Friday links! Creeping mendacity edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
An ad from the Alliance Defense Fund urges students to report discrimination.

An ad from the Alliance Defense Fund urges students to report discrimination.

Look at the kicker in that ad: “Deliberate discrimination against Christians is now the official—or unofficial, but actual—policy at an increasing number of publicly funded colleges and universities.” It’s like the copywriter caught himself lying and then convinced himself what he was saying was basically true anyway, all in the space of one sentence. Welcome to the age of creeping mendacity, where telling the truth is less important than getting people to believe what’s true. It’s a subtle difference—so subtle you can use it to trick yourself. Today is Friday, and the truth is too important to let other people sort it out for themselves. Won’t you conflate “correct” and “honest” with me?

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Liberty Institute, Fox News alert us to anti-Christian prejudice

By Dan Brooks in Church People 4 Comments

Probably your neighbor or the president or something.

The Family Research Council and the Liberty Institute—which, as you can see from their names, are wonderful organizations that anyone would agree with—have released their Survey of Religious Hostility in America. The good news is that Christianity has not been stamped out entirely; a small pocket of Americans continue to profess the faith, clinging to existence at a mere 80% of the US population. They are brave, and they are threatened. As Fox News helpfully explains:

The [report] highlighted more than 600 examples illustrating what it characterized as religious animosity shown by judges, government bureaucrats, schools and secular groups. From ObamaCare mandates that force religious entities to pay for contraception, to children being punished for uttering prayers in school, the report’s findings shocked even those who commissioned it.

Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link and, to a lesser extent, yesterday’s hangover. Prophetic words of Tony Perkins after the jump.

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Social conservatives try to make satire fun again

By Dan Brooks in lying 4 Comments

Larry Doyle, former Simpsons writer and author of an "anti-Catholic screed."

One consolation of our progressive national stupefaction is that satire might start fooling people again. Not that Larry Doyle’s recent column on “the Jesus-eating cult of Rick Santorum” is particularly subtle. When Doyle describes himself as a former “Irish-Catholic, the worst kind” and says he discovered a possible connection between the RCC and NAMBLA “after conducting some research on the internet,” we see the flapping flag of irony country. Here lies the problem of satire within an educated society: pretty much everybody is smart enough to get it. That’s good, but it also takes some fun out of the conceit that someone, somewhere, is taking the irony seriously. It’s like a practical joke that everyone is in on; we all have to just look at the cup of pee and imagine how funny it would be if someone drank it. Lucky for us, Tony Perkins cannot resist free lemonade.

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Santorum says single mothers are “base” of Democratic Party

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 4 Comments

This picture of Rick Santorum comes courtesy of Raw Story. When all other indicators of journalistic neutrality are erased, photo selection will tell us what we need to know.

Speaking last week on something called Today’s Issues, Rick Santorum told Tony Perkins—yup—that single mothers are the base of the Democratic Party. “Look at the political base of the Democratic Party: it is single mothers who run a household,” Santorum said. “Why? Because it’s so tough economically that they look to the government for help, and therefore they’re going to vote. So if you want to reduce the Democratic advantage, what you want to do is build two parent families, you eliminate that desire for government.” First of all, please note that an earlier version of the Right Wing Watch article transcribed Santorum’s remark as “reduce the Democratic appendage,” which was incorrect. Second, if Rick Santorum isn’t careful, his opportunistic political calculations might coincide with human compassion. Video after the jump.

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Once Again with Tony Perkins

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 5 Comments

"Not even a little bit. Never. Not once. Why do you guys keep asking me this? Is it my lips? I know I have expressive lips."

Perhaps you’ve heard, but yesterday a district court judge issued an injunction that stops the enforcement of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, thus A) ending decades of homophobic discrimination in the US military and B) reminding everyone that Congress isn’t the only damn branch of government. Tony Perkins is pissed. The Family Research Council President and lifelong crusader against gay rights, who is definitely not a homosexual, said in a public statement that “once again, an activist federal judge is using the military to advance a liberal social agenda.” First of all, I hope this doesn’t interfere with Mr. Perkins’s research. Second—”once again,” Tony? Let’s look at previous instances of judges using the military to advance a social agenda.

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