Fear Factory
We’ve mentioned before our love of WorldNetDaily, your one-stop shop for right-of-Rush infotainment. It you want to know “why leftists love tyrants and terrorists,” you’re just a click away from enlightenment.
Actually, two clicks: One to wade through a page of blurbs, the second to hit the WND Shop to buy the book that delivers the goods. Which is published by — wait for it — WND.
It’s a neat trick, and we envy their success. It also helps explain why WND has suddenly gone millenialist on us, with a couple of stories warning us about the end of the world as we know it.
Our guest fearmonger today is David Wilkerson, author of the Pat Boone vehicle The Cross and the Switchblade, who not only is still alive and kicking, but blogging about his holy nightmares:
“An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen,” he writes. “It is going to be so frightening, we are all going to tremble — even the godliest among us… It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires,” he explains. “What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath.”
That and a buck will buy you a share of Citigroup, of course, but while WND is no stranger to populist theocracy, outright prophecy — as their banner headline, no less — is still a reach for them. So what gives?
Perhaps it has something to do with Wilkerson’s practical advice to his flock:
“lay aside a month’s supply of food — because I have witnessed the panic in the wake of terrorism.”
As luck would have it, WND advertiser Survival Seeds has just the product for the occasion: “high-yielding vegetable seeds sealed for long-term storage.” And Survival Seeds owner Bill Heid just happens to be quoted in the story, explaining that “average, regular folks” find his product very useful. Good to know.
In fact, market forces being what they are, turning up the Fear to 11 might have its own cause: Christianity claims 10 percent fewer Americans than it did in 1990. If you can’t get new customers, sell more to the old ones.
Pastor now tells how to prep for imminent catastrophe [WND]
Fuck them. I still gots my Y2K rations for the great implosion that never happened. What’s the expiry date on the mil rats I bought? Um, 1954? Well, never mind.
Jeez, and Cons call us Realists a bunch of gloomy Guses with a case of the MunDays. At least our doomsdays are based on more than a feeling.
In the same vein (Boston’s More than A Feeling)
I looked out this morning and the sun was gone
Turned on some Limbaugh to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar rant
I closed my eyes and I lost my shit
Its more than a feeling, when I hear that same doom they love to say (more than a feeling)
I begin frothing (more than a frothing)
till I see my sanity drift away
I see my sanity drift away
So many theories have come and gone
Their FAILs fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on
As clear as the doom like with Y2K
Its more than a feeling, when I hear that same doom they love to say (more than a feeling)
I begin frothing (more than a frothing)
till I see my sanity drift away
I see my sanity drift away
When I’m tired and my bunker’s cold
I rant my rantings, forget the day
And dream of a time I thought I knew
I closed my eyes and sanity slipped away
It slipped away. it slipped away.
Its more than a feeling, when I hear that same doom they love to say (more than a feeling)
I begin frothing (more than a frothing)
till I see my sanity drift away
I see my sanity drift away
New York City? Again? Haven’t we been through enough of this shit? Note that these shitbag preachers never predict devastation for Salt Lake City or Lexington, Kentucky. No … it’s always Manhattan – once in a while L.A. Assholes.
@blogenfreude: I was in SLC in, I guess, 03. Do you know what they did after the attack on the Twin Towers? What they did in SLC? By which I mean that city in Utah? Removed all mail boxes from the streets. Like anyone cares enough about that ghastly ‘temple’ to want to bomb it. But no, they must have their fair share of hysteria.
Hey, am I among friends here? Can we close the door? Blog, turn up the radio a bit so nobody outside hears this:
When I was about 12, I read The Cross and the Switchblade, and liked it. I felt like I was getting important learnin about the mean streets of New York, what with all the Spanish Harlem shivving goin on. Oooh, and the zip guns, I learned how a zip gun was made! That hoodlum-turned-evangelist was totes kewl!
That is all.
@Nabisco: You do know there’s a revival of West Side Story about to open? I’m just sayin’. For more hard-core gang-lore.
I am the wrath of the lamb, the angel of the bottomless pit, and the paraclete of Kaborka!
Funniest moment in Farenheit 9-11 was the rednecks in some podunk shitville sitting around theorizing about where al queada would strike in their town. Their conclusion was, al queada would almost certainly target the Wal-Mart.
ahhh…it’s all about the seeds.
advertising standard. sex and fear.
@Benedick: They welded a bunch of midtown mailoxes shut for a while after 9/11 – I think they’re back in operation now. The mailboxes on Upper West weren’t touched – I suppose we’re expendable up there.
Meanwhile the Pope has upheld the excommunication of a woman who arranged for her 9 year-old daughter to have an abortion after she was raped by her step-father, and in Saudi Arabia a 75 year old widows is subject to 75 lashes for having her nephew bring a few loafs of bread to her house.
Fuck the world’s religious “leaders.” Their opinions are no more relevant to modern life nor possessed of moral insight than those of your average child molester.
@Benedick:
please don’t hate me for LOVING west side story.
not too long ago i saw a pbs special (read: pledge drive) with lenny hisself conducting the score. magnificent, i thought.
am i easily entertained or is it truly an awe inspiring score?
@Serolf Divad: And let’s not forget the Iraq War, brought to (through George W. Bush) by the Almighty himself!
Prommie: Problem is, however, that Wal-Mart probably is a likely target. Federal buildings have concrete planters and bollards, and policemen in side. With guns, even. Wal-Mart is guarded by an old man. And you can’t have the National Guard take up stations in every single Wal-Mart in the country. Soft target, writ large. I mean, in Jerusalem (hi, baked!), your bands of martyr-idiots bomb buses and pizza shops. There’s a reason. Several, actually.
blogenfreude: Note well that Chicago’s now on the list. Thanks a bunch, Bolton!
Serolf Divad: Would that there were one person in public life who would just step up to a microphone and say, “you know what, Your Holiness? Unless and until you clowns stop lawyering up and start owning up to the whole “lets-shift-pedophile-priests-from-parish-to-parish-and-see-if-anybody-notices” thing, there’s a door over there you can use.” This would just turn the crazy on your fundie spokespeople all the way up, but it would be good just to hear somebody say it.
Incidentally — has anybody seen Pat Robertson lately? Haven’t heard dick from the man in recent months.
I could have sworn I mentioned this last night, but I have to mention it again, did anyone see the story of the man who stuck a dildo on the blade of his cordless jigsaw, and was using this ingenius device on his female companion, IN PUBLIC, in a park, when the jigsaw blade cut through the dildo, and, oops, thats one scary vaginal injury scenario (though probably less painful than childbirth).
I find the story simply inspiring. Absolutely inspiring. We are going to get this country going again, we are going to overcome this economic setback, we are going to regain greatness, this country. Yes We Can! Its that kind of ingenuity and drive that makes me sure of it. I am sure he will perfect his “tool,” it should be an easy fix to come up with a safe jigsaw-dildo, and then we will all be able to power-penetrate in the parks. How can anyone hold back a country that can come up with this?
http://www.thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/12368
Prommie: The ingenuity of Americans cannot be defeated, ever. But American talent can always be improved upon.
Paul Harvey…. good day!
@Prommie:
Ingenuous, sure.
Smart, no.
Don’t kids today know about anything about the art of finger banging? Sheesh. Damn abstinence sex ed.
I am wondering if it was a jigsaw or a sawzall; the sawzall would actually be perfect, it has a much longer stroke, and its variable speed, so it can be slowed down to a very slow rate, or sped up and let loose. I bet it was a sawzall.
http://www.curbly.com/uploads/photos/0000/0001/1440/sawzall_large.jpg
@Prommie: I see this story has made a lasting impression.
@baked: It’s a beautiful score though I prefer Candide. And people (read: my agent) are saying this revival is very good.
@blogenfreude: Apparently the UWS is totally expendable. I’m reckoning the next target would be the Empire State.
@blogenfreude: You’ll be glad for UK’s ag school once everything else has been leveled.
It’s my fault for checking CNN’s Political Ticker, really, but Richard Gere clarifying Hillary Clinton’s statement on human rights and a House panel to plan a celebration of the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth? The apocalypse might be closer than we think.
@Serolf Divad: Don’t get me started on the Pope excommunicating the mother of the 9 year old in Brazil (and the doctors who performed the abortion). Even when confronted with the quote from the doctor that a 75 pound, 9 year old girl was physically incapable of carrying twins (yes, she was pregnant with twins) to full term without her dying, the local bishop whined about the babies dying. The doctor said he fully intends to keep going to mass despite having El Papa excommunicate him.
@Prommie: Yes, you did share that last night, and it made me gag then too. But thanks for the reprise over breakfast.
On Sunday I was driving home from the grocery store and a car one lane over and in front of me at the stoplight had a bumper sticker for World News Daily. What made it so odd was that the car was not being driven by some crazy old white guy, it was driven by a young Asian female. Odd.
@SanFranLefty:
Not I. I’d give even odds that she was Korean.
Lots of Krazee Con Koreans with a serious fundamentalist streak. I should know… my parents (atheist father!) tried to set me up with their daughters.
@ManchuCandidate: Could be that she was Korean. It was a hooptie ’80s American car, so I was also wondering if she was the mail order bride for some crazy old cracker. It was also odd that this was on a street in San Francisco, and not out in Vacaville or San Jose.
@Prommie:
i missed the first telling. i’m glad you repeated it, laughing my ass off. yep, quite an ingenious country. it shall rise again!
@SanFranLefty:
this is when i miss george-lapsed-alter-boy carlin. nobody did vatican carazee like he did. el papa? your hitler youth is showing.
@SanFranLefty:
Or she was too lazy to remove the previous owners bumper sticker?
But now that I think about it, I find it strange that an Asian would put a bumper sticker on their car as it’s not a typical thing to do unless it’s a magnetic Jeebus Fish.
@Prommie: That actually makes a lot of sense if you wanted to strike fear and terror into the heartland. Upper midwest, Great Plains, by the Kanadian Kaida. Wired’s Danger Room blog had something on Our Porous Northern Border within the past couple of weeks.
As far as the Church goes, I slashed our contribution to the annual Catholic appeal after those assholes came out against the domestic partnership bill here. Fucking foreign based special interest group.
@Benedick: We now have real life thugs living around the block from us. Nothing cheers a home owner like seeing dudes walk their pit bulls a block from an elementary school. Lots of people who were hoping to cash in in on the Santa Fe real estate bubble have now started renting out their houses in my neighborhood, in addition to the shitty landlord with a house across from us. The people there last summer were very popular. Always a steady parade of young people dropping anytime for a few minutes just to say hi. We bought at the left end of the bell curve so we can take less than market value and still walk away with cash in our pockets for a new place.
@ManchuCandidate: There also was not a line of stuffed animals staring at me through the back window.
@baked: There was a great book written in Mexico in the ’70s by a feminist during the Catholic Church’s crackdown on the Jesuits and the liberation theologists that was titled ¿Quién escucha al Papa? I thought that was the funniest title ever.
Prior to his retirement in 2003, my Die Hard Republican dad was the chief of security for the two-story federal building in the small town of about 10,000 people where I grew up. He was one of those “Nixon’s a good man, he’s just to damn librul” types.
He was a Bush voter—so needless to say—he was sure that his building was next on Osama’s list. They installed this insanely sophisticated, full color + thermal imaging, interior and exterior video security system, in which all images captured would be digitally stored off-site forever, and I almost cry a little when I think about the Egyptian Pharaoh amount of money they must’ve pissed away on it.
It did make a video star of a neighborhood dog that would occasionally run across the street though.
Back in the day, it was a chicken in every pot. Now there’s a terrahist, a drug dealer, a welfare queen and a sex offender under every bed. Booooo!
@Original Andrew: Don’t forget the gheyz and baby killers!
Eeep! You’re right–fixed!
Now there’s a terrahist, a drug dealer, a welfare queen, a humuhsekshal, an abortionist and a sex offender under every bed.
Wait, isn’t that Obama’s entire platform?
It’s like the Brady Bunch with more ethnic and seshal flavah.
First they blamed freddie mac and fannie mae, then they blamed Clinton, then they blamed the browns and poors, now they blame Jesus?
Being Christian is so hard!
@smapdi:
Just keep in mind that it’s always everyone else’s fault–especially tha abortionists and tha humuhsekshals–then it gets reeeaal easy.
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