March 18, 2005
Blasphemy—Modern Style
Blasphemy—Modern Style
Oftentimes, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” spend our Thursday afternoon pondering some of life’s great questions. How can you get a job without experience, and how can you get experience without a job? What’s that smell? Can you smell that smell? What kind of hair products does Stone Phillips use? And has he used them all up yet? That sort of thing.Anyway, this past Thursday one of the senior editors here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let’s just call him “Chip”—was thinking about questions such as these, and a curious thought struck him: In the Western world, there’s pretty much no such thing as blasphemy anymore.
After all, our friends in the so-called blue states have already uttered every kind of religious blasphemy. In fact, many of them blithely sport anti-Christian blasphemy on their car bumper stickers. And everyone in the art world knows that the key to jump-starting a lagging painting career is covering Mother Mary in some kind of animal feces.
Our friends in the red states may say that politically incorrect humor is the modern Western version of blasphemy. To a certain extent, that’s true. Yet nothing strikes us, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” as stale quite as much as boldly announcing one’s politically incorrect bona fides. Hasn’t anyone noticed that most people who claim to be politically incorrect aren’t politically incorrect in the slightest? We blame Bill Maher.
All of this naturally troubled our co-worker “Chip.” What’s this world without blasphemy? It isn’t the kind of place we want to inhabit.
As such, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” set to work to fill the void. The only modern equivalent of blasphemy that we could come up with was angry denouncements of various pop culture icons. Whereas no one gets upset at Pope jokes anymore, pretty much everyone has a fit if you manage to insult Ringo Starr. And that’s rather silly, because he’s a terrible drummer.
Without futher ado then, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” proudly present our humble contribution to the blasphemic tradition, if you will. If the following remarks make you mad, good: They’re supposed to.
“The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Attempts at Blasphemy:
1. Eric Clapton is an overrated guitarist.
2. The Rolling Stones never wrote a song worth listening to.
3. Tom Hanks is no Ryan O’Neal.
4. Tom Foley is no Tip O’Neill.
5. Andrew Lloyd Webber is a talentless hack.
Got you riled up? We bet we did: Them’s fighting words.
