Come back, Henry Louis!

That's what the blogsphere is for, isn't it? We never have to worry that you're whoring yourselves out to advertisers or being crushed under the heels of your editors.

We were discussing that very question (where are all the acerbic, secular critics) at lunch (damn law professors) and I nominated Jon Stewart and the other good folks at the Daily Show. The medium is different, but there is a lot on the show that reminds me of Mencken and Ambrose Bierce.

Junk science, that comment is right on the money. In fact it is insane worship of money above all else that has driven any sort of reasonable commentary off the airwaves and into a corner of the web.

Another thing that's worth remembering is the generations that Mencken and Ingersoll were writing for. Ingersoll was writing in the aftermath of the US Civil War and Mencken in the aftermath of the First World War. Many people reading their articles had witnessed horrors first hand that made the idea of a caring deity even more difficult to take seriously than normally.

--Many people reading their articles had witnessed horrors first hand that made the idea of a caring deity even more difficult to take seriously than normally--

Of course, while we only have 9/11, tsunamis, Katrina, etc. etc.

As the child of two newspaper people, I had some interesting books around the house, and now that I'm home for a little while visiting family, I have the opportunity to pull one of them off the shelf: A Treasury of Great Reporting (Simon & Schuster: 1962), Snyder and Morris editors. Mencken is strongly represented. I quote from page 427, where the editors give a brief background to the Scopes Monkey Trial:

Bryan strode into Dayton as the shining knight in armor of the fundamentalists. Among the mass of gratuitous advice was this hint from Billy Sunday, the revivalist: "If man evolved from a monkey, why are there so many monkeys left? Why didn't they all evolve into humans?"

Yes, Mencken had to contend with PYGMIES AND DWARFS!

The Mencken article itself describes a Holy Roller revival in the backwoods outside Dayton --- a fascinating and more than a little frightening event. Quoth Mencken:

The preacher stopped at last and there arose out of the darkness a woman with her hail pulled back into a little tight knot. She began so quietly that we couldn't hear what she said, but soon her voice rose resonantly and we could follow. She was denouncing the reading of books. Some wandering book agent, it appeared, had come to her cabin and tried to sell her a specimen of his wares. She refused to touch it. Why, indeed, read a book? If what was in it was true, then everything in it was already in the Bible. If it was false, then reading it would imperil the soul. Her syllogism complete, she sat down.

I can't resist quoting a few paragraphs from his description of the frenzy itself:

What followed quickly reached such heights of barbaric grotesquerie that it was hard to believe it real. At a signal all the faithful crowded up to the bench and began to pray---not in unison, but each for himself. At another they all fell on their knees, their arms over the penitent. The leader kneeled, facing us, his head alternately thrown back dramatically or buried in his hands. Words sprouted from his lips like bullets from a machine gun---appeals to God to pull the penitent back out of hell, defiances of the powers and principalities of the air, a vast impassioned jargon of apocalyptic texts. Suddenly he rose to his feet, threw back his head, and began to speak in tongues---blub-blub-blub, gurgle-gurgle-gurgle. His voice rose to a higher register. The climax was a shrill, inarticulate squawk, like that of a man throttled. He fell headlong across the pyramid of supplicants.

A comic scene? Somehow, no. The poor half-wits were too horribly in earnest. It was like peeping through a knothole at the writhings of a people in pain. Form the squirming and jabbering mass a young woman gradually detached herself---a woman not uncomely, with a pathetic homemade cap on her head. Her head jerked back, the veins of her neck swelled, and her fists went to her throat as if she were fighting for breath. She bent backward until she was like a half of a hoop. Then she suddenly snapped forward. We caught a flash of the whites of her eyes. Presently her whole body began to be convulsed---great convulsions that began at the shoulders and ended at the hips. She would leap to her feet, thrust her arms in air, and then hurl herself upon the heap. Her praying flattened out into a mere delerious caterwauling, like that of a tomcat on a petting party.

I describe the thing as a strict behaviorist. The lady's subjective sensations I leave to infidel pathologists. Whatever they were they were obviously contagious, for soon another damsel joined her, and then another and then a fourth. The last one had an extraordinarily bad attack. She began with mild enough jerks of her head, but in a moment she was bounding all over the place, exactly like a chicken with its head cut off. Every time her head came up a stream of yells and barking would issue out of it. Once she collided with a dark, undersized brother, hitherto silent and solid. Contact with her set him off as if he had been kicked by a mule. He leaped into the air, threw back his head, and began to gargle as if with a mouthful of BB shot. Then he loosened one tremendous stentorian sentence in the tongues and collapsed.

Mencken winds up his report with the following:

Such is human existence among the fundamentalists, where children are brought up on Genesis and sin is unknown. If I have made the tale too long, then blame the spirit of garrulity that is in the local air. Even newspaper reporters, down here, get some echo of the call. Divine inspiration is as common as the hookworm. I have done my best to show you what the great heritage of mankind comes to in regions where the Bible is the beginning and end of wisdom, and the mountebank Bryan, parading the streets in his seersucker coat, is pointed out to sucklings as the greatest man since Abraham.

I'll conclude with something completely different, brought via Warren Ellis, author of the estimable Transmetropolitan (which has a few Mencken-inspired touches of its own). Please enjoy "HOWTO Screw Some Evangelist Maggots Right In The Wallet".

Ellis should read Pharyngula -- I'm just waiting for my order to arrive.

Just finished a book "The Serpent Handlers" (Fred Brown and Jeanne McDonald, John F Blair publisher, NC) and it's a hoot. The book purports to be an objective look at the serpent-handling cult in southern churches and the terrible injustice shown to these people by the courts in seperating them from their children after a couple get bit and die. It's another terrible example of taking all of the claims of religious at face value and then some!

And there is absolutely no discussion of reptile behavior! Why and when poisonous snakes bite, fer instance.

Nope, it's just their "faith in God" that keeps 'em from gettin' bit. Well, bit more often than they do.

The pictures of the guys with most of the flesh gone from their index fingers, with the bone stickin' out (got bit and refused medical attention) are worth twice the price of admission!

And the authors never neglect to mention the low real-estate prices in the area and the fantastic scenery, as if the snake-handler churches are just the thing to form a suburban community around!

Great stuff!

Of course, while we only have 9/11, tsunamis, Katrina, etc. etc.

For whatever reason, disasters don't seem to challenge faith in religion or society as much as wars. Perhaps because in wars the witnesses are often also participants in the horrors. The First World War, for example, created a "lost generation" (immortalized in the early works of Hemmingway and others) that had little respect for either religion or conventional societal mores.

Since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, serpent handling has had many a day in court. Several states have passed laws against handling serpents in religious services; and in the case of Punkin' Brown, the court has established a precedent in ordering the Brown family not to take its children tp churches where serpents are handled. Despite this obvious obstruction of religious freedom, there is no public outcry or concern for the constitutional rights of these believers. How is it that a Bible-based religion has come to suffer so much opposition in a country where religious liberty is cherished?"

From the foreword to "The Serpent Handlers".
Foreword written by:
Dr. Ralph W. Hood, Jr.
Professor of Psychology
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.

Sam Harris echos Mencken at times, but I don't forsee reading his words in any newspapers anytime soon.

Carl Hiiasson comes as close as any.

Sorry!

Carl Hiaasen

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/carl_hiaasen/

--For whatever reason, disasters don't seem to challenge faith in religion or society as much as wars. Perhaps because in wars the witnesses are often also participants in the horrors.--

Point taken.

--The First World War, for example, created a "lost generation" (immortalized in the early works of Hemmingway and others) that had little respect for either religion or conventional societal mores.--

As well the dadaists and surrealists.

Ah, Mencken. "Reporters come in as newspaper men, trained to get the news and eager to get it; they end as tinhorn statesmen, full of dark secrets and unable to write the truth if they tried."--that was always one of my favorites.

I think the problem is, more now than in Mencken's day, that we can't even agree on what reality is. Does Christianity soak into every arena of public life, foisting itself on freethinkers and digging its claws into policymakers? Is secular humanism about to complete the destruction of America's long held Judeo-Christian traditions, driving the faithful, persecuted few into conducting their worship underground like Marranos to avoid being thrown in jail for "hate crimes"? Well, it depends on who you ask.

Say what you will about overweening religiosity around the turn of the century, but I don't think they had to deal with that.

I had a guy at the Republican Party booth at the Iowa State Fair tell me that (a) the founders were Christians, not Deists, (b) the Constitution doesn't say anything about "the separation of church and state", and that (c) I'd know all this if I'd read the history books that were written before "the humanists" took over. He couldn't tell me exactly who the humanists were, but they were definitely screwing everything up.

We really can't even agree on what reality is.

Obermann does it with a wink.

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Countdown-Harris.mov

Apparently God is voting for Nelson this time.

Nowadays, though, people are actually shocked that anyone would question religious belief.

Well, I hear Richard Dawkins' "Root of all evil?" documentary was quite well recieved here in the UK. It was aired on Channel 4 who have a reputation for deliberate stirring controversy (and they insisted on that particular title, Dawkins' himself stated that the notion of anything being the root of ALL evil is silly). It was not all it could have been, but in retrospect I think was partly responsible of converting me from liberal Christian to atheist (although PZ is probably just as guilty).

So, could you imagine a documentary like this being broadcast in the US?

'We' can't agree on what reality is?

As the story goes: what do you mean 'we', white man?

Mark Twain too.

I think that Christians today combines extreme fragility and extreme aggressiveness. They have an enormous belief that they are victims, and they treat free-lance ridicule as the equivalent of lynching and slavery. Scary.

James Wolcott, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, (jameswolcott.com) is certainly ascerbic as a "critic of the culture of the mindless." He writes sparkling snark, and can also criticize those in our culture who are so mindful that they're in danger of becoming gasbags...floating in the ether isolated above the mindless.

John Emerson: distinguish between the fundamentalist wackos whom you're calling "Christians" and the ordinary non-fragile, non-aggressive, not wacko people who make up the majority of American Christians. The Fundies political power and thus access to media makes them seem more numerous than they are.

distinguish between the fundamentalist wackos whom you're calling "Christians" and the ordinary non-fragile, non-aggressive, not wacko people who make up the majority of American Christians.

Perhaps when they distinguish themselves.

Silence gives consent.

Caledonian: I don't mean godless liberals can't agree on reality; if you asked only the people on this board, you'd get a broad agreement, I'm sure, not only as to the nature of reality, but on issues of how that reality should be dealt with, of what is good in life, on what a society's goals and responsibilities should be.

I mentioned the Christianist from the State Fair because he was an example of someone working from an entirely different foundation ontology, who was living in an utterly different nation that happens to occupy the same physical space.

Take someone from the religious set. Take someone from the areligious set. A set containing these two will not be able to achieve unanimity as to the nature of reality. There is such basic disagreement between the groups that they can't even agree on a basic point to start from; conversation becomes impossible, or at least pointless.

Several people likened Mike (York Daily Record) Argento's coverage of Kitzmiller v. Dover to HLM. I'd say his columns were extremely witty and showed excellent insight into the Intelligent Design movement, yet his use of language differed greatly. Which is just as well, because his columns could be enjoyed for their own style without suffering the burden of trying to be clones of someone else's.
I've gotten the impression that a lot of bad newspaper writing comes from Journalism classes, plus a lack of emphasis on good writing in other classes.

Perhaps when they distinguish themselves.

Silence gives consent.

Exactly. That's why the UCC is one of the few Christian denominations I respect. Where are the rest of the "mainstreamers"? (Terrified of bleeding more of their most hidebound members to the fundies, and blinded by their own homophobia, would be two of my guesses.)

We not only live in a politically correct era but in "religiously correct" one which to me may be even more insiduous. This morning there was an inane newspaper article about a local Christian high school whose cheerleaders were so concerned about the image they would convey if their outfits were less than chaste. It was ok that they could be "cute" but they must in every way, do everything to glorify Jesus. Their squad is part of a movement to "re-educate" youth into model citizens whose sole purpose in life is to glorify God, called the "Next Generation". Sounds more like these young ladies are part of a future of religiously programmed robots(fascists) who dare not think for themselves... oh no, that might insult their precious saviour. The US seems to be becoming more and more like a religious state every day especially here in the south. It is ironic that the same wackos here who rail against intolrance and religious fanaticism in the Islamic world will not look in the mirror at what they are similiarly becoming, even if not with the violent tactics(yet!)

I mentioned the Christianist from the State Fair because he was an example of someone working from an entirely different foundation ontology, who was living in an utterly different nation that happens to occupy the same physical space.

Worse. He has a different foundation *epistemology*. You can't even agree with him on what rules to use to sort truths from falsehoods, let alone how to apply them. While you may have some simple and obvious beliefs in common (most objects on Earth fall down if unsupported, standing in the rain will make you wet, being hit by a speeding car is likely to be hazardous to your health, etc.), overall an empirical belief system and a mystical one can't be reconciled: they can't even agree on what would constitute reconciliation.

But you go too far when you say he is living in an utterly different nation. He has an utterly different *concept* of the nation, but the nation itself is the same nation. If the true believers actually *were* in a different reality they wouldn't cause nearly so much trouble. Confusing perceptions with reality is very dangerous.

While Stewart's style is quite different, his substance - ridiculing anyone who deserves it - seems the closest to Mencken of any modern media figure. (Or perhaps I should credit his writers with this? I don't know how much influence Stewart actually has over the content, as opposed to the delivery, of TDS.)

He doesn't take on religion much, though - I don't know whether he's afraid to, forbidden by his corporate masters, has a misguided reluctance to "disrespect" other people's delusions, or is some kind of religious believer himself.

James Wolcott, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, (jameswolcott.com) is certainly ascerbic as a "critic of the culture of the mindless." He writes sparkling snark, and can also criticize those in our culture who are so mindful that they're in danger of becoming gasbags...floating in the ether isolated above the mindless.

John Emerson: distinguish between the fundamentalist wackos whom you're calling "Christians" and the ordinary non-fragile, non-aggressive, not wacko people who make up the majority of American Christians. The Fundies political power and thus access to media makes them seem more numerous than they are.

James Wolcott, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, (jameswolcott.com) is certainly ascerbic as a "critic of the culture of the mindless." He writes sparkling snark, and can also criticize those in our culture who are so mindful that they're in danger of becoming gasbags...floating in the ether isolated above the mindless.

John Emerson: distinguish between the fundamentalist wackos whom you're calling "Christians" and the ordinary non-fragile, non-aggressive, not wacko people who make up the majority of American Christians. The Fundies political power and thus access to media makes them seem more numerous than they are.