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, that …

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 that the baleen-fringed …

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 the unforgiving …

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.

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 assured he …

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?

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 blasphemy: …

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 at the film …

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 …

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 …

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 to call …

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 …

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 …

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 to …

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 saint, …