Is it my imagination or is there an awful lot of doom and gloom in the air. Maybe it's the cold wind blowing in from the West but more likely still it's the massive amount of bad news and the growing mess of geo-political quagmires that are intermeshing and coagulating like some sort of malignant clot. Tensions throughout the Mideast are as high as ever if not higher so what better time then for Pope Benedict to embark upon his so called "voyage of reconcilliation" to Turkey in an effort to bridge the ever widening gulf between two of the world's great religions. (Yes, that gulf, the one that was pried open even wider when Benedict gave a speech dissing the prophet Mohammed only a few weeks ago.)
The Muslims contend that the Pope never truly apologized but everyone knows that he's infallible...they'd better not be holding their collective breath.
What we're left with is the Pontiff tooling around Istanbul in a heavily armoured limo because the popemobile couldn't provide enough protection from the potentially hostile throngs. It's a beautiful stroke of irony that the popemobile only exists today because a crazed Turk tried to kill a former Pope who was riding through a crowd in an open car. This, as Oprah would say, is a "full circle moment". (sorry for quoting Oprah...I never said I was infallible.)
Another bit of irony involves the whole infallibility nonsense which is proving, at least in this instance, to be a papal straight jacket. The Pope messed up and insulted a whole group of people as have Mel Gibson and Kramer(who isn't Jewish BTW but who's newly hired publicist is). The latter two have no such lofty constraints and have been kissing ass and apologizing left and right but Benedict can only go so far as to say that he's sorry if people were offended by the truths which he spoke. I and other card carrying members of the Global Zionist Conspiracy can only sit on the sidelines and rub our hands with glee as the Christians and Muslims duke it out....soon my brothers....soon......
Oh yeah one more thing...Iraq. President Bush is meeting with the Iraqi president this week in what I believe will be the first act in a gracefully executed exit strategy. The spin doctors will be out in force ("we overthrew a heinous dictator and bought democracy to the people of Iraq, just listen to Ahmed here": 'At least I got to vote for the people who slaughtered my family!' ) trying to explain how and why the US pushed Iraq into a bloody civil war and then left but that's where this is heading. What's worse is that Iraq may end up becoming a radical Islamic theocracy and anti-western partner to Iran. If I was a Kurd I'd be buying my plane ticket yesterday....or is that a Sunni....this is getting too confusing, I'm out of my league here. I guess it's back to the safe haven of poop jokes and not a moment too soon.
5 comments:
Ed. Note: That's mel gibson and kramer as the devil and/or angel figures perched on the Pope's shoulders.
I had a dream the other night, which might make a good political cartoon, if I had any drawing skills.
A very ugly Colossus is beheaded by an adolescent G. Bush. As the head with the face of Saddam Hussein cracks open on the ground revealing a small faceless man inside, trying to hold it together, the still standing body bursts open releasing the seething riot of bloodthirsty zealots inside, which begin hacking at everything with scimitars, including the legs of both the still standing corpse & G. Bush as he just looks proudly back at his disgusted CO, the statue of liberty.
I'm no fan of the pope or the RC church but I do know a fair bit about it- the infallibility bit, mad though it is, only applies to certain matters of faith, and only under certain conditions- it doesn't apply to the pope's behaviour or everything he says.
Also, he didn't 'diss the Mohammed' he merely quoted from someone many centuries earlier, in a speech that was calling for peace and highlighting how religion can be used as a weapon.
Sorry- I do like the idea of your blog, but if the underlying facts are wrong, then the humour is wasted....
A most interesting Dream JB, thanks for sharing. A couple of years back I too had some very troubling (and embarassing) dreams about an adolescent George Bush but a few months of therapy put things right.
Thanks Helena....you've probably realized by now that facts are often given short shrift here at The Blob (if any shrift at all). While I'd love to give them long or even moderate shrift the truth of the matter is that perception is what counts most. Sure the Pope wasn't REALLY dissing Islam and their prophet but what difference did that make to the thousands of protesters and indignant imams, mullahs, and ayatollahs? (hint...the answer starts with the letter N)
The humor in these situations comes from the knee jerk indignation on the one hand and the hyper-sensitivity (the other metaphorical hand)that makes people go out of there way to praise Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance whenever somebody blows up stuff in it's holy name. C'mon...this is my A material!!
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