Please excuse me while I do my I was right, neener-neener happy dance.

My shocked face!

In fact, the book – like most of Penn’s stuff – just turns out to be a loose collection of breezy anecdotes and rants, dubiously organized thematically around his “Ten Atheist Suggestions”. It’s basically a compilation of Penn’s show-biz stories and video-blog ramblings, apparently intended to illustrate how his “Suggestions” work in his daily life – the connections are thin in most cases. The first chapter is a lengthy and utterly pointless, but fascinating, profile of Vegas performers Siegfried and Roy; it has about one paragraph of material that even mentions religion, and ends with Penn paying several thousand dollars for a pair of tight leather pants as a kind of tribute to Roy after he was injured in his tiger-taming act. That also makes no sense, and sets the tone for the rest of the book. Many of the chapters are hilarious (his story about being one of the first to ride the civilian “vomit comet” zero-g plane, while doing a striptease with a member of ZZ Top and a woman with huge breast implants, is indescribably bizarre; his visit to one of San Francisco’s infamous gay bathhouses at the height of the gay-bar scene – in which he couldn’t get a single gay guy to hit on him in a place that exists only for men to have sex with each other – is equally whacky). Many are touching, especially when he talks about his family. But many have virtually nothing to do with religion, or even with the moral principles that open each section of the book. (He includes a long story about his $100 bet with radio host Alex Bennet – that he couldn’t have sex while SCUBA diving with a fashion model – that is clearly in there only for the purpose of bragging. He even includes the text of his unpublished letter to Penthouse magazine about it.)

On only partial familiarity, my reaction is that the book is vintage Penn – funny and irreverent and not too rigorous. I am enjoying reading it, but I don’t think it contributes anything to the “New Atheism” or to any understanding of atheism or religion. Fans of Penn & Teller – and I am one – will find it a lot of fun, but I don’t think it rises above that level. And that’s what really gets me – not so much about the book, but about Penn himself.

Let me say, first of all, that there’s no reason I should care about any of this. Penn is a cool but exasperating character; he brings a lot of attention to his pet causes, some of which I support and some of which I don’t, but so what? He and Teller are the best in the world at what they do best, in part because they’re the only ones in the world who do just what they do. They’ve worked tremendously hard to build an unique act, and it’s made them rich and famous and given them the chance to do a lot of other cool stuff most people can’t. (Such as? Penn explains that one of the greatest benefits of being as successful in show-biz as they are is that they don’t have to work New Year’s Eve anymore.) They deserve what they’ve earned, and they’re entitled to use it to promote their other causes and interests. I’ve never met either of them, but I can’t help feeling a strange kind of connection, in part because Penn is friends with people I do know, and in part because he’s tight with a lot of the kind of people I wish I knew, like Richard Dawkins and James Randi and a lot of the skeptics crowd. Part of that, too, is simple jealousy, I realize. I really shouldn’t care what he does, and he certainly doesn’t need my approval.

But because Penn dabbles in areas that I think are important, and which hinge on objective questions of fact and logical processes of reasoning – especially areas related to science and morality – I want him to make more sense. I want him to take himself and his issues seriously, and treat them seriously. One thing I like about Penn is that he respects and admires science and logic and the people who are competent with them. (The book notes that he once called Richard Feynman long distance to ask him where to get a container of liquid nitrogen for a special effect. Feynman pointed out that, as a theoretical physicist, he doesn’t use liquid nitrogen, but promised to help. He doesn’t say whether Feynman asked why the hell he was bothering a Nobel laureate in California with a bullshit issue like that. But half an hour later, Penn got a call from a very puzzled community-college science teacher in Brooklyn.)

Penn freely acknowledges there is a lot he doesn’t know, and he advocates admitting “I don’t know” as a skeptic’s virtue. This is right on, and I really admire it. But he also goes off on issues he clearly hasn’t thought deeply about, either believing that he really understands better than he does, or just not caring. Either way, he puts himself on the same plane as the hacks he sets himself against. I thought the P&T Bullshit! show was a brilliant concept, but, though I haven’t seen many episodes, the ones I have seen are often very superficial – an observation that applies in cases when I agree with them as well as ones in which I do not. Very often, their “arguments” are really just illustrations, at best, of some more complex point that they never really make. They rarely acknowledge the complexities of the issues they address – which works for issues like homeopathy, on which there are no complexities (it’s just . . .  bullshit), but not for ones like gun control, on which there are. Something similar happens in God, No! – he offers a series of vague value statements (“The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity, and love”) that serve less as an atheist’s moral code than just as sloppy organizing themes for his funny stories. I’d have happily bought into this book if he’d simply pitched it as the sequel to How to Play With Your Food – but he’s pitching it as the latest accession in the New Atheist library. It is not, or at least it should not be, because it doesn’t try do the intellectual work that Dawkins and Hitchens, or even Sam Harris, have been doing.  It’s hip and funny and sexy, but from the perspective of someone seriously interested in an atheist view of life, it reads more like those insipid Bible tracts, filled with stories of dippy Christians finding joy by heeding the word of God – though in this case it’s a crazed atheist finding joy in extra-large silicone tits. That’s a cool way to live your life, but it’s not a responsible way to represent atheism as a worldview. And I think Penn is too smart not to understand that, and too honest with himself not to know his own limitations and work around them (something he goes to lengths to do in areas he really cares about), so I have to ask why his approach to intellectual issues is often so half-ass.

The other thing is his libertarian ass-bug. He mentions in the book that he actually has pages of handwriting by Ayn Rand mounted on his dressing-room walls as artwork. That’s fucked up. More than that, he just goes off into bizarre rants on occasion – like right in the middle of a story about a magic show or something, he tears off for 2 pages on how much he hates liberals and the government. It’s cranky and annoying, but in addition it often makes no sense. Penn’s books are obviously written on the fly – they reek of Penn’s personality and his speaking style (I wouldn’t be surprised if he dictated them free-form, and just had the tapes transcribed). That’s fine, but again it demonstrates a lack of self-criticism or cogent analysis when he leaves it in as part of his longer chapter, apparently not noticing that it’s non-sequitur, or that it often betrays a stereotypical and idiotic notion of what liberals or liberalism are about. Sometimes he just comes off as a complete asshole.

There’s one chapter that details the death of his father: he was in the hospital, due to be discharged on Christmas Eve, obviously to die, needing considerable nursing support. The hospital was going to send him to a nursing home because there was no way to arrange for home nursing at the last minute on a holiday. Penn offered to pay whatever it cost, including bonuses, to get people to come in. But his father didn’t want his son to spend the money on him; one of his father’s lifelong values was always to take care of his son and never to let his son take care of him, even after Penn had become insanely wealthy. Penn details this fact charmingly and lovingly. But in the case of the nursing home, he asked the hospital social worker to lie to his father, saying that a government program had paid for the care so his father would accept the home nursing and be able to die at home with his family. Penn is scathing about the social worker – he repeatedly refers to her, hatefully, as a liberal, mocks her appearance, and rants about what a terrible person she was because of her liberal values and professional standards. When he asks her to lie to his father – her client in her professional role – so that the father would do what he, the son, wanted, she tells him that she can’t lie to a patient. This is, indeed, the liberal values of truth-telling and self-determination (recognized as bedrock principles of medical ethics as well), but nominally libertarians respect this also. However, when Penn can’t get her to do something dishonest in order to trick his father for him, he threatens to beat her up. Yes, literally (or so he says in the book): Penn – a huge man – said to her “I’ll hit you as hard as I can . . . I’m pretty sure I can do some damage“, if she didn’t lie to his father to make him do what Penn – but not his father – believed would make his father happiest. He kind-of excuses it by saying that this was a way to get the social worker to overcome her own scruples, allowing her to think that she had no choice so she could bring herself to do what he asked, but there’s no evidence she was really playing along with the gag – to all appearances she complied because an angry, selfish, 6′ 7″, 280-pound man threatened to beat her.

Now, look at this for a moment: the threat of violence is appalling, but that’s only part of the problem. Penn rants about how terrible “liberals” are, but the liberal in this case is upholding his father’s right to make his own decision. The reason Penn needed to lie to his father was that his father would refuse to allow Penn to spend the money for home nursing. The reason his father felt that way had to do with his own deep-seated personal values. Penn thought his father would be more comfortable and happier at home with his family than in a nursing home, but he also knew his father would prefer a nursing home paid for out of his own insurance than to be more comfortable at home at someone else’s expense. That’s his father’s evaluation of the competing factors of the case. That’s his father’s decision to make in light of his own values. Penn vacates his father’s right to act on his own values – taking every aspect of the situation into account – in order to impose his own preferred outcome; that outcome is one that will make his father more comfortable in accordance with the aspects of the situation Penn decides are important, even though he knows his father would disagree in light of all the facts as they stand. Penn uses a threat of violence to force a professional to violate established rules of medical ethics and her own professional responsibility, in order to commit an act of dishonesty, in order to trick someone into violating their own values by making a decision on false information, in order to get them to go along with the outcome Penn himself prefers for them. And then he complains about the liberals, who stand for legal procedure, honesty, professionalism, and autonomy, against his own libertarian violence, lying, and paternalism. (This is not even to mention the irony that libertarian Penn appeals to “a government program” to justify tricking his father into expensive nursing care against his will. Apparently Penn’s father believed that his taxes entitled him to a decent minimum of necessities as a member of an affluent civilized community. Penn of course disagrees, but he’s happy to go along if it helps him violate his father’s autonomy.) This is not just supreme assholery (as well as criminal), it’s grossly dishonest.

And that, in the end, is what bugs me about Penn. He sets himself up as a skeptic, but is often as superficial and self-justified as any religious crank. He often doesn’t seem to take himself or his beliefs seriously enough to ground them on defensible fact or argument. I expect that from creationists and bigots; I want better from people like Penn. It’s disappointing to see that in his skeptical arguments, but it’s infuriating to see it in his libertarian reactionary ranting. I think Penn is so cool, and smart, and bold, that I want to see the best in him, and I especially want him not to be like the kinds of people he – and often I – stand against. I don’t think God, No! shows him in the best light in that way. It’s still funny, though.

Oh, and he’s wrong about one other thing, too: there are superstar jugglers.

The real point, of course, is to anger people who actually care about race issues, and to get attention for themselves. It usually works. This week, there’s a lot of media attention, and both the UC campus student organization and the university administration have issued condemnations. But as student-activism scholar, and sometime Lean Left commenter, Angus Johnston points out, even these reactions have generally missed the mark.

On Sunday night ASUC — Berkeley’s student government — unanimously passed a resolution that, after a page of careful laying out of the various jurisdictional issues and imperatives involved, “condemn[ed] the use of discrimination whether it is in satire or seriousness by any student group.”

And yesterday Berkeley’s chancellor sent out an open letter on the sale. The event, he said, was “hurtful or offensive to many” at Berkeley, though he didn’t say why. It was not the politics of the sale, he implied, that were problematic, but the form of their expression: “Regardless what policies or practices one advocates, careful consideration is needed on how to express those opinions.”

Absent from each of these formal statements was any explicit statement of what exactly was wrong with the Republicans’ sale. (ASUC indicated that actually selling treats to certain students at reduced prices might violate anti-discrimination regulations, but of course actually selling stuff was never the point of the event.) . . .

[Chancellor] Birgenau wants to make the debate about the bake sale a debate about how polite the Berkeley community should be. But that’s not what it’s about, on either side. It’s about who should be allowed to enroll in the university, and on what terms.

Maintaining a professorial neutrality, Angus also doesn’t offer a detailed critique of the bake sale. It is obviously mean-spirited, and obviously fails to engage its nominal subject in any intelligent or substantive way. But what exactly is wrong with it, and why exactly is it a bad thing for them to be doing? Here’s how I understand the issues:

First, start with the fact that it’s deliberately provocative. It’s a parody of affirmative action policies such as scholarships for the underprivileged, and an expression of the right’s generally parodic understanding of affirmative action in general as being “special benefits for minorities and women”. (I’m not aware of any affirmative action program that consists of explicitly race-based price discounts for retail items, but I’m willing to bet these CR morons don’t actually know that their price list isn’t a real form of affirmative action.) It trivializes the issue of racial privilege and affirmative action by applying it at a trivial level, to frivolous items, and creates a parody instance of the right’s characterization of affirmative action as “reverse discrimination” with whites as victims. By moving the entire issue onto a silly and false footing, they mock the issue and the people it addresses.

Second, it makes no sense. There’s no way a bake sale “increases diversity”, and “diversity” and “affirmative action” aren’t the same thing. Again, the whole thing is just an expression of the right wing’s stupid and willfully ignorant understanding not only of race issues but affirmative action in general. In the same way that the right approaches every political and social issue by simply pushing buttons to generate canned responses from their followers, and mouthing code words and slogans that don’t actually mean anything – “family values”, “protect our children”, “traditional marriage”, “pro-life”, “fair tax”, “socialism”, “death panels” – they regard race as just another issue to demagogue with its particular set of meaningless and interchangeable code words: “diversity”, “affirmative action”, “reverse discrimination”. As an approach to its actual topic, the bake sale is not just provocative, but consists only in provocation. It claims to be more than just a demonstration or protest – the pricing scheme is apparently intended as a symbolic commentary on race-based aid programs, and as such substantive and meaningful – but it is in fact grounded in stupidity all the way down to the level of vocabulary. Yet for the right, being incoherent and dishonest is just a tactic, not an embarrassment.

But there is more than just that involved.

As a provocation, the stunt is crude and self-centered. It’s a childish act of mockery mostly intended to gain attention for its perpetrators – to make themselves interesting and relevant in a way that avoids taking an articulate position against helping people hurt by racism and racial history, and taking responsibility for that indifference. By treating their own chosen issue as a joke, they treat the concerns of those who take the issue seriously, and the harms that affirmative action seeks to address, as a joke. Just as right-wingers can’t see the history and reality of racism as real, and so see no problem elevating “reverse racism” as a response to affirmative action – because racism in America is all about white people’s problems – these clowns can’t see a difference between their own stupid joke and a serious social issue that affects other people’s lives. For Republicans, complaining about the inconvenience to white people of helping under-represented groups is a civil rights issue fully equivalent to, and more important than, doing something about the social consequences of hundreds of years of slavery, segregation, and racism.

So the stunt is wrong not just because it’s cruel and childish, and not just because it’s stupid and ignorant. It’s wrong because it’s a selfish and self-centered display of moral blindness – a false equivalency between racism and the attempt to make up for racism, a deep inability and unwillingness to see the difference between privilege and lack of privilege. It’s a fundamental, and to a large degree deliberate and gleeful, act of moral perversion – a self-centered demand for more privilege by the privileged out of a sense of entitlement so pervasive it is impervious to fact, feeling, or a sense of decency.

Complaining that you’re being harmed by other people objecting to your privilege is pretty much what the GOP is for. “’In order to move society forward, we’ve got to look past race’ said Derek Zhou, vice president of [College Republicans]. Yep. The same people who think the Confederate flag is “a symbol of heritage” also think it’s imperative to “look past race”.

PS: Live-blog of the event at UCB here.

Predictably, it slows during Republican administrations, and jumped dramatically during the Clinton years, but overall that’s a steady straight line from virtually universal, open racism (at the height of “The Greatest Generation”‘s pro-segregation stagnation) to overwhelming acceptance just two generations later. There are no significant reversals of the trend over that period.

Even more interesting is that the trend is the result of major shifts in opinion within generations: even older people, taken in groups, have shifted their opinions 30% or more in only 20 years.

Of course, the news isn’t all positive. The lowest percentage approvals are found among the typical troglodyte contingencies: “Southerners, Republicans, conservatives, and those with no college education”, as well as the oldest age cohort. But even among those groups the vast majority approves, and the shifts have been huge (again: 50 years ago, 96% of the entire population disapproved).

Which goes to reinforce a general point about progress: it surely isn’t guaranteed, but it is not impossible, or even rare. And it is incremental: when irrational prejudices are dissolved, they don’t return. And it feeds off of almost-inevitable demographic trends: as the population becomes more diverse, as people become more educated, and as more-prejudiced generations die out, large-scale shifts occur in the direction of greater comfort and greater knowledge (i.e., away from prejudice and toward acceptance). Conservatism and prejudice are both doomed for the same reason: people don’t voluntarily give up what they’ve learned, and when they’ve learned the truth – about so many things – they turn away from conservatism, reactionism, and prejudice.

As Gallup notes:

The trend mimics the growing support for gay marriage — though Americans are still less likely to accept that practice than interracial marriage. It also follows the trend toward increasing racial tolerance on other measures such as voting for a black president and an increasing belief in progress and equality for blacks in the U.S. more generally.

In all of these cases, opinion shifts have been dramatic. In all of these cases and others, the eventual cure will be the same as regarding marriage: truth, time, and demographics.

This has implications for other progressive causes. Ethnic prejudices are relatively responsive to education because they are so fully grounded on stereotypes and prejudice, and also because it doesn’t cost anything to give them up. Other conservative issues persist because they have been deliberately obfuscated as to their factual basis, they depend on scientific questions that may seem counter-intuitive to people who are ignorant of the facts, and they have been worked into religion in such a way that giving up one’s prejudice regarding the factual issue also requires giving up some part of one’s religious beliefs. This is true in varying degrees of all the hot-button “red meat” issues that conservatives continue to inflame to maintain their base: abortion, birth control, evolution, global warming, environmentalism, economic policy, and a bewildering variety of other issues – all of them issues on which there are clear and established facts that lead to an unambiguous enlightened or progressive position, and which have been systematically distorted through lies and religious demagoguery.

The solution in these cases is to create a dynamic similar to that in cases of prejudice pure and simple: create familiarity, expose the lies, create conditions in which the younger generation grows up with the un-prejudiced perception as a default. In some ways progressives have done this (the “I Had an Abortion” T-shirt is one attempt; Gay Pride parades are another). In many ways reactionaries have chosen the same tactics (the desperate proselytizing you see on high school and college campuses is an attempt to convert the young before they get too comfortable with progress; home-schooling and public-school creationism are attempts to shut out the truth before they learn it); they’re fighting a battle against reality itself, so it’s more problematic for them, but they at least know how to fight it. The increasingly-visible atheist contingent is an important trend as well: whether or not most people become atheists, it does a lot of good to put the idea in their minds that they can make their own decisions about religion, and that religion is not a default social constraint that everyone has to live by against their will.

Nothing is certain, but history is inherently progressive.

Addendum: The dumbest headline on this issue comes from Andew Malcolm’s column in the LA Times: “Not that it matters to interracial couples, but Americans near unanimity in approval”. Well, of course it matters. That headline could only have been written by someone (probably an editor, not Malcolm himself) who had the luxury of ignoring the issue. Even though interracial marriage has been legal since Loving v. Virginia in 1967 (back when less than 20% of the nation approved of interracial marriage, and the Supreme Court did the nation a favor with its judicial activism), the fact that prejudice has always existed has always mattered to those who were its targets. I presume the headline was intended to reflect the fact that interracial marriage has always existed regardless of public feeling – which is true. But changes in public feeling have a tremendous impact on how well people can actually make use of the legal rights they nominally have – consider current attempts to block legal gay marriages by allowing Christians to refuse to provide services to gay couples, or even register the fact of the marriage in county clerks’ offices; consider also attempts to block access to abortion through legal restrictions that make it inaccessible even though legal, and to allow Christian healthcare providers to refuse to provide services they personally disapprove of. In addition, the simple ability to feel that one has a place in one’s own community – to be free from prejudice and harassment even when it does not amount to legal discrimination – is of immense importance, and something that people from majority groups take for granted. Prejudice has a tremendously debilitating affect, even when it does not amount to legal discrimination. For that reason, progressivism in all its aspects is a great victory for so much of society whose interests can otherwise conveniently be dismissed.

The result was to garner me scores of angry comments, virtually all of them fixated on the fact that I wasn’t properly admiring of this self-absorbed dickhead and his self-absorbed life. Almost nobody noticed the actual point: that the incident was trivial and only got the attention it did because of the distorted values of our society and our media.

As I noted:

The idea of the Washington Post devoting 20 paragraphs and an anguished photo to the story of a single car vandalism in the NE would be gut-splittingly ludicrous. Murders go unreported there, by the dozens. Every lesser crime, every imaginable urban misery, occurs there in handfuls, or scores, or hundreds of repetitions on a daily basis.

Nobody seemed to care that this was true, or even question whether it was. (Tgirsch later posted a revised version of the story, further insulating the dickhead from any negative attention so as to cajole people into noticing the real issue. His theory was that any failure to coddle people like him distracts readers. My theory was, and is, that whiney, self-absorbed, wealthy white dickheads get too much attention.)

But as it happens, we have a similar incident for comparison. Here’s how the Washington Post handled a story about a car-related incident in the Northeast quadrant this week:

Two people on bicycles fired shots as they pursued a car late Saturday in a Northeast Washington neighborhood on the edge of Capitol Hill, authorities said.

D.C. police said they received no reports of injuries or damage in connection with the incident, which occurred about 11:30 p.m. near 10th and F Streets NE.

Police said they had not yet learned of a motive in the incident, but said it did not appear to be a random attack.

Officers will patrol the area and will give special attention to people on bicycles as well as to enforcing traffic regulations, police said.

The area involved is a residential rowhouse neighborhood a bit more than a mile from the Capitol, and two blocks south of H Street NE.

That was it: 5 sentences. An attempted murder in the open street, shots fired in a residential neighborhood – the police have nothing and don’t even know where the bullets ended up; the Post gives it a couple inches of mostly whitespace.

Admittedly, nobody was actually hurt, but then, nobody was in the tire-slashing incident, either. The “shooters-on-bicycles” angle may seem kind of amusing (actually, it’s a telling clue to the social status of the shooters, if you know anything about DC), but I thought the mother’s-basement Hummer-loving dickhead was pretty chuckleicious, too. So why does that clown get 20 inches and a photo for some minor property damage, and the people affected by this incident get almost no attention for an attempted murder and life-threatening gunfire?

Here it is: “10th and F Streets NE“. Just to make that clearer, Wikipedia notes “The more affluent neighborhoods of Northwest Washington are typically safe, but reports of violent crime increase in poorer neighborhoods generally concentrated in the eastern portion of the city.”

This might help:

Still confused? Oh:

Okay, then.

But please, feel free to call Hummer Boy again and tell him how bad you feel for him.

Predictably, the wingers are aspew with dudgeonified invective, as is their wont. But Roger Simon takes some kind of prize with this doozy:

Tedious New York Times reactionary (sorry for the redundancy) Paul Krugman . . .

Um . . . huh? It being yet another item of faith on the right that The New York Times is some kind of far-left publication, and Krugman being in fact certifiably liberal, Simon finds it somehow possible to call them both reactionary because they criticize politicians who are so far gone to the religious right that they engage in deliberate factual self-delusion about issues that are not controversial in rational circles.

What can this even mean? “Reactionary” is a term that, for good reason, is essentially synonymous with “right-wing”, but it does not technically mean “right-wing”. It means something like “blindly rejecting change or progress”. One cannot be reactionary to the status quo, because an unchanging state – a state of inaction – cannot provoke a reaction. Reactionaries reject progress, not stasis, by definition – and thus are anti-progressive, by definition. (Possibly one could be reactionary towards a retrogression, but that’s not how the term is usually used, and presumably not how Simon understands it. These would indeed be good times for a progressive reactionism, but Simon can’t mean that about Krugman, since he wouldn’t accept that creationism and AGW-denialism in any way represent a move backwards.)

As in so many cases, the right wing just makes up terms to suit itself (“intelligent design”, “pro-life”, “death tax”). A favored tactic is projection of right-wing crimes onto progressives (recall Liberal Fascism, and those two paeans to closed-mindedness, The Closing of the American Mind, and Illiberal Education – both arguing that higher education was ruined by letting more people have it on their own terms). Now Simon calls Paul Krugman – as mild-mannered, but sincere, a progressive as you could ever find – “reactionary”. Judging from the content of his blog, here are some things that are not reactionary, in Simon’s mind: complaining about Hollywood liberals; evangelical Christianity; conservative Christian prayer rallies officially hosted by elected officials; Rick Perry; Sarah Palin.

It goes without saying that someone who doesn’t even know what his own words mean can’t be relied on for any wisdom in speaking them. Like the rest of the right wing, he should just be ignored. But their vacuous stupidity still has the power to stun.

Brothers and Sisters , I have been seriously considering forming a ( Christian ) grassroots type of organization to be named “The Christian National Registry of Atheists” or something similar . I mean , think about it . There are already National Registrys for convicted sex offenders , ex-convicts , terrorist cells , hate groups like the KKK , skinheads , radical Islamists , etc..

This type of “National Registry” would merely be for information purposes . To inform the public of KNOWN ( i.e., self-admitted) atheists . . . .

Now , many (especially the atheists ) , may ask “Why do this , what’s the purpose ?” Duhhh , Mr. Atheist , for the same purpose many States put the names and photos of convicted sex offenders and other ex-felons on the I-Net – to INFORM the public ! I mean , in the City of Miramar , Florida , where I live , the population is approx. 109,000 . My family and I would sure like to know how many of those 109,000 are ADMITTED atheists ! Perhaps we may actually know some . In which case we could begin to witness to them and warn them of the dangers of atheism . Or perhaps they are radical atheists , whose hearts are as hard as Pharaoh’s , in that case , if they are business owners , we would encourage all our Christian friends , as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be “feeding” Satan .

Middle-aged white guy: Check. Southerner: Check. Bible College student: Check. Weirdly medieval Bible quotes (“The Lord is . . . my buckler, and the horn of my salvation”): Check. Childishly triumphalist evangelical-Christian imagery (the King James Bible, wearing a crown, on top of a mountain, with volumes of Socrates, Plato, “Netzche”, and Bibles that are not the KJV in a valley below): Check. Request for money: Check. Linked YouTube video of pixellated sinners falling into the flames of Hell while screaming: . . . uh . . . OK.

And, of course – dubiously paranoid sense of embattlement vis a vis perfectly normal aspects of society that aren’t just like him, and which he therefore perceives as threats (“We MUST Win This War With Islam!” “Darwin’s BIG Evolution LIE!”): . . . do I need to say it? So, lumping atheists in with child molesters, the KKK, and “Islamists” (who clearly have a lot in common with atheists) requires no particular excursion from the pathways of logic most familiar to him.

Here I am faced with a familiar quandary: I know, and agree, that not everyone from a particular group thinks the same way, or is guilty of the same things, as the worst or craziest members of that group. But still there are two things to be considered: first, crazy is hardly a small part of Christianity, and, second, it’s the crazy parts that are important. Decent, normal, tolerant Christians, I’m willing to agree, are a large part of that group. It’s not clear that they’re a majority, though, and they can’t be a large majority, at any rate, given the prevalence of creationism, homophobia, misogyny, and generic right-wing craziness of every stripe (cf. “Tea Party”), and the support for political enforcement of such views  (cf. “Republican Party”), that exists among Christians generally, in the US at least.

More to the point, these people are crazy and offensive because they’re Christians. There are certainly offensive liberals; they are in nothing like the numbers of fundamentalist and dominionist Christians, and they don’t organize under the banner of liberal causes and behave like this, trying to invade other people’s lives or shut them out of their own society. The crazy and offensive things Christians do, however, are commonly motivated by Christianity, organized as expressions of Christian action, and claimed as justified on the grounds of Christianity. It hardly seems unfair to take them at their word, and attach that kind of behavior to our understanding of Christianity and Christians themselves, even if it’s not a universal characteristic.

If some asshole wants to put me on a public registry for harassment and shunning, because he’s a Christian, I’m entitled to notice. And it’s impossible not to notice that there are millions like him trying to criminalize or stigmatize everything else people do that their religion tells them to disapprove of. So, reasonably, that’s what Christianity means to me: people hassling, outlawing, and at times killing other people – people like me – for making choices in their lives the Christians don’t give them permission for. Nothing else Christians do particularly matters to me or affects me. It’s the hassle, persecution, and terrorism that affects me.

So, here’s more of it, and I’m not in the least surprised. Two things I know, however: Christians are going to be angry at me for not being surprised at the way Christians act; and, none of the Christians who are angry at me for believing what this guy says about Christianity are going to be angry at him for saying it.

Oh, yes – crazy Christian dickhead with an enemies list? Sign me up:

Kevin T. Keith
Brooklyn, NY
www.ktkeith.com

I’m a sports fan, and I “collect” stadiums (stadia?). Especially major league baseball, NFL football, and NHL hockey. My goal, before I die, is to see a baseball game in the home stadium of every MLB team. It would be an added bonus if I could do the NHL and NFL venues, but right now, I’m focusing primarily on baseball.

Problem is, I keep forgetting where I’ve been, and losing count. Therefore, mostly for my own reference (and because I expect few others to be interested), I’m posting a list of venues attended below the fold. I’ve ordered them in roughly the order in which I first visited them, to the best of my ability to recall.

However, if you have comments concerning favorite (or least favorite) venues, feel free to leave them.

MLB: (25 venues in 19 cities for 21 home teams [one since moved, four parks since demolished]; 20 of current 30 teams, 67% complete; 19 of current 30 ball parks, 63% complete)

1. Milwaukee County Stadium, Milwaukee Brewers (Defunct)
2. New Comiskey Park, Chicago White Sox, guessing 16 Apr. 1997 — White Sox 9, Orioles 3; it snowed
3. Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati Reds (Defunct), guessing Sep. 1997; Pete Rose Jr. appeared in the game
4. Bank One Ballpark, Arizona Diamondbacks, Best guess: 17 May 1998, Diamondbacks 8, Pirates 2
5. Olympic Stadium, Montreal (Defunct), 12 June 1999 — Devil Rays 5, Expos 3
6. Miller Park, Milwaukee Brewers, 8 Apr. 2001 — Brewers 8, Reds 4
7. Wrigley Field, Chicago Cubs, guessing spring 2001 — rain-delayed game
8. Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati Reds, 11 May 2003 — Reds 7, Brewers 5
9. Coors Field, Colorado Rockies, 23 May 2003 — Rockies 10, Giants 7
10. (Old) Busch Stadium, St. Louis Cardinals (Defunct), 1 Jul. 2005 — Cardinals 6, Rockies 0
11. Tropicana Field, Tampa Bay Devil Rays (Shithole), 13 Sep. 2005 — Yankees 17, Devil Rays 3
12. Ameriquest Field, Texas Rangers, 3 Jul. 2006 — Rangers 6, Blue Jays 1
13. (New) Busch Stadium, St. Louis Cardinals, 29 Sep 2006 — Cardinals 10, Brewers 5
14. AT&T Park, San Francisco Giants, 6 May 2007 — Phillies 8, Giants 5
15. McAfee Coliseum, Oakland A’s, 11 May 2007 — A’s 8, Indians 2
16. Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia Phillies, 17 May 2007 — Brewers 3, Phillies 2
17. Kaufman Stadium, Kansas City Royals, 26 Apr. 2008 — Royals 2, Blue Jays 1
18. Fenway Park, Boston Red Sox, 20 Jun. 2008 — Cardinals 5, Red Sox 4
19. Yankees Stadium, New York (Bronx) Yankees, 22 Jun. 2008 — Yankees 4, Reds 1
20. Shea Stadium, New York (Flushing) Mets, 23 Jun. 2008 — Mariners 5, Mets 2 (AL Pitcher Grand Slam game)
21. Turner Field, Atlanta Braves, 25 Jun. 2010 — Braves 3, Tigers 1
22. Minute Maid Park, Houston Astros, 31 Jul. 2010 — Astros 6, Brewers 0
23. Safeco Field, Seattle Mariners, 15 Jul. 2011 — Rangers 4, Mariners 0
24. Nationals Park, Washington Nationals, 20 Aug. 2011 — Phillies 5, Nationals 0
25. Citi Field, New York Mets, 21 Aug. 2011 — Brewers 6, Mets 2

NHL: (7 venues in 7 cities, 7 home teams, 23% complete)

1. The Arena, Carolina Hurricanes, 18 Dec. 1999 — Hurricanes 4, Thrashers 2
2. Fleet Center, Boston Bruins, 2 Nov. 2000 — Bruins 5, Blackhawks 4
3. United Center, Chicago Blackhawks, 25 Feb. 2001 — Blackhawks 6, Maple Leafs 4
4. Gaylord Entertainment Center, Nashville Predators, 4 Feb. 2006 — Predators 6, Blackhawks 0
5. Air Canada Centre, Toronto Maple Leafs, 2 Jan. 2006 — Maple Leafs 3, Penguins 2 (OT) — Sydney Crosby’s Canadian Debut
6. HP Pavilion, San Jose Sharks, 8 May 2007 — Red Wings 2, Sharks 0 (Playoff game)
7. Rogers Arena, Vancouver Canucks, 26 Feb 2011 — Bruins 3, Canucks 1

NFL: (7 venues in 6 cities, 5 home teams)

1. Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans Saints (Pre-season), Sat., 20 Aug. 1994 — Packers 13, Saints 10
2. Milwaukee County Stadium, Green Bay Packers (Defunct), 11 Sep. 1994 — Dolphins 24, Packers 14
3. Tampa Stadium, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Defunct), 10 Dec. 1995 — Buccaneers 13, Packers 10 (OT)
4. Lambeau Field, Green Bay Packers, Mon, 9 Sep. 1996 — Packers 39, Eagles 13
5. Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati Bengals (Defunct), 20 Sep. 1998 — Packers 13, Bengals 6
6. Paul Brown Stadium, Cincinnati Bengals (Pre-season), Sat., 24 Aug. 2002 — Saints 31, Bengals 23
7. Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City Chiefs, 14 Dec. 2008 — Chargers 22, Chiefs 21

NBA: (2 venues in 2 cities, 2 home teams, 7% complete)

1. Bradley Center, Milwaukee Bucks — Guessing 1993; they played the Lakers when Vlade Divac was there
2. Fedex Forum, Memphis Grizzlies, 11 Feb. 2011 — Grizzlies 89, Bucks 86

IHL/AHL: (2 venues in 2 cities)

1. Bradley Center, Milwaukee Admirals
2. Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati Cyclones, 31 Dec. 1999 — Admirals 3, Cyclones 2 (SO)

PCL (AAA): (1 venue)

1. Autozone Park, Memphis Redbirds

Southern League (AA): (4 venues in 4 cities)

1. Joe Davis Stadium, Huntsville Stars, 19 Jul. 2008 — Stars 4, Smokies 2
2. Pringles Park, West Tenn Diamond Jaxx (Southern League North Division playoffs), 3 Sep. 2008 — Mudcats 7, Diamond Jaxx 1
3. Trustmark Park, Mississippi Braves, 24 Jun. 2010 — Braves 2, Bay Bears 1
4. AT&T Field, Chattanooga Lookouts, 26 Jun. 2010 — Lookouts 4, Barons 2

NCAAF Div 1: (1 venue, 0 home teams)

1. Liberty Bowl, 31 Dec. 2003, Utah 17, Southern Miss 0; 31 Dec. 2004, Louisville 44, Boise State 40

NCAAF Div 3: (1 venue, 1 home team)

1. Van Male Field, Carroll Pioneers

Champ Car World Series (defunct, 2 tracks)

1. Molson Indy Vancouver, Vancouver, BC, 26 Jul. 2003 (qualifying only)
2. Gran Premio Tecate, Mexico City, Mexico, 11 Nov. 2007 — Bourdais, Power, Servia

American Le Mans Series (1 track)

1. Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, 10 June 2001, Conagra US Road Racing Classic

IZOD IndyCar Series (1 track)

1. Kansas Motor Speedway, 27 Apr 2008

Previous Updates:

1. 20 May 2007: Add Philadelphia Phillies
2. 27 April 2008: Add Kansas City Royals
3. 25 June 2008: Add Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and New York Mets
4. 23 July 2008: Add Huntsville Stars (AA)
5. 2 Sep 2008: Add West Tenn Diamond Jaxx (AA)
6. 16 Dec 2008: Add KC Chiefs (NFL), and add dates and scores
7. 31 Jul 2009: Added some more dates and scores
8. 25 June 2010: Add Trustmark Park (Jackson, MS AA)
9. 27 June 2010: Add Turner Field, AT&T Field (Chattanooga AA)
10. 2 August 2010: Add Minute Maid Park
11. 20 June 2011: Add Rogers Arena, Fedex Forum; added scores & dates
12. 21 June 2011: Linked box scores for MLB games (Thank you baseball-reference.com!); added Kansas Motor Speedway
13. 6 July 2011: Corrected score for 1996 Packers-Eagles game, thanks to commenter W. Block, and added link to box score.
14. 1 August 2011: Added Safeco Field (Mariners)

I haven’t been paying real attention to the Republican primary run-up, because (a) it’s repulsive, and (b) whatever happens, happens – somebody will be the candidate, and then the real race begins. I see primaries as being largely just opportunities for people to make mistakes that can be used against them later. But things are shaking out now, and the end result is almost a foregone conclusion.

Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll in a walk – an incredibly scary thought tempered by the fact that the Ames poll is essentially a test of who’s willing to pay the most to register supporters on their behalf. (But as Nate Silver points out, it has a good predictive track record.) Pawlenty immediately dropped out; nobody expected him to do anything anyway, but it clears the ground a bit. Most of the rest of the field are joke candidates – Cain, McCotter, Huntsman (who somehow didn’t get the message that sane, decent Republicans died with Nelson Rockefeller). Gingrich is, bizarrely, still taken seriously but he’s getting no traction and has no hope. Ron Paul is polling well but that ain’t happenin’, nohow. That pretty much leaves Perry and Santorum as contenders who at least somebody believes might have a chance at the nomination.

Santorum is strictly from hunger. He’s tainted by his resounding defeat in his own state in his last Senatorial race, and the immense loathing he inspires from anyone who’s not as crazy as he is. He finished well behind Pawlenty in the Ames poll, and barely 1% above Herman Cain. He’ll probably stagger along for awhile because he’s just that narcissistic, but he’s dead meat, and thank God for that.

That leaves Perry, Romney, and Bachmann. Perry trailed in the Ames poll, but he didn’t officially enter there – preferring to upstage the event by officially announcing his candidacy on the same day, from a different state, which pissed off some Iowans but I thought was a clever publicity stunt. Romney is a serious candidate but he’s hampered by the fact that he used to be less crazy than now, and, worse, on the two main issues that the wingers are campaigning on: healthcare and abortion. He’s going to get his bell rung from left and right the further he goes, and I just don’t see it happening for him – plus which he polled about 1/8th what Bachmann did in Iowa, and got about 1/4 the number of votes of Pawlenty, who then quit, and about 80% of the votes of Perry, who wasn’t even there. [UPDATE: See below.]

So it’s Bachmann – the Teabagger favorite – against Perry – the angry-good-ole-boy-plus-reluctant-non-Teabagger standardbearer. The Teabaggers are powerful but I don’t think they have the votes, plus some people are finally going to wake up and back away from the super-crazy. (Palin’s a dark-horse candidate but she’s really just milking publicity to feed her own ego and money machine. I predict she’ll tease for as long as it’s profitable, but won’t enter. If she does, she’ll split the crazy vote with Bachmann.)

So it’s Perry. I suspect Bachmann/Palin and Romney will hang in for quite some time, and probably win some primaries, but Perry will gain traction as the convention approaches and people realize that one of these clowns has to run for President in their names.

Frankly, I’m hoping Bachmann stays in it to the end. I’d almost be willing to take the chance of her as the nominee. But even if it goes to Perry, the longer Bachmann pushes his crazy buttons the better chance it will give the rest of the country to see how really extreme he is, and to negate his claim to being less loony than her. It would be unfortunate if the GOP field clears out too quickly and Perry gets to whitewash himself as some kind of moderate. (The weak-governor system in Texas plays to the advantage of wingnuts, who get to say all the crazy crap they want down home, and then pretend they didn’t really do anything when they run on the national level.) If Bachmann gets Perry to show his true colors clearly enough and long enough, that may help downplay his hair and stupidity as electoral advantages. (One benefit of this campaign: we get to resurrect decades of choice Molly Ivins quotations about Rick “Goodhair” Perry.)

But however it turns out, it will be Perry vs. Obama, with Bachmann fading down the wind with an evil screech like the Wicked Witch of the West. Mark my words.

UPDATE: Steve Kornacki, at Salon, offers a similar analysis, but sees Perry and Bachmann in a serious fight for the religious-right vote, and that that will give Romney a better shot at the less-extreme faction. I have to admit that my prediction is predicated on the assumption that GOP voters will see Romney as not extreme enough, and Bachmann as too extreme; but if the religious/economic division that used to be a cliche about the Republican base is still operative, then it could be that those factions will go for Bachmann and Romney, respectively, and leave Perry falling between two stools. I think that division has faded – the entire GOP base have become wingnuts, but not all of them are lemmings. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Romney was also not an official participant in the Ames poll, which makes his weak showing less significant. Lots of commentators are seeing Romney as a major player. Still don’t see it myself, but I’m always wrong about candidate predictions, so this post is looking less and less prescient. We’ll see.

… I have always and still continue to believe Barack Obama will be a one-term president, unless of course the Republicans go full-retard and Huck things up again.

My guess is that you’re very happy you put that “unless” in there. What say you?