Ho Ho Ho
Hey, I’m a pretty laid-back guy, right? Other than everything I’ve ever written on this site, everything I’ve ever written for several other web sites, everything I’ve ever written for a print publication, and about two thirds of what comes out of my mouth when I’m speaking, I’m scarcely ever critical of others. In particular, I tend to give a pass to soggy leftists complaining that Christmas is offensive; that’s more of a mating cry than an actual argument, and I’ve always sort of considered it to be beneath refutation. I reserve the right, however, to alter or abolish that policy when the sog in question is especially clueless about theology while, at the same time, being of the cloth. So it is that I turn my baleful gaze to the Rt. Rev. Ruth Everhart, who is of a mind that the Blessed Virgin Mary is offensive to sluts.
Church culture tends to be fixated on sexual purity year-round, but during Advent, I’m tempted to blame it on the Virgin Mary. After all, she set an impossibly high bar. Now the rest of us are stuck trying to be both a virgin and a mother at the same time. It does not seem to matter that this is biologically impossible. Can you at least try?
No, you cannot. We’re done here, right?
I realize that Last Week in Weird is not the appropriate venue for deep theological discussion, but it should probably be noted that the gospel unequivocally does not say that women should attempt to emulate Mary by remaining chaste and also having children. Of course that’s impossible; that’s what makes it a miracle, right? That’s the whole point! It’s not something that can be done. So, no, you can’t be the BVM any more than I can be Jesus. Or maybe those of us who can’t walk on water should be offended too, since the Bible is anti-trans-ablist or whatever compound bafflegab we’re supposed to think.
Still, I study her this time of the year — always dressed in blue with downcast eyes — and want to ask: "How was it really? And how do you feel about what the patriarchy has done with you?"
I’m convinced of this: Mary is not responsible for what we’ve done to her story.
Of course not. She’s a woman, which means she can’t be at fault! It’s the patriarchy!
The patriarchy, as any fule kno, does not exist and never has, traits it shares with vampires, werewolves, Gus Grissom, and the bogeyman. Yet, also in common with the above, it nonetheless occupies far too much real estate in the minds of the suggestible, and also gets tons of government money and make-work science projects devoted to it. Here’s a little gedankenexperiment to occupy you, though: if this dread "patriarchy" were real, and if it really did control the minds of women, do you really think it would encourage them not to engage in casual sex? Have you met very many men?
I could say more about living in a female body, but it might be helpful if you just checked in with your own body right now. Is your body feeling quiet and clean and pure at the moment? Or is it hungry or noisy or smelly? Does it have needs?
I think it’s best if we check in with something other than this crazy gibberish now. Bye bye.
Who would know?
President Obama will be leaving office in one short month, which means he needs to cram as many obvious, absurd falsehoods into his few remaining public statements as he can, before he cedes the responsibility to Donald Trump. He’s delivered a wonderful Christmas present to those of us who write snotty news columns in his most recent address, when, after claiming that Obamacare has magically created fifteen million jobs — your humble narrator assumes that the reason nobody’s heard about that before is because of the obvious pro-Trump bias in the news media — he explained that he personally completely saved the whole world from Russian hackers. No, that’s true.
At the beginning of the summer, were alerted to the possibility that the DNC has been hacked. And I made (ph) an order, law enforcement, as well as our intelligence teams to find out everything about it, investigate it thoroughly to brief the potential victims of this hacking, to brief on a bipartisan basis the leaders of both the House and the Senate and the relevant intelligence committees.
And once we had clarity and certainty around what in fact had happened, we publicly announced that in fact Russia had hacked into the DNC… And so in early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that did not happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out, there were going to be some serious consequences if he did not.
And in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process.
Well, thank God for president Obama! He personally told that dastardly Putin to "cut it out," and that was the end of that. That’s why there positively was no Russian hacking after early September. I mean, sure, it would have been nice if he told the rest of the administration about this — it would have saved them all this trouble they’re currently going through trying to find evil Russian hackers who hacked the election continuously all the way up through 8 November.
Donna Brazile, who is calling for a bipartisan inquiry into the alleged hack, told ABC News that donors and other individuals associated with the campaign were personally harassed and the committee’s computer systems were hacked every day on an "hourly" basis.
"No, they did not stop [in September]," she said.
The disgraced former CNN contributor was rather less specific on the subject of how the evil Russians hacked her into leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign.
The president also should have warned the perpetually-clueless Lindsey Graham, who has decided he wants to be a part of the hack train, and has claimed that Russians stole his e-mails too and then just, like, didn’t do anything with them.
To and fro
The most transparent administration in history is at it again, friends! This time, president Obama has decided that it’s important for every American to have access to the 6700-page senate torture report. Now, I’m sure that, as we all know, this document conclusively proves that no torture was ever done by the United States, and all that torture we’ve heard about was done by Russian hackers. It’s 6700 pages long, sure, but that’s just because they used a really big font. So this is really no big deal, but we should probably have access to it anyway just for the sake of form. The president understands this, and he’ll make sure we get it — just not right now.
Under the act, the Senate torture report will be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act for a full 12 years. But expiration of the provision afterward does not mean that disclosure will necessarily follow.
"CIA or other agencies may contend that all or some of the classified information in the report is still classified 12 years from now," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence policy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. After 12 years, a declassification review of the torture report can proceed, "but the review may conclude that the information in it should remain classified", Aftergood noted.
Change we can believe in! I suppose the chances that the CIA will contend that a 6700-page document ferociously critical of the CIA should be kept classified are really pretty low, so this is totally fine. After all, it’s not like the CIA has already destroyed as many copies of the report as it could get its hands on.
Click click click
St. Nicolás Maduro is still at it, friends. Last time we heard from him, he was giving the children of Venezuela low-cost toys he sent the army to seize from toy manufacturers. This time, he’s giving all Venezuelans the gift of spiritual purity by freeing them from the terrible burden of money.
With only nine days to go before Christmas, Venezuelans grappling with a collapsing economy and soaring inflation are left without money after President Nicolás Maduro in a sudden move this week banned the 100-bolivar note, the country’s largest denomination. Only the Central Bank now accepts the remaining bills — and only until Tuesday…
Troops turned away nearly 1,500 people who had lined up starting Thursday night to turn in their useless bills, prompting angry mobs to block traffic and riot. Dozens were arrested.
Mr. Maduro gave his countrymen only days to turn in the 100-bolivar notes, which are worth only a few U.S. cents. Until this week, it was the nation’s most widely used bank note.
Let’s get that Bernie Sanders guy back in here to explain the glories of democratic socialism again, because sometimes I lose track. Just so we’re all clear on exactly what’s happened here, the government of Venezuela has forbidden the use of 100-bolivar notes and promised to replace them if citizens bring them in to the central bank, as long as they do so within a few days, which I’m sure is convenient for everybody. When citizens try to do this, they get attacked by the army and locked in cages. Am I missing anything?
New 500-bolivar bills that Mr. Maduro had said would circulate this week have yet to be distributed, causing panic, because more than a third of Venezuela’s 30 million people lack a bank account.
Ah. The new bills they’re rolling out to replace the old ones don’t exist anyhow. Aces. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starting to think maybe the government shouldn’t be in charge of the money after all.