Wednesday, August 1, 2012

So Stupid It Burns

I sometimes wonder if show-stopping ignorance is a requirement for hosting Christian talk radio. You have the Harold Campings of the world, who insist that an apocalypse is just around the corner and that they can predict the exact date. You have the folks who support "creation museums," I suppose because there's nothing more awesome than Jesus except for Jesus riding a dinosaur. There was Jerry Falwell, who blamed the 9/11 attacks on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians," and of course Pat Robertson, who's made so many bizarre statements over the years on his radio and television programs it's hard to pick just one.

But even compared to all those examples, this little gem pretty much takes the cake. If I saw it in The Onion I would have had a good laugh and that would be that, but it's apparently a real news story. Here's the background - the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain donates to organizations that oppose marriage equality for same-sex couples. Marriage equality supporters decided to boycott the restaurant, but the last straw was apparently that the Jim Henson Company withdrew from a licensing agreement with the chain for muppet-themed toys in solidarity with the boycott. For this betrayal, apparently the only remedy is that Kermit must die.


“A Christian perspective ultimately brought the death penalty upon homosexuality between roughly 350 AD and roughly 1850 or so, for about 1,500 years that form of life had pretty much been eliminated except here and there, it was in the closet, but it was almost unheard of for over 1,000 years, until recently,” Swanson explained. “Of course, now you have a massive, massive increase in this kind of thing.”

“It’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s on looking that tolerance only runs one direction, you only can tolerate gays, you can’t tolerate those who don’t support gays,” co-host Dave Buehner observed.

“And Kermit the Frog is not eating Chick-fil-A either,” Swanson continued. “Maybe Dan Cathy should consider doing a frog filet for one of the sandwiches.”

“Dave, you know that Sesame Street and the Muppets are going to take the sodomy route,” he said, adding that the puppets may also support the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a pedophilia advocacy group.

Folks, this idiot is advocating the death penalty for puppets. You know, inanimate toys. Because those toys might support NAMBLA. Presumably they "might" manage to do this despite their complete lack of consciousness or even vitality. Not only is it ignorant to conflate homsexuality in general with pedophilia, but it's a whole other level of stupid to believe that we should be summarily executing people for supporting gay rights. And when you're firmly convinced that we should be doing it to puppets? That's yet another level altogether of something so completely deranged I don't even know what to call it.

I seriously hope that this is some sort of satirical article and I'm being played, because quite frankly the idea that anyone this moronic even exists blows my mind. It's not like lethal injection would do anything to a puppet anyway, so I guess we would have to burn them at the stake - just like in the good old days!

Technorati Digg This Stumble Stumble

4 comments:

Peregrin said...

Well Roger me rigid and call me Toby! I've been half-heartedly following this Chick-fil-A debacle, but this takes the biscuit. Yesterday I found and shared some wonderful progressive and mystic Christian material. Today... there's this... what a mixed tradition. :(

Scott Stenwick said...

I think the variation is probably because Christianity has so many followers. In any group a certain percentage of people are going to have off-the-wall perspectives on all sorts of things, and a certain perspective will have especially cool and/or interesting ones.

A related point is that it's the really bizarre folks who get all the media exposure. When was the last time you saw a news report about mystical Christians? On the other hand, the Westboro Baptist Church is in the media all the time - even though that particular "church" is made up of something like twenty people, all of whom are from of the same family. Our local Twin Cities OTO body is larger than that!

Anonymous said...

Wow. I've heard about this on the daily show, but now they're dragging the muppets into this? Wow, just wow. Nice post.

Scott Stenwick said...

I know. I think that the guy was maybe just trying to be funny, but the trouble is that you hear so much nonsense from talk show hosts like this guy you never know. There was another of them who claimed that gay demons could seep out of people and into animals, so really, is it that much of a stretch to think that same might be true for puppets? You know, if your worldview is that messed up to start with...