Tonight ABC World News did a piece from Kentucky, I think by Dan Harris, that essentially mocked Baptists for accepting Sarah Palin as a possible vice president of the U.S. even as they bar women from the pulpit. There were the usual interviews with some religious guy who justified the discrimination on the basis of this biblical passage or another and with the good woman pastor who is trying to change Baptist practices. The tone of the piece was very judgmental with a gee-whiz patina.
I share that judgment, let’s be clear. Pure hokum. But why don’t we ever get to hear about the religious hokum that justifies Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and occupation of the West Bank? Let alone the religious hokum behind the Zionist movement: that we ruled there 2000 years ago. As one observer has noted, maybe Tanya Reinhart, the Canaanites had a long run; when do they get to move in and push the remaining Palestinians out of their villages?
The point re ABC is that it’s absolutely conventional for privileged east coast media to mock poor southerners and other citizens of the great interior when they display ignorant religious-based ideas, but no media outlet likes to take on crazy religious beliefs in the privileged waters in which they swim. And yet 58 percent of American Jews are for an undivided Jerusalem out of faith-borne ideology, and about the same number of American Jews have never even seen the place. These strange religious notions are surely one reason that McCain invoked Israel and Iran three or four times in the debate, and they have basically nullified all American motions at fairness in the Holy Land for 60s years, Suez and a few other exceptions notwithstanding. Where’s the journalism about those boobs?
Baptists bar women from the pulpit? I'm pretty sure I've seen a few Biblethumping female televangelists bellowing out fire and brimstone while flipping channels on my tv. I had assumed they were Baptists.
Sorry if I can't be more specific, but I think you may be mistaken.
The point is that, if you attack simple-minded Southern Baptists for their quaint but ridiculous beliefs, you are rewarded by the culture, but if you attack simple-minded Jews for their quaint but ridiculous beliefs, you are crucified as an Anti-Semite.
The Reform and Conservative moments don't bar women from becoming clergyman. And the creators of Israel were secular if not atheists.
Phil should be able to answer his own questions here, since he keeps telling us that Jews and northeastern WASPs are the power behind the scenes.
Powerful Jews need to glorify their civil rights era participation as being completely on the side of the noble, with no hint of revolutionary zeal, or of serving self for the sake of power. And bashing southerners gives them a domestic outlet for their Holocaust fixation, also.
I can't count the number of times that I have heard Jews invoke civil rights or compare southerners to Nazis. It is ridiculous to compare southerners to Nazis. And I believe that the constant civil rights chatter is partly to keep the talk away from the civil rights abuses that many Jews support in Israel. It is also laughable to compare the sins of the South to those of Israel.
The WASPS of the Northeast have been bashing southerners and their heartland relatives for centuries now. What's new? They've needed a scapegoat for a civil war that doesn't seem to be about egalitarian purposes, and attacking southern-style segregation was an easy way to deflect international attention from the North's own phoney egalitarianism during the Cold War.
Do northeastern WASPs really have a leg to stand on with their history slavery, slave trading, segregation, treatment of Indians, imperialism, aggressive war and support of mid-twentieth cethury eugenics and racial hygeine movements?
Being from the South, I completely understand how kooky some of the more religious people can be. But are they any less nuts or hateful than many of the secular and Jewish nuts roaming around? I don't think so, and the Southern Baptists and evangelicals (not the fake ones like Bush) wield much less power than the other groups.
I understand that I can't prove or disprove God's existence. I can hope for goodness, order and creativity in the universe, but that's about all I can do. I feel caught between zealots on each side. Try and tell a typical atheist that science can't disprove God, and you'll see that he is about as rational as the Christian fundie who refuses to acknowledge dinosaurs. And we know that discussing Jews and their myths in anything but the most positive light is strictly forbidden.
Todd, if you've never shown any pride in your region or thought it was right about anything, fine, you'd be justified in expecting that others do the same.
My experience is that some Southerners are all too willing to go on and on about how horrible the "Yankees" are. In dealing with them, it's not wrong for Northerners to point out a few things we were right about.
Otherwise it's the same tiresome scenario of Southerners saying "You're no better than us (but really we are better than you) that prevails in "paleocon" circles.
I had more sympathy with your point of view in pre-Internet days, when one could assume that the liberal media had it in for the South, but it's clear now that the feeling of some Southerners against the North is as strong and at least as unjustified.
Logan, Southerners are usually in the position of reacting, right or wrong. And I do believe that Northerners should spend a little time looking at their own sins, since they are considerable. Whether or not you agree with my ideas doesn't matter to either one of us. I think I'm pretty accurate.
Either way, I see no reason that we should be forced to live under the same system of government. It's never worked equally well for both parties.
And the creators of Israel were secular if not atheists.
Wow, so now zionism is actually a secular nationalism.
Secular, as in propagating religious myth over actual history, defining citizenship and immigration rights by religion, and putting an obvious religious symbol on your flag.
I sometimes wonder what will be left of the English language after zionist propaganda has all run its course.
"Southerners are usually in the position of reacting, right or wrong. … Either way, I see no reason that we should be forced to live under the same system of government. "
True, a lot of the talk about how we'd be better off separating is largely emotional, and not based on a serious examination of the pros and cons of union or separation.
"It's never worked equally well for both parties."
Living together in the same country puts a break on the more extreme tendencies of both sides. Generally that works out well for sane people in both sections.
"And I do believe that Northerners should spend a little time looking at their own sins, since they are considerable."
If that's directed at gratuitous Southern-baiting, fair enough. But historically, that argument's been used against even mild criticism of Southern abuses. And it hasn't always been accompanied with much examination of Southern sins.
Also, most of us up here aren't WASPs. Maybe we do see those "Northeastern WASP sins" and those of Southerners and judge accordingly, not being especially defensive or aggressive on either score.
But maybe it's possible to feel a little sympathy for those dead Northern WASPs who do get attacked for their prejudices and abuses by most of our contemporaries, and attacked again by Southernists for the times when they may have transcended the vices of their day.
Logan, I stand by my first post. You truly are glossing over the Northern past. You seem to believe that I have some great regional pride, which I don't have. I just tire of the bogus egalitarianism and self-righteousness exhibited by many Northerners, little of which stands scrutiny by the standards they apply to the South.
I'm not sure that a peaceful disolution of the union would be such a bad thing. Who would be harmed the most? Corporations? Government? Citizens of one or both sides? Everyone? It's hard to say, but it could be done peacefully. The concentration of so much power in Washington and the Northeast isn't the best arrangement possible.
Southerners have have been forced to examine their sins whether real or imagined. I think it is obvious that the sins of the North have been glossed over whether committed by WASPs or not. I also think that a good case can be made that the sins of the South aren't as great as those of the North–and I'm not one who really cares about the sins of either group.