Mailvox: snapping at the heels

AP loses her bet:

Your sarcastic wit is truly precious. You have quite the knack for pointing out all the problems we dimwitted conservatives have, but rarely do you ever tell us just what the hell it is exactly YOU personally believe?? What political & spiritual articles of faith do you subscribe to? I bet they are fluid. I would also be willing to wager that you are secretly enamored with the Left and that the Right, Christians in particular, embarrass you.

Yes, I’m a massive fan of expanding entitlement programs, a Wilsonian foreign policy and increasing the power of central government. Oh, wait, that’s our “conservative” president! There are Christians who embarrass me; they do so because I am one of them. I am only enamored of the many occasions for amusement which the Left regularly provides me. Apparently, AP has concluded that the CHRISTIAN LIBERTARIAN bit in my column bio and at the top of this blog is some sort of secret Gramscian code giving out props to my Che-shirt wearing peeps. Word ’em up, boyeez. Red West!

SS has read the Beatitudes:

Don’t forget to add a healthy dose of condescending sarcasm to your arguments. It creates in your opponents a healthy respect and fear for whatever ‘intellectual status’ plateau you’ve elevated yourself to in your internal life. I’m pretty sure this was the very tactic Jesus used in his sermon on the mount to quell the cries of the unwashed rabble gathered at his feet. Or was it enumerated in the body of the beatitudes? I always forget… It must be in there somewhere though. I read a lot of ‘Christian’ writers that seem to use it every chance they get. Apparently that whole ‘love your enemies’ thing was just for the marks.

Why do people think that the only thing Jesus ever said was “love your enemies”. Anyhow, while I may occasionally be mildly sarcastic and perhaps just a tad condescending, that is not exactly tantamount to hatred. Consider, for example, a missive addressed recently to two of my good friends:

Will anyone win? In this week’s battle of the cellar dwellars, much speculation centers around the unlikelihood that either the fraudulent Ferrets or the collapsing Cocktails will be able to win. Scientists at the CERN research center in Geneva, Switzerland, have demanded that the game be called off, expressing their opinion that the contest bears disturbing logical similarities to the destructive collision of matter and anti-matter.

“Zee entire globe could be evaporated!” worried Dr. Jean-Pierre Francois, CERN’s resident expert on exogravitational logistics. “Surely zee Amis, zey cannot permit zis game to play!”

When reached for comment, the league commissioner stated that he wasn’t concerned about what a bunch of frightened frogs thought. After being informed Dr. Francois is actually Swiss, the commissioner added: “If his name is Jean-Poof and he speaks frog, then he’s a damned frog, all right? Now, tell him to go surrender to someone; here in The Most Prestigious League In Sports(tm), we’ve got a scoreless ballgame to play!”

Anyhow, I suppose it is possible that “whitewashed tomb” and “son of vipers” is synonymous with “beloved brother” and “dear friend” in the original Hebrew, but color me skeptical.