Spoiler Alert!

by Catholic League I guess you mean that bloated bloviating fag fearing piece of shit William Donahue?

@Capt Howdy: The very same.

I just left a nice message for same Mr. Donohue. If there’s one thing people really fear it’s a stinging comment from an anonymous source. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see this pulled.

may I just say
I LOVE HBO. they and showtime simply can not find enough sharp sticks to poke Willy and the po boys with.
I love it.

1. Where the hell was the picture of Jesus? On a urinal cake?

2. Yes and yes is right. If Jews had a guy like Jesus that they could plaster on everything, he would have done it to that. Sadly, they don’t.

P.S. I know if Jews had a guy like Jesus, they wouldn’t be Jews. Work with me here.

@RomeGirl:

Jesus? On a urinal cake?

my advise:
patent this idea quickly.

Another Catholic tantrum … what a surprise.

What on earth is that a panel from?

@mellbell: I wish I could tell you, but I couldn’t find a source for it — I suspect it’s been bouncing around the Net for awhile.

@RomeGirl: We did. Jesus was a hymie. I’ve never understood how anti-Semites deal with this.

@nojo: BTW, oh godlike (at stinque.com) one, I’m getting a panel ad on this thread to contribute to the homophobic anti-gay-marriage side in Maine. Let me clear this up for the good people at Google. I AM NOT AFRAID OF GAY PEOPLE. OK? I don’t want to see any more of these horseshit ads.

@Dodgerblue: Alas, the ad doesn’t include the URL (some do), and Google doesn’t permit me to click it to discover where it goes. (I need the final address in order to block it.) If someone wants to do the deed and send the URL to nojo@stinque, I can take care of it.

(By the way, haven’t seen one penny from Google ads, which make them a great scam for Do No Evil, Inc. They’re here for entertainment value only.)

TJ: Did anybody else see this?

Doing the math, this implies there are roughly 25k Taliban fighters. Can somebody explain why, at a much lesser expense, we can’t just either give them a million bucks EACH to STFU or offer that same million each for their heads? $25 billion and the Taliban are gone – how much more have we already spent chasing them around the mountains?

@Dodgerblue:
he is a dead jew. thats ok with them.

@al2o3cr:
then we wouldnt have a boogie man. you think the military industrial complex is going to get what it wants scaring people with mexicans?

I’m of two minds on this. Yes, I see the joke and can appreciate it. On the other hand, being fully mindful of those where who are neutral or anti-religion here, it’s disrespectful and may cause more problems than its worth. (“But edgy comedy is supposed to do that” , etc. I know.) It’s not my faith although I’m there almost every week but it’s like watching someone you know wrap their car around a tree by being reckless.

Catholics are easy targets, partly because they set themselves up to be. Substitute another group and object/person of respect or veneration and it becomes anti-whatever. On the other hand, I love blasting rightwingers. Perhaps I’m too mindful of how upset Mrs RML will be about this. If I were on my own I’d probably snigger a bit and move on.

ADD: @al2o3cr: And *why* are fighting the Taliban? Did they send a DBED (donkey borne explosive device) into the WTC?

@nojo: It went away. You are much more effective than the Big Guy in the bible, and quicker, too.

OT – top 15 Lieberman Betrayals.

@redmanlaw:
my entire family is deeply seriously religious. its like hunting, I never got it and they finally gave up. but I do see your point. it always bugs me a little to see christians painted with the broad brush the left often uses since I know they (my family) are mostly yellow dog democrats and generally pretty tolerant.
or they would not be talking to me.
having said that, if the catholics want to stop the bashing the first and most important thing they could do is get William Donahue off the fucking stage.

TJ: South Carolina Republican sex scandal of the day.

@redmanlaw: One point to consider is that Donohue (and Breitbart, and all the other wingers who picked it up) have done more to publicize the moment than HBO — a pay cable channel, not network or basic. Outrage is good business, after all.

@redmanlaw:
Btw
The other day we were talking about hunting. I said something like “I withstood a lot of pressure to go hunting”. The funny thing is I was thinking about that later and it occurred to me that I had never really thought about that. In all these years. I realized the fact is I went hunting once. When I was about 11 or 12. That’s a guess because I really don’t remember but I am pretty sure it was before 13 because that’s how it works but it could have been earlier because I was a big kid. Anyway, imagine me in an 11 year old body (because I have always been just as pompous and unselfconsciously opinionated and I am now) tired, bored, itchy, pissed off that they made me do this, bitching constantly, making lots of noise noticing and talking about all the wrong things. [oh look!! A praying mantis!!] I even made one of them carry my gun. I have a remarkably clear memory of all this in spite of the fact that I had not thought about it in 45 years. When they got me home from that “hunting trip” I do not remember them ever asking me to go again. They never asked me again. Think about that for a second. How much of an embarrassing pain in the ass must I have been for them do that? For my knuckle dragging forefathers to throw up their knuckles and walk away from this most basic of rites of passage? Fotget it. save the watch the wallet is already gone! This is not happening. The fact that I could do that in one shot at the age of 11 without really meaning to boggles my mind a little. And makes me laugh.

@SanFranLefty: Pretty mild stuff. The cemetery location is a good pre-Halloween fact, tho.

As a believer, let me tell you something: God has a sense of humor. He invented humor. They only way this could possibly offend him is if the joke falls flat.

@SanFranLefty:

Very close to “a dead girl”, if you think about it.

@Dodgerblue: Cemetery, sex toys, topless dancer 38 years his junior…I’d say that’s at least 3 diapers. Plus the weirdness of the arresting officer being married to one of his coworkers.

@SanFranLefty:
Throw in anti-abortionist and presumably religious fanatic.

Speaking of SPOILERS!

Fortune magazine published their list of 40 under 40: Business’ Hottest Rising Stars*.

The first 10 include, in order:

1) The co-founders of Google
2) The founder of FaceBook
3) The Murdoch hellspawn who’s the EU and Asia CEO of Nooz Corpse
4) Some random Indian steel heir/playboy
6) Tiger Woods??
7) The Senior Managing Director of the Blackstone investment group
8) The CEO of Hulu
9) A former Enron trader who now manages a hedge fund
10) The founder of Netscape, who’s now a venture capitalist

So, the most-admired future bizniss leaders are basically:

1) all men

2) run internet/media/investment schemes that produce nothing, lose shit-tons of money each year and have inexplicable business models, yet they personally pocket millions. Thank you, Reaganomics.

However will this end??

*And not a single centerfold–screw you too, Fortune.

@blogenfreude:
wow
pretty impressive seeing them all strung together like that.

@SanFranLefty:

“just in case”

HA
how can you possibly argue with that?

@Capt Howdy: I’ve been hunting once – for turkey over two days – in the past two months. It’s my own damn fault for not getting out more.

@SanFranLefty:

I couldn’t help but think of the Scotsman/gynecologist joke from Monty Python when I saw this – “he was on his lunch break”. :)

To paraphrase the bit – “I think that stripper *was* somebody’s lunch break!”

@ManchuCandidate: And anti-ghey, no doubt.

wow
I just had a chance to cruise around wingnut land and see the carnage this has caused.
it was like a cool breeze.

Larry is my new hero.

video is up at huffpo

@Original Andrew: Well, if 18 million cracks weren’t enough to break the glass ceiling…

@SanFranLefty: Now, if they were screwing atop Strom Thurmond’s grave, that could up the diaper rating. But in the SUV, it’s just one of those “if the car is rockin’ don’t bother knockin'” episodes.

Toleration TJ: Army Lets Sikh Dude Keep Turban and Beard

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/28/sikh.us.forces/index.html?eref=rss_us

@ManchuCandidate: Presumably is close to prejudicially; in fact its the same.

Ya know, the Catholic church is the one I don’t attend. When I am feeling chrsitian-y, which I do feel sometimes, I think the catholic veneration of pictures and crucifixes as idolatry, a roman pagan perversion of christianity. So I have no respect for it, this veneration of pictures and idols, none at all.

I will stand there with the ACLU and defend anyone’s right to piss on a crucifix, against governmental action.

There is the rub, the government has no role in defending anyone’s icons against “sacrilige” or whatever they call defilement. I will defend anyone against the government telling them thats a no-no, for example, when Giuliani pulled the funding for a museum for displaying Piss Christ.

But on a personal level, even if you think christianity as a voodoo superstition, don’t you, as a human being, have some obligation to refrain from deliberately, unnecessarily offending the people who do believe?

At least, shouldn’t you refrain from offending unless you have some good reason? Is making a funny-haha a good enough reason?

Oh, yes, its funny, I thought it was funny, but was it smart? Was it really a smart thing to do? Given that it was totally uneccessary, I mean, what was the message, was there a message, like “the catholic church oppresses gays?” Seems to me there was no reason other than funny ha ha.

Was that little ha ha worth offending people, and giving the right wing this little drum to beat on now?

Anyone else out there forced to study post-modernist literary criticism? I thought it was bullshit, back in college, as an English major, I thought it was all total bullshit, that the text means what the reader takes it to mean, not what the author intended it to mean, and all that.

But this brouhaha is actually the first time I have seen validity in it. I know Larry David did not mean to attack Catholics or deliberately offend them, he was making light of the predicament of someone who did not intend to offend anyone, but who unintentionally did something that would offend, and the aftermath of such, this is something that happens all the time. I know that the intent of the author was innocent. But for the first time, I see that there is validity in the proposition that the author has no control over the audience’s perception, and that, in fact, the audience’s perception also has validity, even if it was not the author’s intended perception.

Pissing on someone’s god, its never a wise course of action, even if its a joke.

@redmanlaw:

Does that mean that the turkey eluded you? Not for nothing, RML, and you know I love you, but turkeys are pretty dumb….

@Promnight:

My feeling is always that if my belief, and the set of ideas that accompany that belief, are so weak that theycan be damaged by someone mocking my faith or desecrating its symbols, then I hardly deserve to be called one of the faithful. All this fuss comes from people who in their heart-of-hearts are having a hard time believing, and thus need to reinforce the fact that they believe through offense and pearl-clutching.

@mellbell: 36 million?

@Promnight: As a Larry David humor artifice, it’s okay. Kind of like Lenny Bruce pointing out how modern Catholics should wear electric chairs around their necks. He takes the piss out of everyone…

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Amen, my brother in Jeebus!

Also, religion-wise, I’d like to see us take on higher-hanging fruit. Today was Mormons, Catholics, and fundies? Bah! Talk to me when you’re ready to take on Presbyterians or Methodists.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: I feel exactly the same way, Tommcat, that it is only someone of limited understanding and a limited capacity for spirituality that would take offense. This is all completely true.

My eyes were opened to something that is deeply true about human existence, but rarely spoken of, when I came to know, as friends, a few priests. These were Episcopal priests, but I have also known some catholic seminary dropouts, their training is similar, their theology is actually very similar.

Here is the thing; these people are trained in a very intellectual, knowledgable, nuanced theology. They know all the “contradictions” in the bible better than the shallow atheists who throw them around know them. They are completely aware of the difference between literalism and symbolic meaning, they know that the bible, and even the tenets, are symbolic and not literal. As an example, I will tell you that every priest I have ever become close enough to speak about these things with, would say, absolutely, that there was no need to believe in a literal resurrection, or that Jesus was “literally” the son of god, they were all very accepting of an almost buddhist almost agnostic view, that God is completely unknowable, that all that is said about God in the bible is limited by imperfect human understanding, that all should be taken as symbolic, for example, that jesus was symbolically the son of god in the same way everyone is the son of god, and should be revered only in that he had greater spiritual connection and taught good things inspired by god, and that he was resurrected and ascended in the symbolic sense that he continues to teach and inspire in the things he said and traditions established by those who continued to be inspired by him. All very logical and not at all voodoo.

But these same people, they knew, that the majority of people, do not have this level of understanding, that they are limited in understanding, that they take everything literally, that they personify everything, idolize everything.

Thats a problem, isn’t it? They believe that everyone is welcome to the fold of believers, even if some people don’t really have, and never will have, the ability to get their minds around real spirituality.

So what I am saying is, what do you do, knowing that there are people who, as you say, have weak, uniformed beliefs, whose understanding of spirituallity will never rise above a literal and personified understanding? What do you do?

Do you just decide that because you have a greater understanding, a more evolved belief, that you can feel free to offend them, belittle their limitations, and say “fuck you, you should have been born smarter and more capable of spiritual nuance in your beliefs?”

Our intellectualized egalitarianism has a cruel side, in that because we believe in some fiction about all being equal, we feel free to ask of those less capable than we are that they respond to things the same way we do.

I know you, and I know your intellectual capacity and understanding, and I would feel free to tell you the most scabrous, nasty, horribly offensive religious joke I know. But, I would not tell my mother that joke, I would not think to myself, ‘fuck her, she has a weak and shallow belief if she is offended.”

Thats just simple human decency, isn’t it?

@Promnight: In the story isn’t it an accidental splashment while pissing and losing control of the hose? Not a direct sluicing of said pic.

But no. One can never control what an audience thinks. And they will think the most peculiar things at times. Stuff that really makes you scratch your head and look again at that job in insurance.

So…I have a slightly different take on this, as a militant atheist.

I don’t begrudge any fellow Stinquer’s claim to their own faith. I respect the people, and their actions, (and their blog-comments), not their beliefs. And certainly not their pretty speeches, and I’m talking to you, Obama.

I hold many beliefs that may invite ridicule here, like sympathizing with Paultards on some issues, and being with 911-Truthers on some other issues as well (and here I must clarify, I don’t think ghost missiles struck the Pentagon and hundreds of airline passengers are being held incognito to prevent the Truth from surfacing — it’s just that there are SO MANY incongruencies, so much cognitive dissonance to deal with in the official story of what happened, I’m inclined not to believe in the totality of what whe have come to recognize as What Happened).

I simply cannot believe that there is some omniscient, omnipotent being at the top/bottom of all this. I prefer to believe that humans make their own joy and misery, and the promise of an afterlife is beside the point.

@flippin eck: Today was Mormons, Catholics, and fundies?

The low-hanging fruit was “‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’: Larry David Urinates on Picture of Jesus”. With a headline like that, it has to taste good.

ADD: I smoke contraband fags and always have. They just taste better.

@Pedonator: Thank you. That setup was waiting all day for someone to pick it off.

@Pedonator:

And you get to believe that, Pedo, my belief does not negate yours because they contridict each other. One may be the truth, or, as I suspect, both are versions of the truth. But there is one thing you have to admit: As we are speaking of the unknowable, my belief is as reasoned, and reasonable, as yours. We look at the same data, and draw different conclusions, but as niether of us hold absute proof, both conclusions are equally deserving of respect.

Forgive my misspellings, I comment from my iPhone. :)

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Commenting from iPhones should be banned.

Till I can have one.

Only Verizon works where I live. You know how this story ends.

@Benedick: 50% of us are below average in everything. Or, there are 2 million suckers born every minute, or swine to cast your pearls at. Depends on your point of view. If you get 2% of the people to like you enough to want to see your play, you are bigger than Andrew Lloyd Webber. If you get 2% of the people to buy your widgets, you are as rich as Bill Gates. And the fun thing is, you can be in the bottom 10%, and still be able to fool those in the bottom 5%.

@Prommie: Pollyanna.