Secular Snobs
Table of Contents:
I. Simple-Minded Christianity
The “complex, intellectual ideology” of secular liberalism is seen as a much more impressive worldview than the old-time “fundamentalist faith” that provides a false sense of security to the less educated American. For the media elite, religion is truly the “crutch of the ignorant” and the separation of church and state isn't intended to protect religion from being spoiled by the affairs of state. It's to separate the rational and the bizarrely irrational, and keep religion from having any influence on government.
“Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”
— Washington Post reporter Michael Weisskopf, February 1, 1993 front-page news story.
“She was a ninth-grade dropout thrust at random into the headlights of a divisive social movement -- but she was a powerful symbol. It’s no wonder, analysts say, she flipped over last week from the complex, intellectual ideology of the abortion rights movement to the security of a fundamentalist faith dedicated to ‘saving babies.’”
— Los Angeles Times staff writer Lynn Smith on Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe), August 15, 1995.
“The Rapture, and I quote, ‘is the immediate departure from this Earth of over four million people in less than a fifth of a second,’ unquote. This happily-volatilized mass of the saved were born again in Jesus Christ. Everybody left behind will basically go to Hell, but not before experiencing Armageddon, which is a really bad end of the world. If you find yourself in this situation, there isn’t much you can do except, one, starve yourself to death or, two, get your head cut off. This loving Christmas message coming as it did amid the jungle of the mall Santa and the twinkling manger at the corner of Canal and the Ramparts made it clear that the Rapture is indeed necessary. The evaporation of four million who believe this crap would leave the world an instantly better place.”
— NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, December 19, 1995 All Things Considered.
“Do I need to be concerned that I’m going to go live with a church family, are they going to proselytize me, are they going to say, ‘You better come to church with me or else, I’m, you know, you’re not going to get your breakfast this morning’?”
— Co-host Harry Smith asking author/pastor Rick Warren about church families taking in those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, on CBS’s Early Show, September 6, 2005.
Co-host Rosie O’Donnell: “As a result of the [9/11] attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people, we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries.”
Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck: “But do you understand that, that the belief funding those attacks, okay, that is widespread. And if you take radical Islam and if you want to talk about what’s going on there, you have to-”
O’Donnell, interrupting: “Wait just one second. Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam [loud applause] in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state. We’re a democracy.”
— Exchange on ABC’s The View, September 12, 2006.
“When doctors pronounced the Rev. Jerry Laymon Falwell, Sr. dead at 12:40 p.m. EST Tuesday....my first thoughts were not of what to say or write. In fact, my very first thought upon hearing of the Rev. Falwell’s passing was: Good. And I didn’t mean ‘good’ in a oh-good-he’s-gone-home-to-be-with-the-Lord kind of way. I meant ‘good’ as in ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead.’”
— Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani in her May 18, 2007 piece, “Sigh of relief over Falwell death.”
Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, talking about radical Muslims: “Somehow, the idea got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.”
Host Tavis Smiley: “But Christians do that every single day in this country.”
Ali: “Do they blow people up every day?”
Smiley: “Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine is — I could do this all day long.”
— PBS’s Tavis Smiley, May 25, 2010.
“We have, in many ways, been a victim of the Scriptures and theology that have been used to keep us as slaves. It’s been ingrained us (sic), and now we use it against gay people without thinking about things objectively.”
— Openly gay CNN anchor Don Lemon in a November 2011 online interview with the Windy City Times, a gay newspaper.
“‘First of all, I just have to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’ — and you know what I want to say: S.T.F.U. [shut the f*** up]. I’m tired of hearing Tim Tebow and all this Jesus talk....Tim Tebow, everybody wants to make him a hero. I think he’s a disgrace! I think he’s a disgrace! I think he’s an embarrassment!”
— Former CNN host Bill Press on the December 15, 2011 edition of his radio program.
