Hitler discovers that Michael Jackson has passed away…
Hat tip to Andrew Bartlett… I needed a laugh. I pondered playing the late, great Wesley Willis‘ ‘Michael Jackson‘, but I think the Downfall spoof is in better taste.
Rough week. Got yelled at for being late (I wasn’t late) after a morning of profuse nose-bleeding a couple of days back. Or at least, a sluice of blood down my chest and leg when I got up.
Hooray for the weekend. Not that I’ll get much in the way of a break! Arrrgghhh!
~ Bruce
…or maybe I’m not getting these ‘Worst Person’ segments he does.
And the bronze goes to… Donor for NY atheist bus campaign. (0:33)
Maybe its his upper class status, his tolerant Unitarian upbringing, the colour of his skin, his heterosexuality or perhaps the combination of all of them, but I’m not sure that Keith is fully equipped to understand the finer nuances of being an outsider.
Atheist campaigns to get atheists out of the closet are about encouraging them, not outing them. Quite often the organisations running these campaigns will give support to atheists for some time before they, of their own choosing, decide to come out as atheist.
It’s not hypocritical, nor even remotely ironic, for someone to remain anonymous while being involved in the campaign. It’s perfectly normal. Encouraging people to come out isn’t the same as expecting them to.
People may want to come out, but may lose their job. Be shunned by relatives and so on. Is it so bad that someone who may or may not be a closet atheist for very practical reasons, would want to provide substantial material support to others that perhaps aren’t at quite the same risk?
Heck, they may not be able to aford their home if they came out and lost their job, much less bus ads!
But it gets sillier.
Of all of my religious friends who have bothered to consider if atheists are inherently immoral, or if they can be good, I believe precisely none have opined that atheists can’t be or aren’t good people. To the best of my knowledge, all have found the notion that atheists are necessarily amoral/immoral people who believe in nothing, to be mere bigoted dehumanizing.
The New York bus sign campaign says “You don’t have to believe in God to be a moral or ethical person”, not “There probably isn’t a God…” It’s not proselytising atheism per se, but proselytising the notion that atheists are human beings too.
It’s a statement that most, if not all of my religious friends, could get behind.
So putting the encouraging-isn’t-outing consideration to one side, how does Keith Olbermann know that the donor isn’t religious? To expect a theist to come out as an atheist is absurd, but it’s a notion that Olbermann flirts with if he knows it or not.
This is just another one of those ‘Worst Person’ awards of Olbermann’s that doesn’t appear to make much sense.
~ Bruce
Awoke from a spooky dream this morning.
Was watching Tip, the dog my late Poppa used to have back in the 1970s, jump into my Poppa’s brown station wagon to go hunting with him – which normally he didn’t get to go and do. Then Poppa drove off with him and I realised I was dreaming. My Poppa passed away in 1989.
I woke up – in my dream.
I walked out of the spare bedroom at my Nanna’s old place at Wangary, walked up to her and with my Poppa’s passing in mind, told her that I had a dream about he and Tip going hunting.
Nanna turned around, shrouded in shadows and said “Yes. I know. He said we’d all be seeing him soon.”
Then I woke up.
Spooky stuff. Don’t usually think of lines like that when I’m awake. Why not? Any clues?
~ Bruce
