Quote of The Day

Posted on 12/19/2008 at 5:41 pm by admin

by Lee Stranahan

So let’s start seeing this differently. No one is trying to hurt us with this choice. Oh, yes, it does hurt, no doubt about that, but it’s not aimed at us. Let’s think about it. Let’s come up with a way to walk alongside this man, just for a while, just to see if it works.

That’s from a great blog post by novelist Nicola Grffith.

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  • JG

    exactly.

  • josh

    Similarly, when driving to NY from CT, if you are in the back and the driver gets on to I95-N and not I95-S, drive along with him, just for a while, to see if it works.Wait, that’s too benign. Howzabout, when baking a chocolate cake for a party, if your chef decides to substitute the cocoa, opting to add, instead, a mixture of bile and shit, have a slice, and see where he’s going with it.You’ve said before that you think Warren is not like Falwell or Dobson. You’re right.The guy is Falwell 2.0.I am reminded of Reese from TERMINATOR:Pay attention. The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy. But these are new. They look human. Sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait ’til he moved on you before I could zero him.

  • http://52novels.com Rob in Denver

    While that quote is good, for me the following from Nicola’s blog has always been what this pick was about:

    … I think our time would be better spent in thinking. Really. Think about it. Obama is a politician. He manipulates political machines to get what he needs. He has manipulated the quiltbag population brilliantly. He’s very, very good at what he does. We have to ponder what it is that he’s doing now.

    He’s doing the Big Tent thing. He’s walking the talk of his acceptance speech, to be President for all those who didn’t vote for him, as well as for those who did. …

    For two years we witnessed perhaps the greatest politician who ever stood on the stump. He can’t govern yet, which means he’s still on the stump. That he made a political decision — which is exactly what the Warren invocation pick is — should come as no surprise to people who claimed to be paying attention.

  • http://willpen.wordpress.com willpen

    Once again Lee, your cooler head has prevailed. Thank you for the link to this new wonderful blog.It is nice to be finding these good positive thoughts among all the not so positive ones.

  • sdrDusty

    I must admit there is some validity to this.I still think that the invitation is wrong, And I don’t think the protest about it is unfair in any way.But there are many things that could be learned and gained from it.It’s as doubtful that we’ll change the thinking of many at Saddleback by this as it is that we’ll change Fred Phelps thinking. Warren is just a slicked down nice-ified version of him.But IF by giving him room to speak at this auspicious event, we can convince enough of the non-rabid believers that we’re not planning to criminalize their doctrine, and thus further gain our due rights, then the indignity of this will be well worthwhile.I’m not convinced that’s how this will play out, but it’s possible.

  • http://www.leestranahan.com Lee Stranahan

    Josh – do you think it’s possible that an analogy comparing Warren doing a couple of minutes of prayer to eating shit bile stretches the overall significance of this?

  • http://peggystone263@msn.com peggygeorge

    People really are losing all sense of proportion over this issue. It’s an invocation, not a government appointment. Obama has been elected to serve all the people, and if he were to completely disdain the sensibilities of 35% of the country, it would make it that much harder for him to govern. Save the righteous indignation for the big stuff – the actual changes we need to end a war and claw our way out of a recession that is devastating just about everyone I know. Because, frankly, intolerance flourishes most when people are scared and out of work.

  • josh

    Lee-No more than the analogy of women choosing not to bring their pregnancies to term is like the willful murder of an entire fully realized, living community and culture of 6 million people.Or the analogy that two adult human beings who wish to share one another’s lives in love and companionship is like raping children, or sexual relations between siblings.I would suspect that rage at someone making those sort of comparisons being acknowledged as a wise voice and a representative of the Divine in front of a nation that just elected someone specifically because they were tired of that kind of thing would be expected.And too, I would imagine that to the human beings stinging over being told that their love was less than fully human, the analogy is apt. It leaves them with a decidedly shitty taste in their mouth.

  • josh

    But more importantly, no love for the T800 quote?I thought that was perfect!Falwell is the 600 series. Warren the Arnie 800 that fools the sentries.That smiley-guy with the slick hair who looks like a thinner, more car-salesmanny Gavin Newsome (Osteen?), he’s the liquid metal one.

  • http://peacebetweenpeople.blogspot.com OllyOllyO

    The best thing to do right now is to direct our anger in a more constructive direction. We could debate for months about how much of an ignorant dick Rick Warren is. We could also dissect all of the political reasons this was a justifiable decision for Obama. But, where can it possibly get us? Undoubtedly, we will be standing in the same place when the dust settles.It’s time to get creative. If you haven’t seen Milk yet, and you care about this issue, you need to go see it tomorrow. He was able to build a coalition of people and inspire them to direct their anger in an extremely productive way. Back then, cops were beating the shit out of people for being gay. There was no protection under law for them. But, he was able to channel that energy into political action, and become the first openly gay man to be elected to public office.We have a great opportunity right now to organize nationwide. People need an issue with Obama in office. Bush is not going to be there to serve as our punching bag anymore. Let’s let Obama do his thing for a while, and work on inspiring the rest of the nation to understand why marriage is so important to EVERYONE.

  • http://www.leestranahan.com Lee Stranahan

    But Josh – none of that is what was said. It’s all got big dripping chunks of Josh interpretation on it.I’m way in favor of abortion. But to millions of people, abortion is murder. It’s not just carrying a fetus to term for them, it’s killing. So if you do the math, it’s more than the Holocaust. On their own terms, they aren’t being offensive – what’s offensive to them is the killing of tens of millions of innocent babies. It’s a perfectly apt analogy if think abortion is murder.So I’m not going to say someone is offensive for using an analogy like that because all they are doing is being consistent with their own beliefs. I’d disagree at a deeper level – at the belief itself.What you’re doing is sticking your own belief about abortion in there and feigning shock when they come up with a different analogy then you’d ever use, since you don’t believe abortion is murder.

  • josh

    But to millions of people, abortion is murder. It’s not just carrying a fetus to term for them, it’s killing. So if you do the math, it’s more than the Holocaust. On their own terms, they aren’t being offensive – what’s offensive to them is the killing of tens of millions of innocent babies. It’s a perfectly apt analogy if think abortion is murder.So I’m not going to say someone is offensive for using an analogy like that because all they are doing is being consistent with their own beliefs.

    Then their beliefs are both insane and offensive. At what point does a belief become so ridiculous that it no longer deserves even the gestures of of politeness of taking it seriously?On this same continuum, that lady in Texas thought God was telling her to drown her kids, so to her, it was goodness. At a certain point, what givens someone has don’t excuse their behavior.The Phelps people, to their way of thinking, are just stating facts at funerals. We are not required to be understanding of their viewpoints if they infringe on our free exercise of liberty.I mean, think about what you’re saying. It excuses anything, so long as someone (however wrongly come upon it) believes a given.To get all Godwin’s Law-y, to a German circa 1938, they really DID believe that The Jew was a danger to their life and well being, and a subhuman parasite, so of COURSE they’d get behind the corralling of them and eventual extermination.I don’t get how your stating HOW they come upon their egregiously terrible conclusions in any way makes me more likely to accept it, or to encourage that kind of viewpoint’s validity.To Falwell and Robertson, God HAD dropped his veil of protection over America, because of the abortionists and the feminists and the secular pagans.To Tim McVeigh, the government HAD become so much of a menace to freedom that the tree of liberty had to be fed with blood.To Bill Frist, Terry Schiavo HAD evidenced signs of awareness, discernable to him via videotape diagnosis, so he HAD to try to reverse the opinions of her doctors, husband and courts.I mean, you can do that all day, about every form of regressive, hurtful cancerous thought virus carrier.

  • http://www.leestranahan.com Lee Stranahan

    I’m not excusing anything. I’m saying that you’re stating your case in a biased way. Your response seems to be that you’re not biased – you’re just right and they are just wrong.

  • http://wallenfeldt.com/blog Wally

    At the central core of this is a choice I really had hoped mature adults wouldn’t have to choose between.But here we are.Is this one nation under God?- Or -Are all men created equal?THIS is the choice given when you have to deal with folks like Warren and his ilk.They do not see a distinction between divinely inspired and theologically driven. To them, the second question doesn’t even make sense.And THAT is why it is dangerous to reward this line of thinking.Call it bias all you will, but there are dozens if not hundred of clergymen and women who would have been far better choices for this task.

  • josh

    Your response seems to be that you’re not biased – you’re just right and they are just wrong.

    OK, two things. This statement can be applied to anyone’s response to any disagreement ever. Including yours. In every conversation you’ve ever had with anyone about anything. To think anything else before stating one’s perspective precludes discussion.And also, we’re talking about people who actively and proudly denounce and reject science because they’ve been told that a bronze-age collection of mismatched, patchwork ramblings* says certain things which requires them to do so. You’ll pardon my french, fuck yeah I assume they are just wrong.*-by the way, I’ve read it all cover to cover, Old and New Testament, and had both rabbinical and jesuit instruction and interpretation of the texts. My wholesale rejection of them is, I feel, an informed one.I am similarly “biased” against the idea of phlogiston and luminiferous ether.

  • josh

    Is this one nation under God?

    I think it is always key to note when this phrase surfaces that it is of recent coinage. The pledge my father said in school (he was born in 1939) said simply and with more clarity (and more in step, syllable-wise) “One nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. “”Under God” was added during the Red Scare, when godlessness was equated with Communism, and shows of anti-atheism were synonymous with shows of anti-communism.I point this out because people assume the pledge is this thing written in stone, and that the presence of “Under God” is proof positive that somehow our founders had the implicit idea that God was wrapped up in American identity.Which itself is silly, because the pledge was created in the 1890s and has little to do with any founding principles.What’s FURTHER funny is that the dude who WROTE the original pledge, without mention of any god, was a minister. But one of his day, who understood that the state was the state and the church was the church and the two were not parts of each other.