Captain Catholic Calls the Kettle Black.

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(I was going to write another post on Valentine’s Day and begin an annual tradition but then I realized that would be stupid. If you have an undiagnosed brain disease and really want to read something on that topic, here you go.)

I am a pompous windbag, and I accept this defect in my character. I can pontificate with the best of them (evidenced by my use of the word pontificate) and will frequently rail on about nothing at all as if it were the greatest moral dilemma since Shelley Long left Cheers or alternatively, when Shelley Long returned to Cheers.

When I was four I once lectured my pre-school classmates that “the model created by the seemingly endless, unsupervised activities of Ernie and Bert represents an open-ended paradigm of nomadic, living-room, parentless subsistence and pigeon-loving anarchy”.

I railed against The Passion of the Christ not for its perceived anti-Semitism, but rather because the character of Pontius Pilate was bald. We all know that bald people are evil and there’s no need to discuss the point any further. Regardless, Mel Gibson created a needlessly sympathetic portrayal of that shiny-headed devil. (I know you’re thinking that you can refute me with a Jean-Luc Picard Rebut, so then I shall have to ask you to look at this.).

In my new book, The Cereal Agenda, I’ll explain why Cap’n Crunch is a bad choice for Secretary of the Navy, and will hamper the War on Terror.

Back to the topic of windbags, William Donohue is the sack of guts who acts as the President and Chief Cable TV Irritant for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights – and there is no group with a better track record on religious and civil rights than the Catholic Church.

I don’t approach this matter with pure objectivity. In addition to currently being a pompous windbag, I was previously a pompous, Catholic windbag. I’m generally pro-religion (despite being an atheist) and I have a special, nostalgic place in my heart for the Grand Old Church. My parents are Catholic, my family is Catholic and my wife and I are the only leaf in the family tree that has removed itself from the fold. So my point (not that I need one) is that by no definition would I be anti-Catholic…but don’t get me started on those damnable Seventh Day Adventists – I discriminate against them openly and with relish.

Anyway, Bill Donohue was central to the recent criticism and eventual resignation of two bloggers who had been working for the presidential campaign of John Edwards (D – Disappointed to be in Third Place). The two bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan were the center of a highly-contrived bit of outrage for writing things perceived to be anti-religious, and more specifically, anti-Catholic. Edwards stood by his bloggers (despite calling their writings offensive) but they quit all the same. I won’t bother quoting what either of the bloggers said, since you can decide for yourselves if Bill’s charges are true – honestly, I could give a rat’s ass about either one of them.

While noting that the right to free expression also guarantees the right to be offensive, I will add that I’m more interested with how Donohue reacted rather than the comments that prompted him to act. Just for fun, let’s presume that Donohue has identified two genuine dyed-in-the-wool, anti-religious bigots (who, of course, are also foul-mouthed).

The line from Bill that caught my attention was this:

“It is not enough that one foul-mouthed anti-Christian bigot, Amanda Marcotte, has quit. Melissa McEwan must go as well.” Donohue continues, “Now I will eat ten thousand donuts and scream at people who look like they are catching ‘teh ghey’. I’m wearing a diaper and I smell like turnips”.

I made part of that up.

So Bill’s keywords here are “foul-mouthed” and “bigot”. That’s Bill’s problem, he doesn’t like bigots and he doesn’t like them even more (sending him into an episode of donut-eating rage) when they are foul-mouthed. Here are two quotes of Donut Bill from MSNBC (motto: We’re Still Behind You):

“Gays were all of a sudden worrying if people would start aborting kids when they found out the DNA suggested the kid might be gay or God forbid, we’d run out of little gay kids, so all of a sudden, they became pro-life.”

“Name for me a book publishing company /…/ which would allow you to publish a book which would tell the truth about the gay death style.”

I would consider both of those statements to express a certain level of bigotry, and while they have no regular profanity, they are certainly foul. Now, Donut Bill explains that you cannot be bigoted against gays like you can with race since race is about who you are naturally, and sexual orientation is about what you do.

Last time I looked (i.e., never) there might very well be a gene that promotes acts of group socialization like religion, but there is certainly none for Christianity, and even more certainly there is none for Catholicism in particular. There could not, by this logic, be even the barest hint of a gene for being a red-faced, fleshy hypocrite who is a cross between a giant version of the Travelocity Gnome and Jabba the Hutt (trust me, I’d know). On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a considerable body of evidence to indicate that sexual orientation has a strong genetic component (yup, god wants them that way – ha!).

Being an apologetic for Catholic dogma and the history of the Church is one thing, but this is quite another. Donohue has done precisely what he is condemning, and done so in pretty poor fashion. The only way this could have been much worse is if he’d punched an orphaned baby in the face while blowing out hot gas about being pro-life. Great work, Bill — I’m sure that Holy Mother Church wants to thank you. I’m also relatively sure that they should do it using the psychotic albino monk from The DaVinci Code (I actually knew an albino priest, and he was a very nice man…).

This is nothing more than a loud and poorly veiled attempt to smear the other side of the political equation. Whatever a valid expression of faith looks like, I’m quite sure that this isn’t it.

And remember Bill, it’s “Blessed are the Greek meek” not “Blessed are the loudest.”

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