Category: religious satire

Kim Davis and the Pope, Volume MCMDXXVIII of ‘I am not a homophobe’

October 2, 2015 • 8:15 am

by Grania Spingies

Regular contributor Pliny The In Between has created a new satirical poke at the strange logical contortions from the school of Special Pleading.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

As Jerry noted recently, there is nothing particularly liberal about the Pope’s position on anything; not unless you apply a really low standard to what liberal is: his organization bars women from all high level management positions, in spite of his saying “women are more important than men because the church is woman” (whatever that is supposed to mean). Uttering the phrase “who am I to judge?” is on charitable interpretation only basic human decency on the question of homosexuality, it is not liberal. When put in context of the entire of the entire comment the tone takes a certain slide towards the Right:

A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will—well, who am I to judge him? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn’t this (homosexual) orientation—we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.

That is not a liberal position. That is a I’ll tolerate you so long as you don’t ask for legal equality position. Not so liberal now, eh?

I’m still unsure if I understand exactly why the media fawns so much over religious leaders; but then they also fawn over the Kardashians (and I hate that I had to investigate who they are, thanks America) so perhaps that isn’t the right question.

Perhaps the question is: when did sounding like a mostly decent human being rather than a Westboro Baptist Church representative suddenly get re-branded as liberal?

 

Charlie Brooker mocks religion on Channel 4

February 23, 2015 • 10:45 am

Matthew Cobb, who introduced me to the work of Charlie Brooker, describes the man as “a long-standing scabrous British satirist who has an occasional column in the Guardian.” We’ve already encountered one of his associates, the adorable Philomena Cunk, who presents “Moments of Wonder” as part of Brooker’s BBC show Newswipe. (We’ll see more of Philomena later today.)

But here’s a clip from Brooker’s show You Have Been Watching on Channel 4. While that’s a commerical channel, it’s also partly funded by the British Government.  So when you watch the anti-religious clip below, which appeared six years ago on that channel, think about whether it could appear even now on American government-supported stations, either radio or television. Note too that the Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron “Argument from Bananas” also appears, and the audience finds it hilarious.

I wasn’t aware that there was such a series as Bibleman, which looks like a spoof, but apparently it was for real and played in the US from 2003 to 2011. On that basis I formulate Coyne’s Second Law: “Any sufficiently ludicrous manifestation of religion is indistinguishable from satire.” (I believe this is a subclass of Poe’s Law.)

One advantage that the UK has over the US is that, because of the nation’s smaller degree of religiosity, UK comedians can take the mickey out of religion much more strongly than can American comedians. Could you hear this on U.S. television?:

Brooker:  “. . . and when I say God is a psychotic bastard, I want to make it clear I mean all gods except Allah.”

Yes, George Carlin said stuff like that, but he did it in clubs and private shows, not on national television. Bill Maher does make fun of faith, but late at night and not on one of the three major channels. Perhaps I’ll live to see the day that this kind of satire will be widely shown in my country, but I doubt it.