, and perhaps more dangerous: That is complete agnosticism about where evil is.
This is different from the guy who calls evil good, and good evil. He, at least, must make the concession that there is such a thing as evil. And much of the time, he’ll either place some value on human life, or pretend to do that much. Capital punishment is a great example. I say “Hey, admit it or not, there are some guys who will kill again if they’re allowed to live; you can’t hold them in the prisons, especially when you have liberal hippies running around, unleashed, struggling to come up with new excuses every year for releasing criminals from prison.” You come back at me and say “Waitaminnit, how can you say killing is wrong, and then prove it by killing someone?” And we debate back and forth. Me with the law-and-order argument, you with the Sean Penn Susan Sarandon argument.
At least we are both placing some value on human life; or pretending to.
Not so with the moral relativist who crusades on “weeeeelllllll…ya just gotta keep an open mind.” That is a new level of ignorance.
And it must, inevitably, metastasize into the darkest, purest form of evil. For it doesn’t place a value on human life, nor does it pretend to.
Divine Kismet of the Cosmos (of some kind):
Hey, there goes that Morgan K. Freeberg guy babbling away with his foolish nonsense again. We’d better make some stuff happen. Some stuff that will make Freeberg’s foolish nonsense look sensible. Let’s get to work.
Madonna, quoted in Kyle Smith’s column, Sunday (H/T: Karol again). Commenting on her upcoming film I Am Because We Are, she gives herself the fiftieth-birthday gift of making an enormous fool out of herself. Which raises a problem for her: How’s this different from any other day?
Thank you Divine Kismets. Although I have a feeling Madonna didn’t need much of a nudge to say something idiotic.
“When you think about the way people treat each other in Africa, about witchcraft and people inflicting cruelty and pain on each other, then come back here and, you know, people taking pictures of people when they’re in their homes, being taken to hospitals, or suffering, and selling them, getting energy from them, that’s a terrible infliction of cruelty. So who’s worse off? You know what I mean?”
Whoa. At first you think she’s going to be banal, if gracious, in acknowledging that paparazzi aren’t as bad as what Africa faces. Then you realize she’s saying the opposite. “Inflicting cruelty” = “Terrible infliction of cruelty.” She thinks being photographed is the same as the African horror show. Also: she thinks Africa’s big problem is witchcraft? “God’s going to have his revenge,” she said, at a dark moment, referring not to genocide in Africa or suicide bombings in Israel, but Martin Bashir, whom she suggested should be the Lord’s next thunderbolt target – for making a documentary on Michael Jackson.
Of her film on Malawi, which includes scenes about a young widow who must submit to being raped three times a day to “cleanse” her, Madonna said, “It’s not my place to judge that tradition. But to have a conversation with a village headsman and say, ‘Do you realize this is spreading a deadly disease?’ and have him say, ‘Yes, but there’s nothing I can do’ is mind-bogglingly frustrating. But we drop bombs on children during wartime, so you think, ‘Who’s practicing black magic?’ ” So ritualized rape is OK if you use a condom, and anyway the real horror story is the United States. [emphasis mine]
That needs to go into the List of Things People Say to Get Attention file, because even with a skewed value system this makes no sense at all. You can’t look at it and go “Oooh, look at Madonna, what a wonderful person, she’s so non-judgmental and everything.” You can’t say that, because inside of a sentence or two she’s judging, and making a big show out of doing it.
She’s fifty and ageless, so it’ll have to be a few decades before she drops from natural causes. But whenever that happens, at whatever age, wherever medical technology is at that point — there has to be something to be learned from dissecting her brain to see what wrinkles are on it. Arrangements must be made. If it were up to me, I’d put her brain on the list in front of Einstein and Beethoven’s. Something is simply not clicking in there.
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I’ll wager she’d be willing to judge if she were on the wrong end of that “cleansing” ritual.
- Duffy | 08/19/2008 @ 13:53“I’ll wager she’d be willing to judge if she were on the wrong end of that “cleansing” ritual.”
Oh, I’d say she’s done that, been there…many times over. (Maybe that’s why she won’t judge it).
- tim | 08/19/2008 @ 15:17