Today’s Defendant: Christopher Buckley Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Like his father before him, Buckley has led a life of vilest error from beginning to end: speechwriter for G.H.W. Bush, author of reams of smug crap, wearer of that stupid…
Posted on: October 14th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Cletus, god of the heartland Today’s Defendant: Evangelical Ministers Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Every few months for untold years now, an evangelical minister crawls out from under a rock in the American heartland and says something transcendently stupid that…
Posted on: October 13th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Self-hatred is a dangerous game when practiced by Anglos. The danger is not that they will take self-hatred too far but, on the contrary, that in their capable hands it will quickly warp into coy…
Posted on: October 10th, 2008 | Comments (1)
Today’s Defendent: Joe Arpaio Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Joe Arpaio is a man who enjoys his job. His job is terrorizing Mexicans, always a popular pastime in the southwest. Arpaio wins 80-90 per cent approval from the aged voters…
Posted on: October 9th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: The American election cycle is the perfect complement to America’s vain, self-serving Calvinist religion. American Democracy and American Calvinism both pander to lazy, bipolar drama queens who lack the least capacity for moral introspection. The…
Posted on: October 8th, 2008 | Comments (1)
Today’s Defendant: Jellyfish Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: God has a grand assortment of flails, whips, crops, knouts, taws, fouets and quirts. In His house are many mansions, and in those mansions are many walk-in closets to overawe the best-equipped…
Posted on: October 7th, 2008 | Comments (1)
Today’s Defendant: Dean Lesher, 1902-1993 Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: We have said that most humans are not worthy of damnation. The life of Dean Lesher is a dramatic demonstration that even outsized American lives leave nothing worthy of Hell,…
Posted on: October 3rd, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendants: The words “Folks” and “People” Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: The epithet “folks” is sinful in itself. It is employed by hucksters of various cults to make their victims feel included. We are included only in the sense…
Posted on: October 2nd, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: This Universe Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Thanks to a team of physicists at Cal Tech, the most sacred site in the Anglo world, we know at last the bitter truth: this universe is damned. We live under…
Posted on: October 1st, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Bugs Bunny Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: In seeking an example of sterling virtue worthy of canonization, one name clearly shines out above the rest: Bugs Bunny. In this humble rabbit we see the spirit of a god.
Posted on: September 26th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Clay Aiken Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: It has come to our attention that there is an abomination known as “Clay Aiken” who is taking up space in the world that we require for other purposes. We are…
Posted on: September 25th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Indian Mob Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: “CEO murdered by mob of sacked Indian workers” runs the newsflash going around the internet, and we regard it in the spirit of gentle approval. Beatifications all around, perhaps?
Posted on: September 24th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Pixar Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Our eyes are not dazzled by your state-of-the-art animation; our hearts are not softened by your supposedly wholesome family fare. Disney pulled the same shtick in order to spread the same insidious…
Posted on: September 23rd, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Mickey Rourke Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: The heretic in question is just about to make a major comeback in The Wrestler, a new movie by that tick Darren Aronofsky (pi, The Fountain) which is currently wowing everybody…
Posted on: September 22nd, 2008 | Leave Comment
Meerkat: Heresy; Elephant Shrew: Orthodox Daily Inquisition: The Animals Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: A child believes in many creatures unworthy of its faith, like the Komodo Dragon, revealed on mature inspection to be a mere hypertrophied alligator lizard which…
Posted on: September 19th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Joe “Strummer”: the hippie behind the mohawk. Today’s Defendant: Joe Strummer Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: The damnation of this walking forgery is a matter of choice: for which of his many unpunished crimes should he be damned? For the…
Posted on: September 18th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Cancer Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Reports have reached us of a “breakthrough” in the treatment of Cancer via the extirpation of cancer stem-cells. This must not be. The Economist, the demonic publication gloating of this “breakthrough,” dares…
Posted on: September 16th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Daily Inquisition: David Foster Wallace Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: David Foster Wallace should have been dead to begin with—and it finally hit him, at age 46. That is, 46 years too late. The crime isn’t the suicide, but the…
Posted on: September 15th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Daily Inquisition: Fred Phelps Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: The Rev. Fred Phelps is a good Calvinist; no more, no less. All that separates him from America’s other hundred million Calvinist heretics is that Phelps has the courage of his…
Posted on: September 12th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Camille Paglia Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: We learn with sorrow that Paglia has called this venal bumpkin, Sarah Palin, “the greatest feminist since Madonna.” Paglia’s fall has long concerned the Holy Inquisition, and the time has come…
Posted on: September 11th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: Randy Pausch, America’s Favorite Corpse Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Professor Pausch’s “Last Lecture” is already forgotten by the Oprah fans who leaked cheap tears at his televised death, this middlebrow false martyr. They ask little of a…
Posted on: September 10th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: The Canonization of Kathryn the Martyr Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Today we have the joyous task of elevating the late Kathryn Johnston, of Altanta, Georgia, to sainthood. Saint Kathryn found glory in November 2006, at the age…
Posted on: September 9th, 2008 | Leave Comment
Today’s Defendant: White Trash Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Today we must prune a vile weed spreading over what was once a beautiful continent: white trash. It is with heavy heart we pronounce sentence, for we are survivors of Berkeley,…
Posted on: September 8th, 2008 | Leave Comment
You can’t keep a good Talib down. Or in jail, apparently.
Last Sunday I was grumbling about how there are so many great books about war and not that many great war movies. That got a lot of readers lobbing in their suggestions for good war movies. One reminded me that…
Today’s Civil War Caturday (by the way, that’s pronounced “Kivil War Katurday”), right in the middle of Easter. Got me thinking about my religion, if I have one now, and I realized I do, kind of: The Monitor and the…
Seems like I ought to do something religious today, so I picked a battle from the the ultimate military expression of religious devotion: The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), Europe’s way of debating the Catholic vs. Protestant thing by counting corpses.
Somebody with a face finally died in Libya. His name was Tim Hetherington, an Oxford literature graduate who made that documentary Restrepo about an Afghan base.
Stories about the riots in Northern Nigeria are starting to come in, full of amazing details and ridiculous lies. The lies are the first thing you notice.
One of the strange things about this war in Libya is how slowly it’s moving.
