With all the cone of silence talk, I thought it would be worthwhile to do a little research on Rick Warren's background. Sure, we all know he wrote a best-selling book that some woman used to get through a terribly frightening ordeal. Yeah, we all know he's a bit on the portly side. Of course, we all know he created one of the biggest, most slickly marketed mega churches ever conceived; one that, if like our local mega church, has professional security (you don't find that much in liberal churches). But do we really know Rick Warren for the douche bag that he is?
On Saturday, Pastor Rick Warren hosts John McCain and Barack Obama for two hours of conversation at the Saddleback Church in California. Warren, one of the friendliest fellows I've ever met (and someone who is helping me design what we've taken to calling a "megagogue," which is to say, an enormous synagogue, including a bowling alley), spoke to me earlier this week about what he hopes to accomplish at his candidate forum.
I don't care what religion you are, if you want to turn it into the midway at your local fair, call Rick Warren. I hear his church offers three chances to dunk a sinner for a buck! Even better, the dunking machines double as pools for baptisms. He'll fill your temple with people who know how to spend money and have a good time.
A fucking bowling alley?
We also spoke about the challenge of evil on the international stage: He argued that the Iraq invasion was justified by Saddam Hussein's behavior, and he believes that America has a moral duty to intervene in cases of genocide.
He argues, quite eloquently I assume, that it's okay to kill a bunch of people to save them from a tyrant who would otherwise have killed them and to torture the others who would've been tortured by the tyrant. I tend to agree we have a moral duty to intervene in cases of genocide, but I don't want to commit genocide while doing it.
Now onto selected snippets of this interview...
Jeffrey Goldberg: What do you hope to get out of your summit meeting?
Rick Warren: The idea is really around civility. Can we disagree without being disagreeable? As the great theologian Rodney King said, "Can we all just get along?" That's the notion.
JG: So you're against blogging?
What the hopping fuck just flew in from left field? It apparently didn't phase Rick Warren.
RW: Right now civility is a losing battle. It's easy to demonize from a distance. When people sit behind a screen they lose all civility. The anonymity makes people more ad hominem. One of my three life goals is to help restore civility to civilization. I just think the Internet has made us ruder.
What a flat out prick. What a fat piece of gluttonous shit this fuckhead is. He is a bag full of pig testicles.
Did you see what he did? He just demonized people "sitting behind a screen" or "bloggers." He built a straw man to attack the ad hominem. What a turd!
Skipping along (he did actually talk about Darfur, to his pudgy credit, but then...):
JG: Some people argue that we're not so great ourselves.
RW: The difference is that there are no death squads in America. The worst you can get here is that you can get blogged, you can get Lewinskied, on the Internet. There is a difference between that and living under oppression, living with fear for your life. That's why whether or not they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is beside the point. Saddam and his sons were raping the country, literally. And we morally had to do something. If you have a Judeo-Christian heritage, you have to believe it when God says that evil cannot be compromised with. It has to be resisted, it has to be overcome.
There is why I say this guy is a fuckiot. He claims that the worst that can happen to you is that you get "Lewinskied" on the Internet? Does he thump the Bible with his head?
There is no possible way to get a Lewinski on the Internet without closing your junk in the CD drawer and that hurts! Actually, it hurts bad, so he may have a point that this is the worst thing that can happen to you. But how can he say getting blogged is the worst that can happen to you?
You can get a disease with no health care. You can be arrested with no lawyer (maybe an overworked PD at best). You can be put on the terror watch list. Your government can listen to your conversations. You can get tased. You can get harrassed and beaten by cops. You can be a church member who gets shot at for being at a liberal church.
But to Rick Warren, getting blogged is the worst thing that can happen in this country? That's second on his list right after death squads?
What a jackass.
hink
Update: Rick Warren is a doodie head, too!