Category Archives: Religion
Mongo
Alex Karras died Wednesday. He played football for the Detroit Lions. He was also a pretty funny guy who appeared on Johnny Carson and in movies.
In one of Karras’ most famous scenes, as Mongo in Mell Brook’s “Blazing Saddles”, he slugged a horse knocking it out cold. Blazing saddles could not be made today. There would be naked starlet PETA protests (this is bad?), and the horse would be evaluated against his baseline concussion history and required to sit out for at least a week. Blazing Saddles mocked race relations, sexuality, Hollywood, the American Frontier, and Methodists. It fails the Civil Discourse test miserably. It’s hilarious.
I asked a really bright and hip young woman editor if she knew who Mongo was. She said, ” I can’t believe it! You’re the second person to ask me that today and until now, no, I’d never heard of him.”
Pop culture references are tricky.
Amish Beard Trimming
I get no kick from the Campaign. Islamic jihad doesn’t thrill me at all. I get a kick out of Amish beard cutting.
Especially when the cutter’s name is Samuel Mullet.
Men normally allow their beards to grow as a symbol of faith in the Amish religion. The Amish pride themselves on being plain. Actually they hate pride, but they do like plain. Anyway, Mr. Mullet appointed himself police of plainness and ordered his followers to cut off the beards of those not deemed by him to be sufficiently plain.
This was too much for a federal court, which said Mullet was guilty of hate crimes because the beard cutting was motivated by a religious dispute.
That’s an interesting take. American courts now settle religious disputes. If someone drags you out of your house and cuts off your beard, without an appointment, I might think of it as an aggravated hair assault. Or a Mitt Romney high school high jinx. But a hate crime? That would mean you are guilty of a state of mind – hate – religious hate to be specific. It would be a thought crime, or a faith crime. Do we really want to go down that road?
What other religious practices could be determined to be hate crimes? – Beheadings, blowing up embassies, crashing airplanes into buildings?
Seems awfully intolerant.
Hating a Movie
The Obama administration insists the murder of an ambassador and three others amounts to nothing more than a thumbs down review of a bad movie. The administration of Mohammad el-Magarief (Libyan president) says it was a planned terror attack.
9/11 Tribute
Islamists flew their black flag over the American embassy in Egypt, burned the U.S. consulate in Libya, and murdered four of its staff, including ambassador Chris Stevens – because they hate us, though they say it was because the didn’t like a movie. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued an apology for the movie. Romney immediately came swinging from the trees to attack the apology. Obama was shocked, shocked by Romney’s attack. Obama condemned Romney, then condemned the attackers, and retracted the apology for the movie. Hillary condemned the Libya attack too, but then apologized for the movie.
The Real Clear Politics Morning Note compared Obama’s response favorably to Bush’s original 9/11 response:
“The American people need to know that we’re facing a different enemy than we have ever faced,” Bush added. “This enemy hides in shadows, and has no regard for human life. This is an enemy who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people, then runs for cover. But it won’t be able to run for cover forever. This is an enemy that tries to hide. But it won’t be able to hide forever. This is an enemy that thinks its harbors are safe. But they won’t be safe forever.”
On the 11th anniversary of those attacks, the United States was targeted again, this time in Egypt and Libya. Once again, the initial governmental response from the administration was not commensurate with the threat. But today – 11 years to the day that Bush found his voice – President Barack Obama released a forceful statement of his own.
“I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens,” the president said this morning. “Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.”
