Finally busted for bogus journalism: Sabrina Erdely from Rolling Stone magazine
A jury has awarded $3 million to an administrator at the University of Virginia after Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Erdely defamed her in a bogus story Erdely wrote in 2014 about gang rape at a college fraternity.
However, as readers of this site already know, years before Erdely defamed the U-Va. administrator, she published a completely false and malicious article in 2011 about sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Philadelphia.
Shortly after its publication, Bill Donohue at the Catholic League published a lengthy blow-by-blow takedown of Erdely's hit piece.
In her 2011 article, Erdely relayed the bizarre claims of "Billy" – whom readers of this site know to be Florida resident Dan Gallagher – who claimed to have been raped, molested, and sodomized by some three different men – two priests and a Catholic school teacher, all of whom barely knew each other – years ago as an altar boy in Philly in the late 1990s.
Enter veteran journalist Ralph Cipriano at BigTrial.net. As we have repeatedly chronicled here at TheMediaReport.com, Cipriano has doggedly uncovered detailed information indicating that Gallagher's unbelievable claims were just that: unbelievable. The lives of these three innocent accused men were shattered by Erdely's reckless reporting. (For background on the Gallagher case, see this and this. Also, check out the latest from Cipriano.)
Now that a jury has affirmed that Erdely's tale of ceremonial gang rape at U-Va. was false, we hope that the mainstream media will finally take a similar close look at her preposterous 2011 story about abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
We await.
The TMR piece here and the Donahue and Cipriano articles to which it hyperlinks demonstrate the role of the media in the synergy that created the Stampede.
Additionally, we now have even the New York Times that in the past week issued a public acknowledgement that its efforts to run the same type of gambit in regard to the Trump candidacy was a mistake. But I would say that what the NYT tried to do was simply to run the now-standard media gambit of selectively ‘reporting’ merely to impose the NYT’s own preferred ‘narrative’. This manipulation of public opinion (readers who read the Donahue hyperlink will recall his reference to then-Philadelphia DA Lynne Abrahams’s effort to conduct a trial ‘in the court of public opinion’) played a crucial and vital role in the Stampede’s creation.
The lawyer representing the plaintiff, Nicole Eramo, said that his client was virtually "collateral damage" in the Rolling Stone's blind rush to sensationalism. Wonder how many priests have also been collateral damage?… Due to selfish motives in the media?.
From January 20 next year there will be a new tenant in the White House. No doubt he will get much flack from the media. Given his public animosity towards political correctness, and also his intense dislike of so-called 'progressive people' in liberal circles. My bet is that this guy will hit back at the media. Particularly because surveys have shown many voters are distrustful of the media anyway. And don't underestimate this guy's ego.
Reckon we are now living in very interesting times.
What is her problem? Not only should the media take notice, but another defamation of character lawsuit with a $3 million judgment ought to be in order.
What? No lawsuit for libel? Or is that next. Go get 'er.
Integrity has been gone from the media for so long that I – and so many Americans – have stopped believing anything they report. It's disheartening to see how Truth is so ill served by a profession that is supposed to be a guardian of it. Most reporters would be more honest if they just became press agents for their causes instead of trying to falsely demonize the targets of their bias like people of faith, and the Catholic Church. Fortunately, they're becoming irrelevant for people with intelligence.
You catholics amaze me. You talk of "Truth" and "faith" and "honest[y]" and "Integrity" as if they are qualities that you and your church possess. No media or person has demonized your priests or hierarchy more than they have personally demonized themselves, by their own actions. Is it possible that you've lived in darkness for so long a time, that when the light shines in on your disgusting church and it's false teachings, you're just totally incapable of believing their crimes to be feasable. A church that refuses to follow Biblical teachings, has absolutely no right to point out other's shortcomings. Take a good look at yourselves, before being able to criticize others. Matthew 7: 4-5
Same as usual.
How wonderful the last 4 posters use,only, their first names. What are the odds?
Don't you need to be playing the Horst Vessel song underneath all these comments?. That old high steppin' goosery of the stupid part of the Roman Catholic church is the rhythm that should be played here. You didn't even win the popular vote. As if you gold lickers ever liked democracy. What you want is not what this country is about. You will find out the hardway. Nobodies going backward here but you to your proper tax-free place and out of public law. You get a free tax pass for shutting the fuck up about politics. That's the only reason you get to pay no taxes. So butt out fuckers. You aint winning shit. You Nazis are only 19% of the populace and when Golden boy starts failing to deliver jobs or gets caught with his hand in the till. And you know he will. You are over. This is your Last Harrah. You are on the wrong side of humanity and history. Who but you believes the church has been more persecuted than persecutor. You own the Mass Media. Making them look silly is your job. So people will never know what's true objectivity or not. You'll just pull an imaginary persecution card, whisper some prayers over it and struggle to maintain power. This aint Russia where even after 70 yrs of socialism the Orthodox church came back to rule. This is the USA and you and the moronic Christian right whores that they are. will never put sexual freedom back in its bottle. The bliss tops anything your imaginary pie in the sky has to offer. A word to the wise. Political correctness means dealing with all people as equals. You hate that. You can not bear that. It so defeats your concept of yourself as special or saved.
"Hit back at the media"? What a fight between marshmallows? One marshmallow that doesn't report any news vs. another marshmallow, who doesn't want any news reported? Whoohhoooo it'll be a grudge match showdown between creme puffs. A dance number, Donald Trump vs the Bought press. A press owned by the same people who own Trump. It's a kind of entertainment a dancing with the stars.
The world is no longer as stupid as you are or as you'd like us to be. Nobody's rolling over for you. Expect a fight. A fight you can not win because time has passed you by. You may own the world but you have no soul, just anger and anger usually covers up hurt. Are you hurt because what you believe just might not be true? I'm sorry. But you'll live. Did the sky fall because Gay people can marry now? How did it affect your lives? I bet not a smidgen. Being equal is much more fun than being superior/ inferior. Your beliefs may own you but they don't own me or other people. You used to but no more. That's what you miss not love, you've never had that, but power. Power's what you really love. Where, exactly, did Jesus mention loving power as being something good?
This matinee performance by JR (the 17th at 232PM) opens with a signature harrumph: posters only use their first names. And so what? Surely the use of one’s given name is no guarantee of accuracy or honesty, as we have seen, and regular readers will quickly recall, from JR’s own self-created misadventures in posting and story-telling.
He then quickly moves on to some sort of Nazi innuendo, intended apparently to corral both the commenters here and – had you been waitttingggggg forrrrrr itttttt? – the Church. And that deceased Nazi icon’s name was Wessel; the ‘v’ is in the pronunciation in German, not in the spelling.
It then becomes clear that he is working hard to avoid the actual content and substance of the TMR article here: he is, rather, trying to change the subject to the recent presidential election. In regard to which he apparently presumes that the commenters (that “you” in “You didn’t even …”) are Trump supporters, and thus, in his cartoon demonology, their material is automatically unworthy of credibility or even of being taken seriously – whereas, we are to infer, his material is most certainly a paragon of credibility and must always be taken seriously. Readers may consider it all as they will.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 232PM:
Thus he then riffs on about “gold lickers” and “democracy”, which then segues into – had you been waitttingggg forrrr ittttt? – a threat to the effect that such commenters “will find out the hard way” that they are wrong (and, as well, that JR is and always has been right).
And then the signature addition of some adolescent scatology, since to JR the insertion of some scatology is a credible and worthy substance for serious thought.
And that thus segues into his demand – with more tough-guy scatology – that anyone who doesn’t buy his stuff should just “butt out”. Such persons will have to choose to “butt out” because the content of JR’s material certainly isn’t going to persuade them; which demand itself ironically strikes a queasy Nazi note: we won’t convince you, we’ll just tell you to shut you up and if you don’t we’ll make you do it – which, in a charming bit of historical table-turning, was exactly the type of Nazi activity Wessel was engaged in when he met his untimely end at the hands of a couple of folks who weren’t going to shut up.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 232PM:
Just who those “you Nazis” are who constitute only 19 percent of the population is anybody’s guess.
But in any case, his conclusion – such as it is – to the effect that “You are over” is simply the same crackdream threat he has been trumpeting all along at Catholics in regard to the increasingly-shaky Catholic sex-abuse Stampede. As to whether this will be their “Last Harrah” (somehow confusing the name of the old casino with ‘hurrah’) … readers may consider as their need for entertainment dictates.
And he then lards on – apparently oblivious to any irony – the old New Left bit (borrowed from Lenin) that anyone who disagrees with him is “on the wrong side of history” and so on.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 232PM:
As to Catholics or Conservatives ‘owning’ “the Mass Media”: the fact that the Mass Media are now vividly revealed to have been so blatantly partial to the New Left Democrats appears to have made no impress upon his mind whatsoever. So we might consider this whole performance to be simply a rehash of his cherished cartoon bits, repeated here as the in-your-face raving of a wicked witch in the process of melting.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 232PM:
He then starts to sidle toward another signature gambit: claiming that if (take your pick: liberals, ‘victims’ or both) look bad, it’s only because the (take your pick: Church-, Conservative-) controlled media make them look bad. If it weren’t for such media – doncha see? – JR and his imagined confreres would look like the insightful, virtuous, and altogether truthy paragons they claim to be. Readers may consider as they will.
From a historical point of view, his claim that “the Orthodox Church” doth “rule” Russia or that it ever did, holds no water at all. The Russian monarchy – following its Byzantine origins – always ‘ruled’ the Orthodox Church, which in the Byzantine-Russian schema was simply court-chaplain to the monarchy.
(In the West, Theodoric and Charlemagne actually also tried to run that gambit, i.e. that since the royal or imperial office was held by a crowned head chosen by God, then the Church’s spiritual commission was at best equal to the royal or imperial authority and for all practical purposes was functionally subordinate to it. The Papacy, building in part on Augustine’s distinction between the City of Man and the City of God, fought that tendency, thus imparting to Western political thought the principle that there can be, are, and must be limits to royal or imperial or government authority.)
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 232PM:
And the whole bit riffs a bit further to its predictable – and at this point, familiar – conclusion
On then to JR’s further bit of the 17th at 302PM:
The opening riff is built around marshmallows and “creme puffs” (nice- if unaccented – stab at a classy European touch, rather than using the English ‘cream’). Readers may suss out the sweet wisdom in it as they may. JR, of course, is no crème-puff. Not at all.
And then the riff segues into some “dance” imagery. Regular readers may consider JR’s own flat-footed misadventures as a hoofer in his long-running Dance of the Victims routine.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 302PM:
And all that then leads to a regurgitation of more of his favorite bits: “The world is no longer as stupid as you are or as you’d like us to be” – wherein JR once again confuses or conflates himself and his own stuff with what “the world” doth think or believe.
And – again – the pronunciamento that “time has passed you by”. Readers may consider recent developments in making their assessment of that assertion’s credibility, whether in regard to the national culture or the Stampede or both.
And – as so very often – JR once again demonstrates the wonders of clinical projection as he asks of readers a question that he might (and I would say should) be asking himself: “Are you hurt because what you believe just might not be true?”. The hot ironies hiss and smoke for all to see. But irony is lost on a certain type of mind.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 302PM:
He then riffs on about gay marriage and since he has raised the point I would simply say that surely it is too soon to tell.
When you blow up a dam by planting a charge deep inside it at its base, it might take a while for the effects of the blast to make themselves visible. When you run an ocean-liner alongside an iceberg and rip her hull open beneath the water line like a tuna-can, the negative effects of that grievous damage may not make themselves obvious for a while. When you smoke a whole lot every day for a long time (as Ulysses Grant did) then the negative effects might take a while to manifest themselves.
These examples are designed to demonstrate the shallowness of the PC hoot that the sky hasn’t fallen: a culture is built on deep conceptual foundations and when you start whacking away at those foundations, then there will be results – consequences – that, by the time they manifest, will indicate that the damage is already far advanced.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 17th at 302PM:
One need only consider half-a-century of single-motherhood (formerly: unwed motherhood): what was asserted at the outset to be a marvelous act of liberation from ‘oppression’ / somehow led to large numbers of under-parented boys (and girls) / who by way of compensation were then supposed to have been raised by the good offices of the government education and social-work power / but as the phenomenon spread and the numbers of such domestic situations increased / then large numbers of under-socialized youth began to grow like vines that have no trellis, wild over the ground.
Or the decades of gay sex-freedom culture: originally seen (and spun) as a marvelous and groovy act of liberation / it resulted in bath-house culture and what I would call Cabaret-culture / which then resulted (through intercourse with persons or primates in other parts of the world) in a condition originally only found in non-human primates being spread to the West / which mutated from a simian to a human-specific form / creating the pandemic of AIDS / where it mixed with another marvelous liberation policy – unsanctioned drug use.
Persons may choose to believe that this time around a policy touted as purely liberating and with no downsides will perform as advertised and spun. But from the examples I have just given, I would say that history does not support such optimism (and such persons may well be on the wrong side of history, as some like to say).
Us Gay people have been screwing each other as long as you straight people have been screwing each other. Your screwing is good juju and our screwing brings on flood and famine? Well, you tried killing us all over and over again and you still had earthquakes flood and famine. Maybe you are the problem here not us. Maybe your pleasure is the problem. PLEASURE,the one word you avoid like Dracula runs from garlic. Simple sexual PLEASURE. What's wrong with that? Oh, I forgot you religious types can't make money from that. you only gain financially when it's verbotten. Go flush your head down the toilet and clean your filthy minds. Sex even with multiple partners is just plain fun.People enjoying each other being kind and respectful as the do IT.
Your popes have held orgies at the Vatican with naked little boys running across food laden banquet tables. Your founder, Jesus, some of you may have read about him, said absolutely nothing about Gay people. He did, however, mention, very specifically what should be done with child molesters.
I pity you and your judgements about your fellow human beings. You are very damaged. Very ill.
By the way, P, I was voted best dancer at my Catholic high school in senior bests.
And remember who Jesus' "beloved" was. It wasn't the girl next door. Lovely though she may have been.
As far as my bad spelling goes. Yes I spell badly. If there were an edit button at TMR I would have corrected my mistakes here. I hadn't noticed them before I posted them.
P, of course being the kind loving Christian man that he is, has pointed that out many times. Many times. It's all the poor s.o.b's got going for him.
Notice I post and up pops P and down go the single named posters at the top of this thread. Mmmmm tres convenient. This place is a joke. Wack-a-Mole for Catholics.
Hey P your church's favorite political system, fascism, has come to the U.S. again. What are you going to do to fix that? Perhaps you'll shelter Latino "illegals" in your church or home. Or go down and register as a Muslim and flood the Nazis with fake registrations. Maybe you'll even fight to protect Gay people and our rights even if you don't believe we should have any. Or protect women's rights over their own bodies even if you don't agree with their choices. What cha gonna do Christian man?
JR treads the boards again (the 19th, 535PM).
He opens with the sassy bit that “us gay people” have been having sex for as long as anyone else.
True enough, but not the point at all. The point is that under the New Left’s New Cultural Order such activity is ‘valorized’ as being the very essence of cutting-edge conduct of a life. Which, along the lines of what I have said in previous comments above, requires taking some hefty whacks at the foundation of the civilization and culture and society that evolved in the West.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
Demonstrating the now-conventional approach that simply evades these profound foundational consequences, JR merely honks the standard ‘gay liberation’ line to the effect that to say one type of ‘screwing’ is good and another type of screwing (differentiated merely by the same-sex of both participants) is bad can be nothing but some form of oppressive favoritism on the part of the ‘majority’.
The Catholic rationale goes far deeper than any of that. To use an image I have used before: the gay-liberation approach is equivalent to trying to fly an aircraft in reverse: the craft is not designed to be successfully operated like that and the fact that the (gay sex) maneuver is something that the (gay) pilot would like to try on the basis of his sovereign autonomy and his claim to ‘equality’ is hardly sufficient to override the brute fact that the aircraft cannot be properly operated like that due to the natural laws of aerodynamics and things will thus not work out well for the pilot, any passengers (family, friends) and the surrounding society and culture generally.
Or: yes, a pilot can – on the basis of his so-called sovereign autonomy and right to ‘equality’ – decide to operate the aircraft as a large motor-vehicle and drive along a freeway with it, but that’s not really going to do much for anyone and will no doubt bring its own form of chaos in its wake.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
There is, of course, that second account of the creation of humans in Genesis, wherein God creates woman as a companion to man. But then again, the ‘companion’ in the second account is a woman.
Which even meshes with a general principle of evolution (which does not mean that I agree with all of evolutionary theory’s conclusions or claims): if the evolutionary purpose of sex is the continuation of the species, then a woman is sort of … required.
And given the vast complexity of the human person and the extended time necessary for the human to grow from conception to adulthood, and given the genetic bonds automatically engaged through the process of heredity, then evolutionary Nature – if you will – demonstrates a certain wisdom in building on that bond to ensure that the child or children are consistently and carefully nurtured by a pair of adults possessing the qualities of both the male and the female respectively, rather than simply relying on the – alas – highly mutable emotional whims and preferences of humans or the limitations consequent upon the capacities of only the male or the female of the species.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
And thus the institution of marriage – developed to provide cultural support for such a pair of child-rearing humans – developed in order to give structural support to those basic realities and give children the best chance (but no guarantee) of basic survival and a decent chance at human flourishing as adults.
As I say, there are no guarantees in human existence such as it is, but perhaps we might say of marriage what Churchill said of democracy: the worst option, with the exception of all the rest. And I would add that we should never move too quickly over that “worst” in Churchill’s formula: nothing is perfect in this world and rarely does anything (or anyone) work out to the full perfection of its potentials.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
JR then proceeds to suggest that it is just such thinking as I have outlined here that is the problem; and that – when he gets right down to it – it’s all about “pleasure” (scream-caps omitted). After all, he bleats, what’s wrong with “simple sexual pleasure?” (ditto).
Here’s what’s problematic with “simple sexual pleasure”: the sexual urge evolved to ensure the continuation of the species, and thus it is one of the most compelling of human urges. Thus there is nothing “simple” about it; when you arouse and engage it, you are playing around with one of the most serious and seriously-powerful of all the human urges. This is not a pastime to be undertaken lightly.
Military officers of any service who are in command of weapons-systems must demonstrate consistently a capacity to forego the ‘fun’ of pressing the red button on the fire control board or pulling the trigger because not only can the ordnance you release create some chaos on the downrange end of its trajectory, but the shooter himself can get much too attached to the thrill of shooting the real stuff.
And when such a dynamic gets going, bad things are going to happen on both ends of the trajectory.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
JR then tries to impose one of his cartoons on the problem: the Church (or “you religious types”) “can’t make money” from “simple sexual pleasure” – doncha see? – so that’s the only reason the Church (or “you religious types”) are against it.
Not at all. And after half a century of government-supported sex, drugs, single-parenting, group-parenting, and all the rest, one need only now take a look at the news: homeless teens, drug-addled children, opioid abuse crises, drug-addicted parents giving drugs to their infant children, immature parents who don’t want to be burdened with kids leaving them to die in hot cars for hours because they ‘forgot to drop him off at day care’, or – one of the most stunning – a female police officer leaving her child in her cruiser while she went in and had hook-up sex with an off-duty male officer and after some time the infant died in the back of the police car.
All of these are in the news, and yet they are treated as if they are just bad things that sort of just happened. That half a century of sustained and deliberate screwing-with the foundations of culture and civilization has been the cause of such widespread and lethal dysfunction (there are few if any elderly crack addicts; the stuff kills you before you ever have to worry about Alzheimer’s) … such an analysis is not often undertaken.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
And – after a mildly scatological instruction about what “you religious types” can go and do – JR then tops off his cartoon sundae with this cherry: sex with lots of people is “just plain fun”. And no doubt robbing banks and shooting people was fun for Bonnie and Clyde … but so what? It merely demonstrates some of the derangements that sexual activity can impose on various persons’ working definition of “just plain fun”.
And that point is even more vividly demonstrated with JR’s carefully added bleat that such ménages would – but of course – be conducted with all of the parties “enjoying each other, being respectful and [being] kind to each other” … yah. When one pilot helps another pilot take the 737 on a spin down the freeway, it may be fun for them, but “respectful” … of what? The aircraft? The pilots’ professionalism? The other people who sooner or later will suffer the consequences of their fun? (Think of the AIDS pandemic and how many people wound up downrange of all the fun that somehow generated the mutation from a simian to a human-specific syndrome.)
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
In his second paragraph, JR will shift to a different gambit: After all, “your popes held orgies at the Vatican” and so on. Are we to infer that JR’s multiple-partner ménages are OK because popes held orgies? And did JR learn the particulars he relates here from some reliable history research or was it just a movie or was it just something on some site he trawls? And even if the orgies happened as he claims, does such a failure on the part of some particular pope somehow make JR’s ménages OK?
Or does it simply demonstrate the awesomely potent capacity of the sexual urge, which must always be handled with at least half the respect a bomb-squad member gives to a ticking-device that he holds in his hands?
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
And Jesus didn’t mention gay sex. No, but He mentioned marriage on more than one occasion.
Nor did he marry John, who seems to have felt particularly close to Him and kind of cuddled at the Last Supper; maybe Jesus sensed something but insisted that the relationship was to be friendship and nothing more than that. Or maybe Jesus realized that they all had more important things to do than merely have “just plain fun”.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
And then JR tries to bring it all home with that last bit about “child molesters”. We have been all over that pericope before in comments on prior threads: Jesus was talking to the disciples about the “faithful” whom He had characterized as children and to drive home the point He took a nearby child and put the kid on His knee (which would qualify as at least a ‘boundary violation’ if not worse in the ever elastic world of sex-abuse definitions) and warned the disciples that anybody who led the faithful astray with bad teaching would be better off with a millstone around his neck.
And let’s not even get into some of those ever-fungible stories of molestation claims.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 535PM:
And in his final paragraph, JR will first don the Wig of Mr. T, relying on that Hollywood character’s authority to bolster his presentation here: He doth “pity” everyone who doesn’t buy his stuff.
But – had you been waitttinggggggg forrrrrrrrrr itttttttttttttttt? – that “pity” Wig quickly falls away as JR rams on top of it his Wig of Pronouncement (or Denouncement): Those who don’t buy his stuff are “very damaged” and “very ill”.
JR here is probably fortunate: few would take him for a disciple or teacher so slathering on all his stuff isn’t going to qualify him for any millstones.
He’s just somebody looking for “just plain fun” and his definition of ‘fun’ is what it is. Readers may consider as they may just how “damaged” and “ill” that sense of fun actually is.
Hey if I'm damaged sexually guess the cause? I feel safer in groups because I was abused one on one. I don't trust people when I'm alone with them, after experiencing Catholic school. I never know when they'll turn on me. In groups I know my safety is more secure.
The pagans didn't even have gay marriage when Jesus and John were dating. Never read in the Bible about John and Jesus cuddling. Leonardo painted the Last Supper that way. But "cuddling"? Not really.
The church itself introduced a same sex, priest performed, bonding ceremony in about 600 A.D . Right around the same time opposite sex marriage was introduced to the masses. Before that it was a property contract amongst the haves, the royals and lesser property owners.
You say we have "valorized" ourselves, we Feminists and Gay rights activists, we of the New Left. Weren't we persecuted and only survived your persecutions thanks to our valor?
Women survived illegal abortions. Gay people survived ostracism and jail and mental hospitals and career loss and police harassment and blackmail. Only to be finally treated as the neighbors and family members that we really are.
Straight people are valorous too in their ability to defend the innocent, to empathize with their persecuted fellows.
But not you of the Old Right. It's your way or the highway. Do we demand you chose birth control or abortion against your will for yourselves? Do we say it's mandatory that you have same gender sex? No! we do not. But you would ban those choices for us, out of some false sense of duty to an imaginary deity.
Our valor is our business. You, making laws against us is also our business.
If people made laws against you believing i n your imaginary sky friends/fiends I'd be at your side to defend you. Why? Because that's what you want to do. Your religion is your business. But when you want to make your religion my business, I have to tell you back off.
Gay people can marry now in the U.S.A. and so what? Only you people worry about that. The rest of us show up, work, love and die just the same as you do. But you have to have control over others you are used to that. When it stopped you felt someone took something from you. All we id was take back our autonomy that you had stolen from us. We just took back our right to be whatever we wanted to be. And you lot, won't live with us as Christians should, loving your neighbor, No it's only about controlling others that you are interested in.
I have to respond with. Sex isn't some sacred sacrament. Comparing sex to playing with or deployment of death weaponry is beyond strange. It's sad;I'm frightened for you.Sex isn't a bomb you're holding on to that might explode. It's play. It's playing with yourself and or others and that's all it is. If the sexual rigor that you preach is so right. So much "the correct but rocky road" what's at the end of all this sacrifice and control? Heavenly bliss that you have no proof exists vs a body that offers pleasure zones that evolved over eons long before your savior was a gleam in his mother's eye? You ignore the visible trail of evolution in our own bodies and in our own selves. For an after-life than can not be proven to exist. Also where are the spiritual giants, the super stars, coming from these sacred marriages? Are they different or better for their sexual sacrifice? When they marry and reproduce. Are the children better? if so why and if not, then why the sacrifice?
If Jesus was both God and man, the man side definitely enjoyed fun. The question is why did God choose to sacrifice himself, Jesus, to redeem people who started sinning, and all sin evidently, by listening to a talking snake who told 2 people to steal fruit. How could Adam and Eve know right from wrong if they hadn't yet eaten from the fruit of the tree that taught them that? And why would a blood sacrifice be necessary? Why would a God sacrifice be even necessary?
Your God had no problem wiping out everyone on the planet, all but one incestuous family, later with Noah. Why not just scrap Adam and Eve and Cain and start again with Abel? And where did Cain and Abel get their wives? And who was in the land of Nod when Cain showed up?
You, P, are pure evil and your mythology is both evil and silly. Swell combination! I see no love there.
I'm so glad to see that you've overcome your issues with "longwinded nonsense". Two thirds of the comments in this forum belong to you. Too bad you can't transfer some of that energy towards taking a serious look at the faults of your false cult, but that would surely take a miracle. I have heard of cases where He opened the eyes of the blind. I guess there are some miracles that God is not even capable of. HaHa!! Dan
P.S. I hope you didn't miss my comment at 10:16 pm, cause that was directed towards you and Malcolm, too.
Seriously Jim? Christ never spoke against homosexuality. I think you should take a look at Matthew 15: 18-20 and Mark's repeat of Christ's words in Mark 7:20-23. Don't forget there is forgiveness of these sins through Jesus Christ, but to say He never spoke of these things is far from truth. And I hope you can stop confusing catholic with Christian. They are total opposites and far from God's truth. And as far as sexual immorality is concerned, they, (the catholic church), should be taking a serious look at their own malfeasance, instead of making their lame excuses and pointing fingers at others. Especially big mouth Bill Donahue. Hypocrite.
Dan, I'm a direct descendant of Zwingli. The first Anabaptist. My 10th G grandfather was the first Mennonite Bishop in America. I know the Bible. Reading it made me an Atheist. I don't sin I make love. I enjoy my nerve endings. You don't like me enjoying my body the way I like? then mind your own business. You wanna play Bible games? You wanna play "what Jesus" said games? Play with someone who gives a shit about that. I'm not that guy.
The tag team are back. Any one wanna make a bet on how many posts P will line up here next? He averages about 5 to my one. And where are the single named finger puppets from the top of the comments?
Jim, was I supposed to be impressed with your ancestry? Apparently, you don't know the Bible, otherwise you would know what Christ said. Besides, I believe you're a bit confused between the meaning of the word love and lust. If you want me to mind my own business, then it might be best that you don't air your dirty laundry in a public forum. Most normal human beings don't want to hear details about your nasty sexual escapades and how you enjoy your nerve endings. There are most likely several sexual deviant forums that would be interested in disgusting your perversions with you. I don't play Bible games. If you don't want to be corrected on what Jesus said, then I would suggest that you hesitate in telling us what He didn't say, in order to fool those who truly want to know the truth. And again, dealing with people's souls are not some game I play. If this is some game to you, then so be it.
As far as a tag team goes, you and P seem to make a pretty good one yourselves. Forgive me for coming between the two of you. You make such a beautiful couple. servant
LOL! Why Danny, what a little Puritan you are! I talk about nerve endings, which evolved in us over eons , and you wind up giving us the very same pompous nonsense that P vomits forth. Just because you think my brand of pleasure sexually is disgusting, doesn't mean it is.
It just is. Neither good nor bad just as extant as the moon or the rivers. It just is. It just always has been here and it pleases those it pleases.
You don't want to have sex with a man? Then don't. Easy peasy.
But the judgments, you support, of some Northern African tribes' religious fantasies from the Bronze age means as much to me as the thoughts of the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.
You like that junk thinking, fine.You are free to. But your thoughts mean nothing to me. Your laws matter little either. Why? Because we homosexuals harm no one. We do what we do whether we are jailed for it or not.
The vast majority of child molesters aren't Gay people but heterosexuals. Lucky you, that your God blesses you with so many of them.
Talking to me about souls is like talking to me about Disney characters as if they were real. It just makes me look at you, askance.
Here's my point about human nerve endings and their evolution. Why would such pleasure be produced around the rectum or male nipples? They don't serve any child creating or bearing function in those areas. Yet pleasurable feelings rise there.
Do you think Satan evolved those area's joy centers as we evolved?
If it was God who evolved us, why the fun feelings blissful feelings really come from there?
I know it disgusts you Puritans to look at the human body as anything but a soul carrier but think about what I've said. Why do parts of the human body unconnected to child birth, feel so good when touched? Why do these pleasure places exist on the human body? Are they just another temptation created by Gody-Boy to test our love for him and his future blood sacrifice of Jesus? The Bible tells us nothing. Jesus says nothing about this. Yet my nerve endings sing. Must be Satan who evolved those nerves in everybody. Sheesh! You guys are dumb.
Jim, Where do I start. Thanks much for comparing my comments to the "very same pompous nonsense that P vomits forth". Much appreciated!?! Last I heard, the human "rectum" was a highway to excrete shit. If you want to put parts of the human body up there, that's fine, and also disgusting and nasty. And I don't care if you think that's kosher, whether your homo or hetero. Ditto to everything I said Nov. 21 @ 9:42pm. You don't think that God sent you fools HIV/AIDS as a warning to stop doing your nasty deeds. Boy are you "dumb".
The most recent crop from JR gives us a nice review of some signature gambits he deploys to make sure he has a ‘come-back’ that satisfies him – even if it doesn’t do much to advance or develop the points at issue.
Thus on the 19th at 539PM we are informed that JR was “voted best dancer” at his high school. Readers may consider the veracity of that assertion as they may.
But apparently the (choose one, several or all: shock, bitter disappointment, trauma, outrage) of (allegedly) once having his hand shoved down a teacher’s pants a year or so before didn’t interfere with his dancing capability. How nice for him, perhaps.
On then to his comment of the 19th at 545PM:
I dealt with that point in my post of the 20th at 119PM.
On then to his comment of the 19th at 555PM:
Here we see a fine example of what happens when you’re so busy trying to make excuses that you lose track of whether your excuses are coherent among themselves.
His “bad spelling” wouldn’t have been helped by an Edit button on the TMR site since if he were a bad speller he wouldn’t have known he’d made the mistake in the first place.
And his misspelling of Wessel (as “Vessel”) indicates a) that he doesn’t really know much about the material that we are to believe he knowledgeably deploys (what person familiar with the history wouldn’t know the spelling of the proper noun-name Wessel?) and b) the mistake indicates that he quite possibly didn’t read the history in regard to Wessel but instead heard it somewhere – since the spelling mistake he made was one of spoken-pronunciation.
Of course it’s also possible that he simply picked up a mistake made by some other equally ignorant internet troll on this or that site that he visits.
LOL! I bring up the subject and because I misspell. I, therefore, know nothing about the subject I introduced into the conversation. Is that a rule of grammar I missed? Only correct spelling validates thoughts? What did humanity do before Webster? Poor Plato!
Read any Shakespeare? Many spelling variations there.
You're like an old school marm whose Em-phasis is on the wrong Sy-lable.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 19th at 555PM:
He then tries to impugn my Christian charity since – doncha see? – if you point out a relevant problem then that’s being un-Christian.
I would say that I point out problems that are relevant to the accuracy or reliability of a comment.
But JR is in the plop-tossing business, and if he has tossed up a satisfactory piece of plop, then he cawn’t think why people just wouldn’t take it the way he wants it to be taken.
And his cartoon explanation is that such people must be un-Christian.
As for his concluding stab at innuendo, readers so inclined may try to suss out its meaning as they may.
On then to JR’s of the 19th at 606PM:
Once again he will try to move on to more familiar ground, by – had you been waitttingggg forrrr ittttt? – plop-tossing: the Church’s “favorite political system” is “fascism”. This from somebody who tells anyone who disagree with him or point out problems with his material to “butt out” and on prior occasions had demanded that such commenters shut up and/or be banned from the site … which is as charmingly Nazi a gambit as one might come across.
And he riffs further afield on that bit for the rest of the paragraph.
One should always remember that Hitler learned all his exclusionary tactics in Catholic school. What can't be said or thought and what can be said or thought. The essence of Catholic religious teaching gave your boy, Adolph, his matrix for fascism. (He based his S.S. on your Jesuits) Oh! and then there's Mussolini too.
On then to JR’s of the 20th at 443PM:
Here he will again trip himself up while trying to make excuses for himself.
If he is “damaged sexually” … I don’t see any comment here that stated or implied that he was “damaged sexually”. Unless we are to infer that being gay equates to being “damaged sexually”, and does he really want to take that position?
The only person "tripping " here is you.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 20th at 443PM:
Behind this bit of his – of course – is his claimed experience of having a high-school teacher (a Brother whose class he was not doing well in at all) shove JR’s hand down his (i.e. the Brother’s) pants once upon a time. We are to imagine that that single instance is responsible for JR’s being “damaged”, whether “sexually” or in a more clinically psychological way.
Readers may consider whether such an instance and single experience can reasonably be presumed to create the actual damage that JR would clearly appear to demonstrate.
This demonstrates the classic sex-abuse theory Causality Problem (often considered in comments here and at great length): can the alleged experience be presumed – by any credible and rational established principles – to be the direct and single cause of such derangements (used here in its general sense) as the allegant currently displays?
"Single instance"? These assaults happened daily, save for weekends, over two weeks.
Having people, who believe magic water can cure them from a deadly cancer diagnosis, can be considered capable of an accurate judgment of what happens to children's psyche's when sexually attacked by a religious teacher,is absurd. It is a subject beyond their keen.(ken?)
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 20th at 443PM:
We are then informed that JR doesn’t trust people when he is “alone with them”. A single experience was enough to catalyze so profound and clearly long-standing a problem?
Surely there are other explanatory possibilities (such as a pre-existing tendency or an inability to work well with others or the fact that others find relating to him difficult … for whatever reasons) that do not require so fantastical an explanatory leap as his excuse here requires.
But – slyly – he lards on the now-familiar general cultural trope about his “safety” and feeling “more secure”. Since in comments he has recently become enamored of the recent election’s results and general cultural issues, I will propose that he too joins the various myriads who have required cocoa and teddy-bears from various consolation-providers to help him deal with the ‘trauma’ of the election results.
Answer, to your first question in the post above is: Yep!
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 20th at 443PM:
He then moves on to the claim that “the pagans didn’t even have gay marriage” and that is, as far as I know, accurate: in the historical record, no human culture or society or civilization that we know of has ever formalized “gay marriage”. That point alone should prompt some profound questioning.
It was not Leonardo’s painting that has John placing himself close to Jesus and resting his head on Jesus’ chest. Ghirlandaio’s painting makes John’s posture pronounced, with John getting himself as close to Jesus’ lap as the table will allow.
Which is not quite the standard stance for adults dining together and – given that John was “beloved” – it would qualify as “kind of cuddled”, as I said. Although I am not au courant with more precise definitions of the term among this and that sub-group.
Leonardo focused on a different moment in the dinner, when Jesus instituted the Eucharist. In Leonardo’s composition of the scene nobody is physically close to Him at the moment of institution.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 20th at 443PM:
JR then raises the question of an early-Medieval Catholic “same sex, priest performed bonding ceremony”.
This is the thesis John Boswell put forward 20 or so years ago. There may have been such a ‘bonding ceremony’ but it was not sacramental marriage. Indeed it would appear that – if we prescind from the many scholarly objections to Boswell’s thesis – the Church was seeking to offer some type of recognition and support to some sort of strong relationship between males (although whether this involved sex and whether such a relationship is rightly to be equated with contemporary ‘gay’ conceptions of male relationships remains to be seen).
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 20th at 443PM:
But to say that “opposite sex marriage was introduced to the masses” in about 600AD is rather inaccurate indeed; opposite sex marriage – in various forms but with the emphasis on ‘opposite sex’ – had existed, as I have said previously in recent comments, for all of recorded human history.
I, by the way, would have no objection to such same-sex bonding ceremonies (loosely termed ‘adelphopoiesis’) in Catholic usage today, if they were not presented as a form of sacramental marriage and were presented in such a way as not to confuse the faithful. But I don’t deny that in light of contemporary excitements and agitations it would require some very careful thought and explanation.
On then to JR’s of the 20th at 450PM:
Here JR will take as a stab at theological speculation, which actually consists simply of a bunch of hardly closely-related bits.
Are we to imagine that any definition of such “fun” as Jesus might have personally enjoyed included the type of “fun” that JR has trumpeted on this thread?
That somehow suddenly brings him to Adam and Eve in the Garden. The imagery in Genesis is meant to convey the profound point that humans chose to use their gifts not to fulfill God’s plan but rather to satisfy their own desires – which is the primeval sin. And in so doing such a choice and the arrogation of such ‘autonomy’ to themselves resulted in humans making a hash of their own genuine created selves and – given the profound interconnection of all created things – their world and other humans and their history.
Weighed on the ultimate existential scales, such “fun” seems rather lightweight indeed when contrasted with the costs and consequences built into that “fun”.
"Single instance"? These assaults happened daily, save for weekends, over two weeks.
Having people, who believe magic water can cure them from a deadly cancer diagnosis, can be considered capable of an accurate judgment of what happens to children's psyche's when sexually attacked by a religious teacher,is absurd. It is a subject beyond their keen.(ken?)
So God's plan was for Adam and Eve to live in bliss in the G of E forever? Yet the all knowing God plants a tree and a fruit and a snake to tempt these creatures away from His plan? And he, being all knowing, knows they will eat of His forbidden tree.Even before he creates them and plants it??? And Him being all powerful. A) That He doesn't stop it from happening then B punishes them and their descendants for eternity? Only to redeem them by killing himself,well his Son, well himself, Jesus.? This makes sense to you? Doesn't he seem like a goofy God? A god not quite all there? Why did he need to test his magic plan for man? Why did he throw it away forever? Why blame the innocent generations to come? We stole no magic fruit. We listened to no God or talking snake. An unjust God is no god. Let alone Why did He decide that a bloody deicide was what was needed to redeem us? Couldn't He just forgive us? And really How can an undying God kill himself. When, like Poxatawny Phil, he just pops up 3 days later. He fakes his own death to save us. or he kills his human side just to save us from the Hell he created? The God of yours is nuts. And to believe in Him, is, even more, cuckoo
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 20th at 450PM:
And Adam and Eve would have ‘known’ “right from wrong” because God had specifically and precisely told them – after which they still went and did what they wanted to do.
Which illustrates the story’s profound point that humans are born with some sense of right and wrong because God created them (and us) with such an innate sense.
Why then have a tree who's sole temptation was the knowledge between good and evil. If they already had that knowledge? Why did he not warn them about talking snakes?
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 20th at 450PM:
Why a “blood sacrifice”? I would say: to illustrate the vital ultimacy of the stakes involved in human choices and in human sinfulness.
And to satisfy the balance between God’s Love and God’s Justice: once sin was introduced to wrong-choices, then the complete harmony that existed between earthly creation and God’s very nature was thrown out of whack; by taking upon Himself the shedding of His blood, Christ restored the potential for that harmony to once again be the guiding dynamic in human life and affairs.
And to provide an example of the Stance necessary toward this still-wobbling world of human affairs, where the still-damaged human species will inevitably create instances of evil acts that will inflict suffering on others and on the whole of this profoundly interlocked Creation.
LOL! The sin of fruit stealing requires a blood sacrifice of a GOD?????!!!!!! He's an idiot. Murder requires the suicide of a deity to ameliorate? Do you know how silly what you believe in is?
And it becomes clear in JR’s of the 20th at 5PM that all we are getting here is a bunch of his old 3x5s on the questions arising from a literal reading of various Old Testament origin pericopes.
Interestingly, the same method of literal reading he happily seeks to deploy against the Old Testament is precisely the method he fought tooth and nail to avoid having applied to his own ‘origin story’ about his claimed abuse.
But all that is simply pretext for his favorite bit: donning the Wig of Denouncement he proclaims me to be “pure evil” as well as the Bible being “both evil and silly”. Which is topped off with the sudden shift to the Wig of Christianity: he doth “see no love there”, he piously bleats. Readers may judge the performance as they may.
And ‘Dan’ returns (the 20th at 1031PM). Hesitant about getting into substance – and no doubt rightly so – he has to work a bit to find some safer plop to toss: he is “so glad” to see I am no longer putting up “longwinded nonsense” … apparently a reference to the shortness of my comments.
Alas, I merely break them up because the site’s rather techy rejection parameters for length often result in my getting that ‘error message’ and posts have to be sent to DP so he can put them up with his override capability as site administrator. Simple as that.
But ‘Dan’ further riffs along these same silly lines: apparently he has calculated that 2/3s of the comments on this site belong to me. And so what? He’s welcome to put up as much of his stuff as he wishes – and have his stuff considered as it may be considered.
Then he works to bring it home with his familiar “faults of your false cult” bit, and we are back down the rabbit hole to the Dan-verse – which, we are reminded, has no faults but just pure pristine truthiness and coherence and rationality and so on and so forth.
Don't know what "rabbit hole" you've gone down or slithered out from, but I never claimed to have "no faults" or sins. I'm just not one and refuse to associate with liars, pedophiles, perverts, idolators and hypocrites, who are unrepentant sinners and those who conjure up excuses for the like. Especially those who claim to be followers of God and Jesus Christ, yet by their actions prove to be nothing such. And you can cherry pick your few cases of fraud all you like, but it still will not negate the thousands of valid cases that your demonized cult has committed. You just prefer to make excuses for any mention of those disgusting, despicable examples. And this is why all your in-depth, longwinded, nonsensical assessments are laughable, because they do absolutely nothing to hide the truth of your nasty cult and all it's works. They are truly from the works of Satan and shall be cast into the Lake of Fire, along with all the false prophets and all their followers. Stick that down your rabbit hole and smoke it. servant
And on the 20th at 1016 ‘Dan’ delivers yet another one of those lectures that actually would be best delivered to himself (and the assorted divinities resident in his bathroom mirror.)
Despite all of the evidence now extant in regard to media demonization and specifically media demonization of priests, he doth assert and declare that there has been no such thing.
And the thing then riffs on toward more semi-scriptural carrying-on, ending – marvelously – with precisely the instruction that ‘Dan’ has always avoided delivering to himself (or Himself).
And last but not least, JR (the 21st at 2PM) delivers a repeat demonstration of one of his more outré gambits: declaring his lineage as a way of buttressing the light weight of his actual material.
Last time around regular readers may recall JR declaring that he is the descendant of a saint/king, a pope, and a whole bunch of other prelates and great-folk. This time around he declares he is a descendant of Huldrych Zwingli, who introduced the Reformation to Zurich.
But – alas – JR didn’t read far enough in whatever material he consulted. Zwingli wasn’t the first Anabaptist; he persecuted Anabaptists, in the general scrum into which the various Reformers quickly descended.
Oh, and the first Mennonite bishop in American too – JR is descended from that gentleman as well.
And anyone willing to do so can try to suss out the coherence and sense of JR’s self-apologia as the riff goes on.
And tops off his effort with a more reliable (in his mind anyway) plop-toss about the number of posts I put up. Just in case anyone started thinking about the pile of whoppers he has just posted in a single comment.
I notice your sly usage of "various Reformers quickly descended". Are you under the impression that the catholic church is gradually ascending? Do you mean ascending to the top of the garbage heap? Both religions have it wrong. Catholics believe in infant water baptism. Anabaptists believed in adult water baptism. John the baptist's powerful words – "I baptize you with 'water' for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." Matthew 3:11 This is why Stephen in Acts 7:51 proclaimed – "You stubborn and hardheaded people! You are always fighting against the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors did. Is there one prophet that your ancestors didn't mistreat. They killed the prophets who told about the coming of the One Who Obeys God." Christ's own words – "They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men. You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men." Mark 7:7-8 Quit spreading your lies. God is watching you.
My relatives are my relatives. They are who they are, according to Ancestry.com. I bring them up in the belief that outlooks roll down through a family's generations through the genes through the upbringing. Herman Herr has a house in Pennsylvania that's a museum. He was my 10th great grandfather. And Louis IX was my 24th great grandfather. You no like? Tough!
Must correct myself. 10th Grandpa was Hans Herr. Here's his house. I am cousins with an unknown American artist, Andrew Wyeth we share Hans and Christian and many other grandparents, all Mennonites, in common. He's painted the house several times.(And I don't mean the walls) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Herr_House
Satan and His personal Lake of Fire. Not a Bay of Fire nor a Canal of Fire nor a Trough of Flames nor a small Pond of Fire but a whole lake of it. Wow! I'm so scared!
That God of Love of yours has hidden depths. And they are hot.
What utter gibberish! This is what you believe in? This is why you judge others because you so kindly want to save us from your God o' Love's flame pools? You realize only an idiot would believe any of this stuff?
The, so called, Christian Right, which includes P and the TMR side of the RCC, has just sold this country down the river. They handed the country over to fascists without batting an eye. Why did they do this? Because they wanted power. All their bullshit about the ends doesn't justify the means. They threw that away so fast and never missed a beat doing it.And all done for power. As always religion sides with fascism.
My father, uncle, and cousins did not fight WW2 to turn this country over to fascists. But you tax free religious bastards did it without a second thought. Congratulations! Because you hate Gay people you've killed America. Nice work!
But you better arm yourselves because you'll have to invade the Blue states and declare marshall law. You have started a shit storm you can not win. 2 million+ more Americans voted Dem., granted HRC was a bullshit candidate, than for T-Rump. You've sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind.
Dan your God is watching not only who I get it on with.( The old lecher) but he watches 9 million children die a year from malnutrition. This is a God who loves us? He kills more babies every year than abortion does. But Him you don't complain about. Those actions he "allows" are never questioned by you. Grow the fuck up!. Your God according to the Bible killed the entire human population of the earth and saved an incestuous family in a boat because they didn't love him? He needs our love and obedience so badly he kills the entire human race and offers them a Lake of Fire after he's drowned them and their babies. He's a psychopath. And so are you all for believing in him. Grow up! You're no longer peasants; quit acting like you are.
On the 23rd at 108PM JR bleats that just because he misspells he cawn’t really be imagined to know nothing about the subject, can he? (He spelled ‘Wessel’ as “Vessel”, we recall.)
Well, more or less Yes. Especially since it was a proper noun/name key to his presentation, then the probability of his credibility does take a rather significant (and self-inflicted) hit.
What the Stampede did was to build itself on the presumption that ‘facts don’t matter’ and that an insistence on accuracy is mere quibbling when one is dealing with stories of such outrages (with the emphasis on ‘stories’).
We are, instead, expected merely to presume the truthiness of the claims and assertions and just run with the emotions of outrage and disgust and so on and so forth.
We’ll have more opportunity to examine JR’s credibility as we proceed down his most recent crop here.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 23rd at 108PM:
He then tries to drag Shakespeare into it. But there is the matter of almost half a millennium: the English language was in a state of developmental flux in Shakespeare’s day but since then it has taken on much more settled structure.
JR – to run with his concluding imagery here – is like a failing student who always tries to come up with an excuse for his poor performance that shifts the responsibility for that performance elsewhere.
On then to JR’s of the 23rd at 114PM:
In an effort to parade his ‘knowledge’, JR then trots out an old 3×5 from his pile, to the effect that “Hitler learned all his exclusionary tactics in Catholic school” – and so did Mussolini, since “the essence of Catholic religious teaching” gave to Hitler and Mussolini their “matrix for fascism”.
Sounds gripping and makes a catchy soundbite, but JR would have to explain just what “exclusionary tactics” are – or were in the Catholic education of those two – capable of being classified as forming a unique single “matrix for fascism” (time-saver: JR would also have to establish the definition for “fascism” as well, before he did anything else).
As for the fact that Hitler “based his S.S. on your Jesuits”: governments and monarchs for millennia (long before the Church came along) sought a highly-trained and reliable corps of soldiers or operatives (think of the Persian Immortals whom Leonidas faced at Thermopylae with his own elite corps of 300 royal Spartan guards).
But we see here the simplistic word-games, absent any serious and critically-evaluative historical and cultural assessment, that certain mentalities seek to pass off as thinking and knowledge.
On then to JR’s of the 23rd at 123PM:
Here we get to see the plasticity and mutability of Stampede ‘victim’ stories: we are now informed that the hand-shoving down the pants was not – after all these years of JR’s re-telling – a “single instance” after all, but rather happened “daily, save for weekends, over two weeks”.
First, this is news since the sustained multiplicity was never mentioned by JR before.
Second, his bit here – had you been waitttinggggg forrrr ittttt? – raises far more questions than it answers: we are apparently supposed to believe that he allowed himself to be alone with the teacher every school-day for two weeks so that these alleged assaults could be repeated. Really? Seriously?
An alternative comes to mind that does not require so fantastical a presumption: JR was performing notably poorly in the class, the teacher brought him in for extra help sessions, upon which JR thus built his claims of ‘abuse’(single or multiple), aimed at getting-back at the teacher for JR’s own failures.
The archaic “save for” is a nice touch, though.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 23rd at 123PM:
And in a fine demonstration of the type of manipulation characteristic of Stampede stories, JR then quickly tries to move us along to the dubious claim that such an experience (perhaps more valid for instances of overt rape and assault than JR’s hand-shoved-down-pants allegation) as to what happens to “children’s psyches when sexually attacked by a religious teacher”.
He was sixteen and while legally a “minor” he was not a ‘child’; the actual alleged act – having a hand shoved down pants – hardly constitutes overt rape or anything approaching it; and if he is trying to make the case for himself that his ‘psyche’ was so thoroughly discombobulated by the first instance of the alleged assault that he came back every school day for two weeks even though similar alleged acts occurred during every session … then we are indeed down the familiar Stampede rabbit hole.
And – once again – we see the wisdom of the Anderson strategy of amassing large numbers of such stories into multi-plaintiff lawsuits, the better to insure that such stories would never be individually examined in open court but instead would – as per established tortie strategy – be ‘settled’ with insurers out of court.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 23rd at 123PM:
Ah, but the Stampede Playbook has another bit to cover all that too: if it never happened to you, then you don’t have any grounds for doubting the allegations, doncha see? Neato.
That was the Stampede in its heyday.
On then to JR’s of the 23rd at 149PM:
Here JR will continue with his ‘theological’ riffs. If it seems we are entering into rather juvenile territory here, the problem is not with your set.
God’s plan was for Adam and Eve – created in His own image – to live in peace and freedom. They used that freedom (a sharing in God’s own freedom) to assert their own preferences and desires over God’s plan, thus misusing God’s gift of free will … and it went downhill from there.
Why didn’t God just treat them as plastic figurines on a train-table or dolls in a doll-house and move them around according to His whim? Because then they wouldn’t have a share in the freedom of His free will.
And – JR apparently has to be reminded – the death of Jesus was followed by the Resurrection.
And from the Death and Resurrection flowed the process of ongoing reconciliation. One might say that God chose to have ‘kids’, and wound up – as parents do – with a whole lot of heartbreak as well as the joy.
And thus the rest of his riff here can be considered as readers may judge.
And it’s Punxsutawney Phil, by the way. If facts matter.
LOL! Your God is such a nebbish He's a putz. I always said the Ressurection is a lot like Punxsutawney Phil only when Jesus comes out he does not see his shadow and does not go back in.
Still being evil, P. You are The ScumLord. If you had a life and were traumatized by an act. I know I wouldn't mock it. I'd empathize with your sorrow. I would right this minute. But you say I have nothing to be sad about. Nothing really bad has happened to me. Not only do you not empathize you deny there's anything worth empathizing about. Signed sealed and delivered. Every thing with you is either an insult or a denial. No kindness. no real reasoning because you start from a false premise. You throw so much mud because your church is all mud. A contraption like all religion is, based on ZERO proof. Not scant proof, not a little proof hidden away in some Vatican vault. But in fact NO PROOF at all for your entire world of make believe. So you take your belief in nothing and project it onto everything you can that doesn't suit you or fit your moronic myths. I tell you the truth about what happened to me and the man who pushes lies and imaginary things by the millisecond says I'm the liar that I'm the cheat. I'm just clarifying this for all the readership.
On the 23rd at 152PM we get more of the same:
The “sole temptation” represented by the Tree was whether Adam and Eve would use their free will to participate in God’s plan or whether they would use their free will merely to satisfy their own desires.
That was the key dynamic in knowing the difference between Good and Evil: the core dynamic of Evil is to put one’s own desires ahead of God’s plan. By the very act of disobeying God’s instruction and instead pursuing their own desires, Adam and Eve ipso facto participated in – introduced, actually – Evil into the human world.
Had Adam and Eve followed the instructions given them by God, the serpent would have remained a powerless by-stander. The serpent needed them to disobey in order to bring Evil into the human world.
They chose to go with the serpent and here we are.
Hey! poop for brains? Where did all these desires of Adam and Steve (So Sorry! Eve) come from? The manufacturer, maybe? What was god's Plan? (Hope it wasn't a wall that Mexico can pay for)
Did God share his plan with his test dummies? What was this plan? God knew that this evil which he created since he created all things, would come into the world through his reptilian messenger. He, too, had to come from God because God made all things. So God sets up this puppet show for us to lose and his death sacrifice to redeem. What a weird God! This is beneath Goofy. (I mean Disney's Goofy).
As to JR’s of the 23rd at 203PM then, readers may judge for themselves just whose position is “silly”.
And, for that matter, how silly would it be to believe in JR’s own little Victimist ‘origin story’ (i.e. JR is what he is today because … and so on).
JR then (the 23rd at 159PM) moves onto this bit about his “relatives”. He assures us that it’s all proven by the site Ancestry.com.
Adding – to neutralize the silly idea that (allegedly) having certain people in one’s way-back lineage somehow a) improves the quality of one’s mentation or b) adds to the credibility of one’s claims, assertions, stories, and mentation – the claim that “outlooks roll down … through the genes” and “through upbringing”.
Given the number of generations, the characteristics or predispositions imparted by those “genes” would be rather significantly diluted.
And since JR himself has never had too much to say about his elderly parents (apparently the bond was not strong enough for him to rely on it by telling them what (allegedly) happened to him at school), then “up-bringing” here wouldn’t seem to apply in any significant sense.
And was there not the question of mental infelicity in the immediate biological family, if memory serves?
JR no like? Tough.
Wonderful! You now insult my dead parents. You ARE Jesus' messenger here on Earth. Hosanna in the highest!
You are so like your master T-rump. Find an enemy and if there are no enemies make one up. I know you hate filled "types" only relate to each other through your hate. You revel in hate. Hate's your drug of choice. I say that because you are always using it. You are a dried up hate junky.