This cartoon, by Pat Bagley, appeared yesterday in—of all places—the Salt Lake Tribune. Its title: “Spokesmen for the Almighty.” There’s no op-ed or essay that better describes the malfeasance of religion. (But according to Obama and other apologists, of course, none of those are real religions—they’re all corruptions of genuine faith.)
The figures or movements are easy to identify except for the third from left. If it’s a Mormon marrying young girls, then Bagley is a brave man. Readers can weigh in below:
I’ll add this one from Jan 4, which is nearly identical to that in the previous post:
h/t: Mark
I believe number 3 is Warren Jeffs, of the Fundamentalist Mormon movement. Incidentally I used to work at the Salt Lake Tribune, and Pat Bagley’s work is always excellent and on point. It pleases me when his work goes national.
This kind of thing, of course, would never appear in Salt Lake’s Mormon-owned paper, The Deseret News, which has only doubled down on its Mormon identity.
At first I thought there was a problem with screen-shot taking, or something, but the original cartoon does cut off at the RHS with person [OFFSTAGE RIGHT] saying “I a# doin# Go# wil#”
Which I read as implying a long string of people doing gods will in various unpleasant ways.
They all look like god’s swill.
Hey, I just thought of that one, and you pinched it from under my nose!
Agreed. I think I t’s Jeffs. And Bagley gets better all the time.
Warren Jeffs, almost certainly.
Excellent comics, all three (including the one from the other post). Though if I had my druthers, I’d have added some amusing but unnecessary adjectives to the last description. Something like “a flannel-breasted loon” or “a rebel-crested loon” would’ve had better parallel structure with the earlier comments. But hey, everyone’s a critic…
#VanillaISIS
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Y’all-Qaeda waging yee-hawd.
Abraham Lincoln made a famous comment about the North and South both worshiping the same God and having opposite views on slavery.
Roger Waters’ song “What God Wants” is a bit germane here.
While Lincoln did not practice religion in any way that I remember, he was always a politician and he used religion and bible sayings to make points with the masses. As a small child with no schooling he taught himself and there was always a bible around to read. So he read the hell out of it until he could find other books.
That is why he could always quote from it in speeches for effect. The smartest guy in the room always knew what he was doing.
Wow, how old are you?
lol
‘The devil can cite scripture for his purpose’
Not that I’m suggesting Lincoln equates to the devil, except maybe in the eyes of some southern gentlemen…
cr
And thanks to William Shakespeare, millions of Christians have something to quote when someone uses the Bible to condemn *their* actions.
In other words, the faithful can cite Shakespeare for their purpose.
Something symmetrical about that. 😉
cr
I just finished reading David Donald’s Lincoln which I can highly recommend. (Also, most highly: Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning single-volume history of the US Civil War.)
Your description is basically correct.
He was sharp as anything. He loved to be the center of attention, the raconteur. And he could sling a Bible verse with the best of them.
And he was not religious, though he seems to have shifted a bit in that direction after his son Willie died, and he did tread carefully around others’ religious sentiments.
God Swill.
My new favorite political cartoonist. Utah sure has changed (or at least, Salt Lake). I thought of the old Joan Baez song, “With God on our Side”.
Pat Bagley has always been like this, and he’s been publishing in the SL Trib for….well, I think forever. I want to say I was reading him when I was at the U, but that was almost 40 years ago, so I could be making it up.
Anyway, he’s been publishing for a long time, and he’s always been pointed and funny and eloquent.
For the record, both olive-sided flycatchers and loons are uncommon at Malheur. Though I guess the loons are more common now than they used to be, in a lot of places.
As Ben often points out, theism is an attempt to garner unquestionable authority for oneself. “You can question my motives all you want, but right now I’m on an errand for god!”
A related trick theists often play is buck-passing. Since they’re only doing god’s will, you shouldn’t shoot the messenger when they try to block LGBT-friendly legislation etc.
At first glace, I thought that the middle figure was a doctor doing god’s will by healing children. “Doing god’s will” could be positive, negative, or neutral.
As PZ Myers has written “god is a sock puppet” who speaks “with a remarkably egocentric voice”.
Even the devil can quote scripture, and the Bible is such a hodgepodge that anyone can find something in it to justify most anything.
-Carl
“Obama took my brains!” LOL. That about sums up the entire Repukelican party for me.
Ah! But does God have Free Will for the loons to interpret for the gullible?
*If* there was a God who was omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient could ‘He’ be anything other than ‘Himself’?
Where’s Abraham and Isaac? Jepthah (sp.?) and his dancing daughter?
I’m not really understanding the second one. Are those supposed to be hunters? I get the impression the artist thinks hunters use rifles to shoot birds, that they shoot protected species, and are not conservationists. Doesn’t make sense. Am I missing something?
Those are the idiots who took over the bird preserve in Oregon. Note the name on the sign in the middle.
… and they are supposedly protesting the jailing of the Hammonds, who committed arson twice, burning a lot of public land both times … the first fire pparently was set to cover up evidence of their illegal poaching activity.
So ya. really. You really should try to take the cartoon as if it shows that the artist doesn’t understand hunting. (sarcasm).
This species of loon is rather common in rural Oregon, Nevada and Idaho.
Left to right:
Figure representing the Malheur NWR nitwits
Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church
Warren Jeffs
Figure representing (I think) the “Lord’s Resistance Army”
Figure representing ISIS
and on they go ….
Nevermind, second cartoon. Well covered by the other replies.
Reminds me of the Norman bastards at Hastings – Diex aie…
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/168110998565326346/
Sub
Bagley is famous in utah for his cartoons. The Tribune is not Mormon dominated (the LDS have their own paper here), so it tends to be fairly centrist in general and open to a broad range of ideas. Due to the culture here, look for Utah to continue to surprise in its secular people’s deep understanding of religion’s effects on today’s society and current events.