Posted 12:19 PM by Scoobie Davis

Synchronicity
Mike Huckabee is standing by his 1998 comment that we ought to "take this nation back for Christ." Last night, I finally got to see Jesus Camp which contained a similar quote ("take back America for Christ") and same general theme. The film deeply disturbed me. Huckabee's chumming it up with John Hagee also disturbs me.

I thought it was interesting that one of the children in the film used Chick tracts as a witnessing tool. Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I have a postmodernist appreciation of Jack Chick's work.

UPDATE: Another synchronicity: Chick Publications has a new tract online called "Poor Little Lamb." It deals with the origins of Passover.

Posted 11:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Buy this Book!
John Gorenfeld's Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom will be published in March. More details on the Moonie blog.

Posted 10:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Washington Times and the Mainstreaming of White Supremacist Thought
On the Moon blog.

Posted 11:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Films
Last night I saw The Savages and Persepolis. I got a lot out of The Savages even though I thought parts of it didn't have the ring of truth. From a standpoint of acting, it's hard to beat a film with both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney.

I'm not listing Persepolis as my favorite film of the year only because of No Country for Old Men. Persepolis blew me away. It's a coming of age story about a Iranian girl who experiences the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq War and who spends much of her teenage years in Austria. One of the things I loved about the protagonist is that after she returned to Iran as an adult, she and her friends risked arrest and persecution by Iran's morality squads by holding secret coed music-and-dance parties. As someone into comix and sequential art, I was familiar with the highly-regarded graphic novels but I didn't read them. I hope that word of mouth helps the film to gain a wider audience--a challenging task for a subtitled film in the U.S. I also hope the film does well because it ticks off the mullahs.

I also recently saw Charlie Wilson's War. There's something odd about the Washington Time's review of the film so I will write a post about it on the Sun Myung Moon blog later.

UPDATE: The post on Charlie Wilson's War is up.

Posted 11:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

Merry Christmas!

Posted 10:08 AM by Scoobie Davis

Mike Huckabee Hangs out with Pastor John Hagee
Yesterday I was flipping through the channels and noticed that John Hagee's show was on. As I watched, I was so taken aback by his rhetoric that I recorded part of the sermon. It was a Christmas sermon and contrasts starkly with the Christmas sermons I heard when I was a child. Later in the day, I found out that presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was Hagee's guest (I didn't see Huckabee on the broadcast and don't know if it was the one in which Huckabee appeared).

The thing about members of the clergy like Hagee and the late Jerry Falwell is that they graft their own redneck, bellicose, authoritarian, tribalistic, and bigoted views onto Jesus and other biblical figures. For instance, when Falwell was opposing Martin Luther King's call for civil rights in the 1960's, he justified Jim Crow culture by claiming that blacks were stricken with the "curse of Ham" and thus it was biblical that they be subservient to whites.

Likewise, Hagee projects his power-hungry, war-loving, puritanical, aching-for-a-crusade mentality onto Jesus. I have previously written about how policy makers and media people have accorded legitimacy to Hagee's apocalyptic views (click here and here)--developments that are truly frightening. Here are some excerpts from Hagee's Christmas sermon:

And then there's this self-serving, self-absorbed, hedonistic society of ours. People say, "Well, what about my rights?" You don't have any, darling. . .

The idea of a universal peace for a Christ-rejecting, pleasure-loving world, enslaved by greed and materialism is an illusion and an absolute farce. It is never going to happen. . .

The Christmas message is: The baby Jesus in the manger is now the ruling, living, reigning, mighty, all-knowing Son of God-- [Shouting] with power and glory--and he's coming back. [loud applause] He is the lamb that has become the lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the baby of Bethlehem's manger who is now King of Kings and Lord of Lords. . . He's going to rule the world with a wrought of iron. He's not going to ask you if you will obey. He's going to make you obey because he's King of King and Lord of Lords.

Revenge of the Cultic Kitsch-mongers: A Weakness of Democracy
In a previous post, I mentioned how I used to watch Hagee's sermons on the Trinity Broadcasting Network during the 1990's (of course, with plenty of ironic detachment from the subject matter to enjoy it as kitsch). I haven't enjoyed his sermons since I learned that Hagee has the ear of the Bush administration and is being taken seriously. This man is a fanatic who bases his foreign policy views on his interpretation of the Book of Revelation that nuclear war is inevitable and desirable because it will usher in the Rapture (allowing Hagee and his tribe to be whisked into Heaven leaving non-fundamentalists to deal with that cosmic buzzkill, the Great Tribulation).

Although Hagee's foreign policy views are cartoonish and dangerous, that doesn't prevent him from being courted by national politicians and the media. Why is this the case? Authoritarian cult leaders use their power over people to attempt to seize even more power. For instance, Hagee has used the mass media to gain a sizable congregation and, thus, political power. Similarly, Sun Myung Moon has used his religion (through fraud and deception) to become a billionaire who can line the pockets of influential politicians and media figures. Thus, in today's society, we have a situation in which dangerous megalomaniacs like Hagee and Moon exert power because of the number of people they control or the amount of cash they can spend on unprincipled politicians. This is scary.

UPDATE: This January, Sarah Posner's book God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters will be published. The book looks at Hagee and other Rapture-ready preachers and their relationship with the GOP. The forward is by Joe Conason.

Posted 4:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Jimmy Eat World
Enjoy:

Posted 1:33 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sun Myung Moon and the American People
On the Sun Myung Moon blog.

Posted 2:01 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Incredibly Shrinking Amway Rally
On the Amway blog.

Posted 2:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

Saturday Night Live clip
On the Sun Myung Moon blog. The segment spoofs the New Messiah, deprogrammers, and the zombie film Night of the Living Dead. It's from 1977 and has the original cast members including the late great John Belushi as Sun Myung Moon, Dan Aykroyd, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, and Bill Murray. Shelley Duvall was the guest host.

Posted 11:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

Saw a Film Last Night
One of the best things about LA is that your entertainment dollar goes very far. One reason that is the case is that there are many preview screenings and test screening. Studios with films in post-production are always trying to tweak the film and get test audiences. I'm not supposed to go to these because I'm in the industry but I go anyway.

I generally don't comment on these films because they are works in progress, not the final product and because there might be elements of the film that the studio don't want disclosed to the public before its release. That's why I won't go into specific about the film other than to say that I liked it a lot. The film is Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It's my favorite Judd Apatow-produced film (note: I liked Zero Effect and the 40 Year-old Virgin but didn't like Knocked Up or Superbad).

Quick asides: It was only three-quarters through the film that I realized that a main character in the film was being played by Mila Kunis--who is best known for being in That '70s Show. I think Kristen Bell is a really talented actor. She is best known for the Veronica Mars series (which I have never seen; I know her from Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical which is a really funny movie).

Posted 3:27 AM by Scoobie Davis

An Open Letter to Martin Luther King III
Read it here.

Posted 3:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

A Message to Readers of my Sun Myung Moon and Amway Blogs
Check out my blogs addressing Sun Myung Moon or Amway

Posted 5:35 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Enchanter
I'm not in contact with Jack Chick anymore so I didn't get a chance to ask him what he thought about Mitt Romney's speech on religion today. However, I have an idea of what he thought. Yesterday, I finally got to read the new Chick Publications Crusader comic titled "The Enchanter." It's about Joseph Smith and it's no surprise that it's not flattering. Most of it is a biography of Smith (whom Chick views as a pawn of Satan to steal the thunder from the Second Great Awakening). Among other things, Chick addresses Smith's dabbling in divination (e.g., using a seer stone) and apparent appropriation of Masonic rituals. I don't have time for a full review right now but, like most of the Chickster's other books, it doesn't pull any punches and is highly inflammatory.

Posted 3:00 PM by Scoobie Davis

CNN Shouldn't Worry about a Lawsuit from David Bossie
I just read on the Drudge Report that operative David Bossie of Citizens United is considering a lawsuit against CNN for reporting that, among other things, referred to Bossie as "a dirty trickster."

I've written about Bossie. CNN was right. It's pretty bad for a Republican operative when a Republican administration refers to you as "the lowest forms of life." Bossie was also one of the people spreading rumors about the death of Vince Foster and he was fired for doctoring exculpatory tapes of a Webster Hubbell conversation. I have a far-from-exhaustive list of Bossie dirty tricks here.

Posted 12:49 PM by Scoobie Davis

Nutty Religion
People wonder why I simultaneously enjoy the work of Jack T. Chick and am repelled by the activities of the late Jerry Falwell. For one thing, Chick does not generally want to make his world view the law of the land. Falwell, in contrast, had theocratic plans for America. Also, Chick is a businessman who lives modestly and has paid a high price for his controversial stands. Although I disagree with just about everything Chick writes, I have to at least applaud Chick for sticking to his guns even though his controversial comics were threatening his business. Falwell, on the other hand, is a man of the cloth who has bilked his congregation out of their hard-earned money with expensive and libelous video tapes and other schemes. Most important, unlike Chick, Falwell and other apocalyptic preachers have had the ear of people in the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations. That's scary.

That is not to say that I don’t find much of Falwell’s shtick amusing. It would be more amusing if people didn't take Falwell's apocalyptic views seriously. The other day, I checked out a videotape of Falwell's 1993 sermon, "The Coming Satanic Superman" which deals with the supposed imminent arrival of the Antichrist and the Rapture. What is scary about it that John Hagee is saying the same things to today's audiences. Here are a few of the more revealing excerpts of Falwell's sermon.

I’m expecting the Lord to return in my lifetime. I can’t guarantee that but I’m living that way, with full expectations that I will not need an undertaker. . .

Others affirm that he [the Antichrist] will be a Jew. I think he will be. There are two Old Testament passages and one New Testament passage to indicate that he will be a Jew because he will be counterfeiting the Christ who is a Jew [Falwell cited Ezekiel 21:25; Daniel 11:27; and John 5:43]

According to 1 John 4, the spirit of Antichrist is already at work in the world. Who would ever believe that the National Endowment for the Arts, with our tax dollars, would pay a so-called artist to create a cross with Christ on it and submerge the cross in a container of the artist's human urine? All paid for with our tax dollars? Who would believe that that would happen in America and the President of the United States supports the National Endowment of the Arts [Reminder: this sermon was from 1993 when Bill Clinton was president]. It's that spirit of Antichrist at work here: pornography, the abortion of unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, all of these wicked, vulgar, and blasphemous things are happening right now. The spirit of the Antichrist is at work in the world while we speak. Al Worthington and I were speaking backstage a moment ago about the fact that the majority of us are now being controlled by a vulgar minority. A vulgar minority--maybe five percent of the New Agers and the pornographers and the baby-killers and the Christ-haters--they actually control all of us. They own Hollywood; they own the national media; they own the White House; they own--the majority of them--the Congress.

Don't think, you liberals and New Agers and Antichrist religious people, that you will rise to power on the coat-tails of the Antichrist. You'll push him to power and he'll destroy you.

It blesses my heart to be a premillenarian because I don't have to worry about those crazies in the Middle East getting their hands on the Ukrainian and the Russian nuclear ICBMs and others and destroying the world.

All the heavens and Earth as we know it now will melt with a fervent heat and cease to be. You know what the saints will say? "So what?" Because coming down out of Heaven like a bride adoring for her husband will be the New Jerusalem, the holy city of God, prepared for the saints for all the ages. We'll have new heavens and a new earth, and no more need for this one. We can give it to the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the environmentalists, Al Gore, the tree-huggers, whoever wants it. We don't need it anymore. [Laughter and applause from the congregation]