Ted Rall for November 10, 2010
Transcript:
Christianity is nothing more than the world's biggest book club. Obsessed with a single title. (Woman: Genesis 22 and judges II say human sacrifice is ok.) (Woman 2: Cool. I'm so sacrificing my boss!) The world is falling apart. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of geeks pore over every word in a poorly edited anthology of hack writers. (Woman 3: No you're not. The new testament contradicts and trumps the old mean vengeful God thing.) If we really must tease out every detail one book... (Woman: It's one book. There is no contradiction! Anyway, Jesus never says not to do human sacrifice.) ...how about non-fiction? (Man: For the next week: Steve Coll's "ghost wars" or the new franzen?) (Man 2: I'd rather base all my beliefs on Grisham.) (Or at least good fiction?)
dtroutma: “There must be a power greater than ‘Man’…”
Why “must” there be?
“…but formless and certainly not Don Knotts, Steve Reeves, Charleton Heston, or Peewee Herman.”
Since you mentioned Chuck Heston, I’ll say that, for me, his definitive role (and I’m not being sarcastic) wasn’t Moses but Col. George Taylor (“Bright Eyes”) in “The Planet of the Apes.” At the beginning of the movie, he says “I can’t help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than Man. Has to be…” and “Tell me, though. Does Man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor’s children starving?”
(Taylor has intelligence and charm, but they’re coupled with arrogance and misanthropy. Also, when he straps on that rifle near the end of the movie, he seems somehow completed. It’s a marvelous combination of actor and role, and I can’t imagine the movie working as well with anyone else.)
We are the best of beings, we are the worst of beings. Always have been. And we’re all we’ve got. Whether we end up with Heaven on Earth or Hell on Earth is up to us, either way. I’m an optimist in that I believe in the potential for human perfectablility (or at least improvement). I’m a pessimist in that I also believe in the necessity of it.