We used to live in awe of our recent ancestors. To have lived a life encompassing the Wright Brothers and Apollo 11 was to have witnessed Humanity’s Great Leap Upward. We were lucky enough to have caught the tail end of that era, but really, watching the first moon landing at ten is to lack all the context. Pretty cool, but so was Batman.

We lived in awe, but not resentment. We also missed a couple of world wars and an influenza pandemic, and benefited from the polio vaccine. It all evens out.

And besides, the future wasn’t done yet. We’ve lived the computing revolution, from mainframes to minis to micros to Macs to modems to cable modems to no modems to iPhones to iPads. Only twelve men have walked on the moon. More than two billion people travel through cyberspace. We’re writing this on something we would have seen on Star Trek growing up.

And maybe we’re luckier than we thought. There’s a quarter-century gap between Apollo 11 and the Web. That’s a long time to marinate, if you lived from ten to thirty-five during those years — a lot of context stored up for the Big Cyberbang. If, on the other hand, you’ve just turned thirty, you might find yourself posting something like this:

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Title: “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics”

Author: Ross Douthat

Rank: 51

Blurb: “Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of American decline, Douthat exposes the spiritual roots of the nation’s political and economic crises. He argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, it’s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses.”

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It’s official! Andrew Breitbart died of a terminal case of raging asshole:

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger whose posting of a sexually explicit photo of former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner led to the congressman’s downfall, died of heart failure, the Los Angeles County Coroner said in an autopsy report released Friday.

The news broke late Friday afternoon, so we may have to wait another day for the conspiracy theories to kick in. Meanwhile, we’d like to note a few remarkable things from CNN’s lead paragraph.

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“RNC members and state GOP chairmen were welcomed into the private reception [with Romney] only after signing a form pledging to support Romney as a delegate to the national convention in Tampa.” [CNN]

In this corner, Montana Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer:

[It’s] kinda ironic given that [Romney’s] family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico, but then he’d have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico, given the gender discrepancy… [Women are] not great fans of polygamy, 86 percent were not great fans of polygamy. I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of [the] polygamy lifestyle, but his father was born into [a] polygamy commune in Mexico.

And in this corner, the Washington Post:

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[Mediaite]

Our guest columnist is the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, who thought it was “hilarious” when South Park depicted him taking over the Church and being killed by Jesus with a throwing star.

Jon Stewart refused to apologize last night for the unprecedented assault on Christian sensibilities he launched on April 16. In that episode, “The Daily Show” featured a naked woman with her legs spread and a nativity scene ornament placed between her legs; with the picture on the screen, Stewart laughed at what he called the “vagina manger.”

Our effort against Stewart includes asking his most consistent sponsors to pull their advertising (if necessary, we are not ruling out a boycott of their products), and a lengthy public relations campaign. The goal? To get him to apologize. If that doesn’t work, we can guarantee that his reputation will never be the same.

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