I encourage all of you to go to Urban Dictionary and vote a thumbs up for my new entry: rim fag*. Well, actually, not all of you… those who are very easily offended might want to skip it. I won’t give the full definition here, but I’ll just say that it was created because I’m in academia, right smack-bang in the middle of the McGovern coalition.
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*Fag here means cigarette.
This is the part of the blog where we take a moment to point out dumb things people write, then sit back and feel superior. Ready? Go!
“The language of ‘clearing’ is another way of talking about ‘kingdom’–and kingdom is another way of talking about creativity.”
This gem is from an introduction by general editor Leonard Sweet to the book The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives.
Hands up everyone who’s read “Again he said to them, the kingdom of heaven is like…” and thought, “Oh. I get it! He’s talking about creativity!”
I may be thought uncharitable, but if this introduction is any indication then Sweet is just flat out a piss-poor writer. The goal of the book he is writing for is to convey information concerning the Emerging Church movement. But that means more than slapping down words or pictures that capture what Sweet feels when he thinks about the emerging church. He can be postmodern to his heart’s content, but the only sure fire way to convey information is denotation, not connotation.
I watched my first NBA game in years last night, and saw my Lakers hold on to beat the Spurs despite some very poor play down the stretch. At the end of the game there was this controversial play:
I’m not looking forward to hearing all of the conspiracy theories about the no-call on the last second shot by Barry, so here’s my preemptive argument for why I shouldn’t feel bad about the game.
1. It’s the NBA. If it were college, it’s a bad no-call, but the NBA just lets more of those things slide.
2. Barry lowered his shoulder and initiated contact. Fisher went straight up on the head fake, and then Barry lowered his shoulder and moved forward. If either Barry or Fisher are going forward the whole time then it gets called.
3. It’s the end of the game. I know, I know. I don’t particularly feel comfortable using this excuse, but it’s just a fact of life that fewer whistles are blown at the end of the game. These first three all work together.
4. The Spurs still wouldn’t have won. If the foul had been called, it would have been on the floor. It’s highly unlikely that the Spurs could have gotten a tip in, and even more unlikely they would have pulled out an overtime victory.
5. The best team won. If the Spurs deserved to win the game I might feel bad. But they didn’t, so I don’t.
5a. My team won. And really, in the end, isn’t that what’s important?
Recently a group of Evangelical authors got together and produced “An Evangelical Manifesto.” Even more recently, a book group that I belong to absolutely tore the document apart over the course of two or three hours. Here’s the top five problems we found.
1. It’s not a manifesto!
Well not on the whole anyway. There are some bits that would fit as “a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization,” but much of the document is dedicated trying to get evangelicals to act right according to the authors.
2. According to the document itself, the idea of an Evangelical manifesto is incoherent.
If, “no one speaks for all Evangelicals, least of all those who claim to” then the strongest claim the authors can and do make is to “speak for [themselves] but as a representative group as Evangelicals in America.” Such a group cannot write a manifesto for “Evangelicals in America.” Obviously this is a significant factor in the first problem.
3. It makes the same mistakes that it is criticizing.
One of my favorite statements from the document is when the authors claim that, “we insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our ‘true’ motives and our ‘real’ agenda” (p. 4). But then four pages later the authors do just such a thing to Fundamentalists. This is particularly egregious since Fundamentalism actually has a document that led to the definition of the movement. That’s something that Evangelicals can’t claim, yet the authors want to tell people what Fundamentalists are all about while chastising them for doing the same to Evangelicals.
4. Failure to capture Evangelicalism.
The authors may be forgiven for not giving necessary and sufficient conditions for applying the label “Evangelical”; it’s not that sort of a movement. At the same time, the desire to pitch a big tent seems to have led the authors to soften the stances that would traditionally be associated with Evangelicals. Vaguely, there is a problem with the handling of sin. The subject only seems to come up in discussions of what Evangelicals have done wrong. The doctrine of depravity is in the background, if present at all. Relatedly the authors fail to mention hell, even while affirming heaven. And finally, perhaps most importantly, there is not even a passing mention of inerrancy. It’s true that there has been no small debate over the nature of inerrancy, it is reflects poorly on the authors to have left the issue out all together.
5. Shockingly bad writing.
If these are the intellectuals of the Evangelical movement then let me out right now. I know it was produced by a committee, but that’s still no excuse for the dreadful ambiguity and out-and-out poor writing of the document. One would think that before nationally publicizing a work the authors would have run it by an editor competent enough to catch mistakes like the hyphenation of “fellow-creatures” on page six and the long list of sentences that yield three or four or more possible interpretations.
Iron Man would have been at least 17% better without that horrible blond reporter.
The last couple of posts focused on Obama mainly because he’s like the Red Sox, in that his fans are the most annoying in all of politics, just as Sox fans are the most annoying in all of sports. But I don’t want to give the impression that I’m only cynical about the left (though I am more so than of the right).
I don’t waste my time voting, but if I did, I would definitely vote for John McCain in the upcoming election. But it’s not because I think that he has some masterful plan to cure the woes of the nation. It’s for reasons analogous to #1 in my previous post. I.e., I am a conservative, and I want the most conservative candidate in the White House (though, granted, McCain isn’t the most conservative by much).
This is despite the fact that, unlike what I have claimed for Obama, I do know some past achievements of McCain; of course, things like his campaign finance reform bill are reasons that I have to revert to the reasoning above to support him. And I know of at least one case in which McCain had the balls to say something I never would have expected a politician to say–when he told people in Michigan that their jobs weren’t coming back.
But none of that matters to me. Cynic that I am, I take past performance to only be a weakly reliable indicator of future action. Furthermore, the only place I see the president as having a huge impact is in the appointment of judges. So, my support goes to the candidate who is most likely to appoint the most conservative judges.
… but I’m still not waisting my time voting.
[I feel obligated to warn you that this turned a little rantier than I expected.]
The other day I put up some videos that showed quite a few Obama fans* who couldn’t even name one political accomplishment of the senator’s. And one of them was even a congressman who had officially endorsed Obama and gone on national television to support him!
Now, I’m sure that most people who read that post (certainly the angry man who commented) thought that my point was that one shouldn’t vote for Barack Obama. While it may be the case that I think he’s terribly under-qualified, hopelessly left of reasonable and that he would do a good deal to hurt America if he were to be elected president, that doesn’t mean that I think it’s necessarily irrational or stupid to vote for him. There is at least (maybe only) three good reasons to vote for Obama:
I can respect those positions, even if I disagree with them.
What I cannot respect, what I think is stupid or irrational, is to vote for Obama because you buy into his shtick. If you think that he is a new kind of politician, that he offers some sort of hope that other candidates don’t have to offer or that he will bring any more change to Washington than electing any other first term liberal senator would, then I have to seriously question your discernment.
On the “hope/change” front, Obama’s positions aren’t even that different from Hillary, much less other more liberal democrats. The only major difference that I can see is in regards to the war.
On the “new kind of politician” front… well, the Wright debacle has pretty much shattered that myth. The facts are that Obama went to Wright’s church for 20 years, then Wright’s positions became nationally known, and then Obama dumped him. Now, it may be that Wright was Obama’s mentor/buddy/pastor for 20 years (as was the account before the recent kerfluffle), and Obama got rid of him once he became a liability to the campaign. Or, it may be that Obama only barely knew Wright, tended to nod off in services, and didn’t read the church bulletin, then dropped him like a hot potato when he realized Wright’s positions. But then why would Obama have gone to the church in the first place? The most likely answer seems to be because it was necessary for the politics of Chicago, the most old school, political machine type city in the nation.
Either way, Obama’s not anything like a new politician. He speaks well and stays on fluff, which keeps his more controversial views out of the public eye. Some people think it’s refreshing to see someone who’s not playing the game. What they’re actually being refreshed by is someone who plays the game better than anyone in a long time.**
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*My experience with Obama supporters is that the videos I put up the other day are pretty much par for the course (with a couple of notable exceptions). For this reason I will no longer refer to Obama’s supporters as such, but rather as fans, which seems much more apropos.
** Yes… he really is like a new JFK.
[Michel Mondays were instantiated and explained here.]
Okay. With a Michel Monday I am good and back.
Michel Gondry. The Foo Fighters. Lumberjacks. Dresses…. I don’t even know.
Quick. Don’t do a search, just stop and think. Can you name just one political accomplishment Barack Obama’s?
Now, please be honest. Could anybody? If you couldn’t, don’t feel bad. Neither could these people. Let’s start off with a congressman who had officially endorsed Obama:
Neither could these supporters:
Now, if you actually could name an accomplishment, and again, please be honest, did you learn it because you realized “Hey wait a minute… I’m supporting this guy for president, and I don’t even know what he’s done… I’d better go look it up!”?
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[Yes. This means I'm back off of hiatus.]
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