September 23, 2005
Blessed Are the Hatemongers It
Blessed Are the Hatemongers
It will not be a surprise to any of our sundry readers to hear that we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are dutiful devotees of the Bible. After all, our literary persona—such as it is—naturally demonstrates our great piety and reverence.As such, it must come as no shock to discover that many amongst us regularly attend our Official Staff Bible Study. Of course, there are a few Godless atheists and semi-Godless agnostics in our midst. A handful of them appear to think that Ayn Rand is God, and one other is betting on Elton John. But we do our best to wake these heathens up to the presence of the Divinity.
In addition, we must add that our Official Staff Bible Study not only ensures our near-saintliness, but also allows us to carry around an irksome heir of saintliness wherever we go. After all, half the fun of Bible study is making those who don’t do it feel bad. Or so we’ve been told.
Anyway, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” were sitting down to another rousing Saturday morning of biblical exegesis when we came upon what must be our favorite passage from the Good Book.
As we made our way through our Old Scofield Study Bibles (no non-believing texts for us), our hearts collectively delighted in what must be one of the most beauteous passages in the history of world literature. For those of you sufficiently devout to follow along with us, we refer to II Kings 2:23-24.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy these elegant verses, which we have adapted only slightly from our Old Scofield translation:
And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Beth-el; and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou baldy; go up, thou baldy.
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
Simply magical, isn’t it? This passage—which we have cleverly named “Andre Agassi’s Revenge”—brings great delight to the male members of the crack young staff. Informal polling around the office water-cooler suggests that every last one of the male staffers is either bald, balding, or deeply worried about balding. Or all three.
As you might imagine, then, this passage—given all the authority one associates with the Bible—is simply magnificent. The next time anyone makes a crack about our hairlines, we’ll call in the she-bears. We bet about 42 of them won’t be so happy when the tearing asunder is all over.
