Wednesday 7 October 2009

Interpreting The Classics

Remember how the media is full of liberal bias, so America needed FOX News? Or how school textbooks on American history are full of liberal bias, so America needs new books that don't mention liberals at all?

Well, that jazz is for amateurs. You know what's really liberally biased? What really needs attention from conservatives to make sure the truth is known?

The Bible.

Various people have been trying to parody this since it started doing the rounds (I got it from Balloon Juice, so h/t to them), but how exactly can something this incomprehensibly loony possibly be parodied? I mean, Supply Side Jesus worked back when so many conservatives were conent to just ignore their own holy text's lessons, but actually re-writing it? What can you do that would make this seem more crazy than it already is:
Guideline 6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
Guideline 7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.
Applying logic to Hell.

Sure, there are mistranslations in the Bible, and there are an awful lot of very smart people who disagree about various words and passages. Crucially, though, those are the very people who Conservapedia say "can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook". Got that? The people who are actually qualified to spot errors are all moonbat feministas, so those who by definition don't know how to spot a mistranslation must be the ones to change the holy word of God. To think these people say academics are arrogant.

Like I said, I can't see how you could riff off this to make it more crazy. This is coming just days after Neal Gabler's article Politics as Religion, which essentially argues large subsections of the American populace now view politics as so black and white that it might as well be religious dogma to them. Turns out religion isn't really dogmatic enough for them, either.

I can't stop thinking about the Pharisees in all of this, attempting to turn the word of God against God Himself when He finally showed up. There's some half-remembered story about a cult who murder their own leader because he refuses to go along with the way in which they've twisted his own message; I wish I could remember the name. How else can you view the attempt to re-write one's own holy book so as to remove "the pervasive and hurtful myth that Jesus would be a political liberal today"?

No comments: