The Most Hilarious Piece Of Speculative Pseudojournalism On Michael Phelps And The Pope That I've Read So Far

Editor's Warning: Do not read the following without eating; you may have to clean your screen and keyboard afterward.

From deadspin.com comes the "truth" about why the moustacheless heir to the Throne of Spitz decided to sleep in instead of going to Castel Gandolfo:

It's not because he got high (as we all know, the Pope smokes dope). The reason famous fish-person Michael Phelps won't meet with the Nazi Pope is buried deep in his family history, as revealed on his Wikipedia page.

It's all because of these seemingly unimportant words, from the "Personal Life" section of his user-generated biography: "His father, Fred Phelps...."

Michael Phelps' father is Fred Phelps. Unless there is more than one Fred Phelps in America, that means the Olympic champion swimmer's father is the psychotic ruler of the Westboro Baptist Church, and the creator of the famous slogan and website "God Hates Fags" and its slightly lesser known campaign, "Priests Rape Boys."

Given the statistical impossibility of the name "Fred" and the surname "Phelps" ever being combined in more than one person, it would appear that the author's logic is flawless.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. It has all the piss and vinegar of a Jack Chick tirade combined with killer Lone Gunman action. Some things are just too hilarious to make me mad.

If It Happened, It Happened. Also, If It Could Have Happened, It Happened.

It doesn't matter whether or not Christians are actually protesting the release of the EA video game "Dante's Inferno;" what matters is that EA thought that people would expect it to happen. When a negative reaction to the game didn't materialize organically, EA decided it was time to manufacture some dissent:

Video game giant Electronic Arts has admitted it funded a group of fake protesters who pretended to be Christians as a publicity stunt to spur interest in its upcoming action game very loosely based on Dante’s “Inferno.”

The game company hired a group of almost 20 people to stand outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, the Associated Press says. The phony protesters passed out amateurish material and held signs bearing slogans such as “Trade in Your PlayStation for a PrayStation,” “Hell is not a Game” and “EA = Electronic Anti-Christ.”

Holly Rockwood, an EA spokeswoman, said the charade was arranged by a viral marketing agency hired by the company.

A web page in the crude style of 1990s web design was also created in connection with the stunt. It depicted crosses crushing the word “sin” and placed images of the King James Bible among phony condemnations and thinly-veiled promotions of the game.

“A video game hero does not have the authority to save and damn... ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE. and he will not judge the sinners who play this game kindly,” the site said.

I tried to find the website and couldn't.

I don't know whether I'm amused, or (pardon the pun) inflamed by this stunt. But I do know that I'm amused by this little gem that the writer of the above article decided to sneak into the copy:

Dante placed the fraudulent and the sowers of discord in the penultimate Eighth Circle.

All of this raises an interesting ethical question: does unfairly representing someone you believe to be a bigot make you a bigot too? Methinks it does.

"Clearly, Sterility Doesn't Matter Given That Death Is The Desired Outcome."

What's creepier? The fact that our culture is seeking to treat the sick among us like racehorses with broken legs, or that euthanasia is being addressed in such casual terms in a forum like Time Magazine? This, from the article glibly titled "Foolproofing Suicide with Euthanasia Test Kits":

When someone with a terminal illness decides to end his or her life by overdosing on barbiturates, they may hope the drugs will lull them into a peaceful and permanent sleep. But if the drugs have passed their expiration date or lack a sufficiently lethal concentration, the would-be suicide victim may actually survive — risking an array of complications including coma, reduced physical functioning and the opprobrium of disapproving friends and family. Now, in an effort to provide certainty to those contemplating suicide, one of the world's leading euthanasia advocates plans to sell barbiturate-testing kits to confirm that deadly drug cocktails are, in fact, deadly.

"People who are seriously ill don't want to experiment," says Dr. Philip Nitschke, the physician known as Dr. Death for his efforts to legalize euthanasia in his native Australia. "They want to know they have the right concentration of drugs so that if they take them in the suggested way, it will provide them with a peaceful death."

The kits, which will debut in Britain in May and retail for $50, include a syringe that allows users to extract half a milliliter of barbiturate solution without breaking the sanitary seal. "Clearly, sterility doesn't matter given that death is the desired outcome," Nitschke says. But the solution deteriorates slower in a sterile environment, allowing those with painful conditions to "lock it away in the back of the cupboard in case things gets too bad." The extracted sample is then mixed with chemicals from the kit; a color change indicates a lethal solution.

I'm wondering how the ads for this will be worded: "Want to end it all, but hate to leave a gross-looking corpse?" or perhaps "have you tried to kill yourself before, but other assisted suicide kits just didn't get you quite dead enough?"

Mercy.

Mainstream Media Offering Comprehensive Coverage Of The Pope's Visit To Africa

And when I say "comprehensive," I mean they're sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "LA LA LA CONDOMS LA LA LA!"

"Those Who Know Don't Talk, And Those Who Talk Don't Know."

Phil Lawler has an insightful column at USA Today about the woefully inadequate handling of the public relations disaster surrounding the lifting of the excommunication of SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson:

(Many) do not realize that Benedict XVI (has) not restored Williamson and the other SSPX bishops to regular status. Those four bishops are still suspended from public ministry; the lifting of their excommunications was only one step in a process of reconciliation. But the media message that carried the day: Williamson, an anti-Semite, was back in business.

Yet the story has even more depth and context that the Vatican failed effectively to correct: Neither Williamson's original excommunication in 1988 nor the pope's decision to revoke it were related in any way to his extreme political views. Under the canon law that governs church affairs, excommunication is a rare disciplinary action, used only for certain specific offenses (such as, in this case, ordaining a bishop without approval from the Holy See). The church does not formally excommunicate members for their political views, even when those views are repugnant to Catholic teachings — as, for example, in the case of Catholic politicians who favor unrestricted legal abortion."

One of the most significant aspects of this story that has been vastly overlooked is the fact that fellow SSPX Bishop Bernard Fellay has renounced the anti-semitic views of Williamson, something that would have never happened unless the excommunications had been lifted.

And for the record, the only place that Rich Williamson is a bishop is in the (still) schismatic Society of St. Pius X. I just wish that someone from the Vatican would make that a little clearer.

I Stand With The Archbishop

If you ever want to be thoroughly depressed at the state of our society, simply read the comboxes in a public newspaper anytime anybody from the Church says anything about anything. Immediately employed is the Catholic version of the argument ad Hitlerum, wherein the reaction of the public defaults to a sticking of the fingers in the ears and a chanting of something to the effect of "LA LA LA SEX ABUSE SCANDAL LA LA LA!" As Chesterton so aptly put it, "it is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer."

Such has become the case with Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati's recent expression of disgust at "Sexploration Week," currently being offered on University of Cincinnati campus, notoriously sponsored by the intrepid sexplorers at Pure Romance. One caption from a photo of the "Pizza and Porn" session reads as follows:

some Students who attended “Pizza and Porn” were asked under what circumstances they would ‘do porn.’ Some would ... with provisions.

Curious for more information about "Pizza and Porn?" Here ya go:

At the event "Pizza and Porn," sexuality educator Kathleen Baldwin will discuss how "porn is not necessarily a bad thing," Johnson said. "We're not showing porn, we're just discussing porn."

Because porn is not necessarily bad, but too bad to show over pizza, apparently.

Other session titles include "Sexcapades" and "Got the Hook Up?" And if these talks whet your sexual appetites, free condoms and "safer sex kits" (I don't even want to know) abound, along with a free demonstration of products from Pure Romance to help accessorize the experience.

A word coined on Mark Shea's blog the other day aptly sums up the whole fiasco: "sluttony."

Archbishop Pilarczyk, an alumnus of the University of Cincinnati, rightly expressed his disgust at the week's events. Not surprisingly, he was greeted with a chorus of detractors, the content of most of whose comments could be summed up by "stuff it, you molestor!" and "sexual promiscuity is right because it's recent!" Here's a sampling of a few of the comments on the article from the Enquirer, which at last count filled 50+ pages:

"keep sex in the rectory where it belongs!!!"

"Mind your O.D.B. Catholic Church and Pilarczyk. Take your pageantry and pedophilia to a cave somewhere. We can all be good people and citizens without that garbage."

"Does the Archbishop realize that his parents had sex too! If not how in the world did he get here? His parents must have had impure thoughts and actions! Just once. Oh MY that may make a mortal rather that the high and mighty one he thinks he is."

"To the archbishop. GO CRALL BACK UNDER THE ROCK YOU CAME from! The only disturbing thing is how you handled the priests you shuffeled from church to church at the expense of the children that they molested. You Danile Pilarczyk are very disturbing to all of us in the city."

And so forth. Perhaps UC should consider spending their money on a campus-wide grammar and spelling convention instead.

The sex abuse scandal happened. There's no denying it; there's no excusing it. But to forget that the scandal happened inside the Church at the same time that the sexual revolution was happening outside is to live in unreality. I hate that the abuse happened in my Catholic Church, just as I hated when it happened in my Nazarene Church, or in my United Methodist Church, or in the schools I attended.

But perhaps what I hate the most about the fact that it happened in my Church is that when someone like Archbishop Pilarczyk rightly expresses disgust at a tasteless display such as "Sexploration," that the arguments he makes are automatically dismissed with the man.

Shock! Pope Benedict Misrepresented By Media

Proving what Chesterton said when he stated that "it is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer," here are my top ten favorite sneery headlines from press outlets who cherry picked a single sentence from BXIV, divorced it from its context, and proceeded to generally mislead the general public:

1. "Pope Benedict at Christmas: Preaching bigotry disguised as compassion"- The San Francisco Chronicle

2. "Pope Benedict's Vatican Address Angers Gay Community"- ABC News (still waiting on the headline "Gay Community's Distortion Of Vatican Address Angers Pope Benedict")

3. "Protect The Planet From Gays, Pope Says"- Canberra Times

4. "The Pope's Christmas Condemnation Of Transsexuals"- Time

5. "Saving The World From Homosexuality Like Saving Rainforests: Pope"- Indian Express.

6. "Fury As The Pope Says: Save The World From Gays"- Aberdeen Press And Journal

7. "Pope Accused Of Spreading Fear About Homosexuals"- Daily Mail

8. "Pope Says Gays Could End Human Race"- First Post

9. "Pope's Latest Outburst 'Justifies' Homophobic Bullying"- Pink News.

10. "Pope Rebuked For Stoking Homophobic Sentiments"- The Scotsman.

Let's do a little experiment here. I'm going to take a HUGE journalistic risk, and print here the text of Pope Benedict XVI's address that has caused the sensational pseudojournalistic firestorm detailed above. See if you can find the following words or phrases in it: "Save the Planet," "End Human Race," "Homophobic Bullying," "Homosexual," "Gay," "Transsexual," or "Rainforest Equals Heterosexuality":

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man's self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God's work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman - as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

From reading the articles linked above, you'd think that the Holy Father had just off the top of his head said, "Merry Christmas! And by the way, all you gay people are going to Hell." In none of the articles linked above will you find a single reasoned response to the metaphysical and ontological arguments presented in the Pope's address. All you will find is foamy-mouthed crotch-liberation theology. Is there such a thing as the ideal setting for sexuality as created by God? It's awful hard to deny. And it's not homophobic to say so.

The Lights Are Back On

After Sunday's maelstrom, we in the Cincinnati area are beginning to finally be back in business, electricity wise. My place of employment went back online around 1:30 this morning. The humble Hartwell Homestead still remains electricity-free.

I, for one, must express my slight disappointment at the fact that we're getting the power back. These days of no electricity have been some of the most peaceful in recent memory. Odd how when there aren't televisions, ipods, computers, and cell phones to monopolize our every waking moment, people actually hang out with their neighbors. Call me crazy, but I sort of wish the Duke Energy people would have been more relaxed in their approach to Cincinnati's own localized experience of Hurricane Ike.

(That's right, I said HURRICANE Ike. He hit the tri-state Sunday afternoon with Category 1 strength.)

Went to a Panera across town yesterday just to check things out. It was a veritable laptop-fest, as young and middle aged professionals clamored for their respective pieces of the wi-fi pie. One person recounted how on Monday, two such customers were thrown out of the place because one of them, furious that he had as yet been (gasp) Unable To Check His Email, unplugged another person's power source, sparking a heated altercation that, from anecdotal reports, nearly escalated to fisticuffs.

In this great, prosperous and civilized nation, I've come to the conclusion that we are roughly five to seven telecommunications-free days away from total barbarism.

"Send a solar flare, Jesus..."

What The Vatican's New Seven Deadly Sins Are... And What They're Not

File under: The Wonder That Is (British (Lack Of)) Religion?

At the prompting of the inimitable Jimmy Richter, my comrade in (sleeve tattooed) arms, I have decided to weigh in on this provocative subject. Please bear with my fumbling analysis.

Much has been made of a Vatican pronouncement of seven new deadly sins, which, after reading the sources, was neither a pronouncement, nor an enumeration of seven sins. You gotta love British journalism. It makes real news into tabloids, and tabloids into real news.

That being said, it's not a bad thing at all to discuss the things mentioned in L'Osservatorio Romano as deadly sins. Nor is there any sense in which the things wrongly cast as a "replacement list" are anything new, especially to anyone who has been paying attention to what's been coming out of Rome for decades. As such, we have decided to set down to explain what each of the British media's interpretations of the new "seven deadly sins" are, and what they are not.

Sin #1: Thou Shalt Not Engage in "Morally Dubious" Experimentation

What it is not: A prohibition of all stem cell research. As some who are paying attention have noticed, the Vatican is extremely in favor of stem cell research. What the Vatican is against is creating test-tube babies for the sole purpose of killing them and harvesting their parts in order to treat Michael J. Fox.

What it is: A stern warning to those who would do anything that Dr. Ian Malcolm would see as being really, really bad, especially when it comes to human-animal hybrids, and the exultation of discovery over ethics.

Sin #2: Thou Shalt Not Engage In Bioethical Violations

What it is not: A backward and reactionary knee-jerk response to anyone who wants to make medical and reproductive advances in our culture.

What it is: An upbraiding of the Western ideal that we should screw anything and everything that will hold still, and some things that won't, whether by coercion or free will.

Sin #3: Thou Shalt Not Abuse Drugs

What it is not: A Scientologist's guide to mental illness.

What it is: Seriously, if someone has to explain to you what constitutes drug abuse, you're probably on drugs.

Sin #4: Thou Shalt Not Pollute The Environment

What it is not: An assurance that you will go to hell if you drive an SUV or don't recycle.

What it is: A reminder that a correct environmentalism has to have the dignity of human life at its center, as opposed to having a hatred of human life at its center. Whenever we pollute water sources or waste food, we should realize the effect that it has on the poor nations and peoples of this earth, rather than thinking about how those poor people should freaking stop procreating so us Westerners can continue to drive SUV's and throw our Wendy's bags out the window.

Sin #5: Thou Shalt Not Contribute To Making Others Poor:

What it is not: An admonition to stop working hard so as to succeed in this world.

What it is: A slap in the face to the oil industry (Western and Arabic alike), the CEO's who fire people in Detroit and perpetuate below-minimum wage sweat shoppery in third world countries, and those of us who haven't thought hard enough about how to stop buying from China. Every penny spent is a vote ratifying the policies of the corporations from which we buy things. Is conscious consumerism such a difficult thing to ask?

Sin #6: Thou Shalt Not Store Up For Thyself Excessive Wealth:

What it is not: A commandment that applies to yours truly.

What it is: A reminder that retirement from work is not a retirement from social responsibility. You're still part of the human race, even if you think some of the rest of the human race smells sort of funny. From everyone to whom much is given, much will be required.

Sin #7: Thou Shalt Not Widen The Divide Between The Rich And The Poor:

What it is not: Does anyone feel like the disingenuous denizens of the British media really just tried to cut Sin #5 in half in order to make an even Seven?

What it is: A call to reflection for those who keep making the rich richer and the poor poorer, who rely on third world labor laws to perpetuate their daily surf and turf dinners but make sure their hourly employees never average enough hours to where the company has to provide health insurance.

We hope this brings clarity to the Vatican's updated list of Seven Deadly Sins, which was never intended to be a new list of Seven Deadly Sins in the first place.

Monk Error In Your Favor

The boys of Creative Minority Report have the perfect solution for a course of discipline to be carried out against the staff of L'Osservatore Romano, who recently admitted they had overstated the 2005-2006 decline in religious order membership by 1311%. Read it liesurely while you boil the wet noodles, which should be prepared al dente, in honor of St. Apollonia.