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...
This summer I had commented on that silly episode of The West Wing from October of 2000 when the show’s writer, Aaron Sorkin, decided to properly skewer Dr. Laura. He chose to do this the way he skewers everybody else, as I understand it: To position a ridiculous caricature of the chosen target opposite the blisteringly self-important Martin Sheen, and construct a highly improbable “dialog” between the two, most of which is worked over by Sheen himself, rushing through his pre-constructed lines at a jackrabbit pace.
This episode is often cited as a display of the show’s brilliance, which is odd because the whole thing is pretty far from being original. It had been passed ’round the innernets like a hooker at a stag party some five months before the show aired. A model of Sorkin’s brilliance? It seems the selection of a different model would be in order, but lots of West Wing fans don’t think so. You can get a transcript of the scene from many places, including here.
But the point is, just because you seldom hear of a response to those stupid questions this fictitious President is hurling at Dr. Laura, doesn’t mean the responses don’t exist or are somehow not probable. The responses are more reasoned and straightforward than you might think, and someone has taken the trouble to put them together. Really, they’re just the kind of responses a reasonable person would expect them to be, for the most part. Example…
Q. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to the French but not to the Scots. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Scottish people?
A. It doesn’t actually say slaves, it says ‘bondmen and bondmaids’. People who were poor bonded themselves or their children to someone wealthy. It was a form of social security. It is also written (Exod 21:16) that anyone who steals a man to sell him shall be put to death. So those Muslim slavers who took and sold black slaves to the white man were flat out of order and worthy of death. Don’t forget that the man who had slavery outlawed in Britain was William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian. Atheists were quite happy with slavery.
Zing.
But come on. Who really thought the best answer that Christians would have to give to Aaron Sorkin’s oh-so-brilliant recycling of innernet urban-legends, would be just a bobbing up-and-down of the Adam’s apple and a deer-in-the-headlights look? Maybe a fun fantasy for you if you really hate Christians, I suppose. But back here in the plane of reality…situation’s unchanged. It always pays to get both sides of the story.
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