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Authors: Roy Blount Jr.
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Yankee doesn't like it, let him who is without sin cast the first…
Or, getting back to my first thought, how about “lest thou dash thy foot on a ham.” That's not bad. “Hath flung the Ham that puts the Stars…” Maybe. Maybe. But “a ham look on the ham's face”? Nope. Doesn't work.
But I'll say this. If we had stuck by watermelon
and
ham, and the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years.
As I write this, DeLay has gone on to another stage of his career, too caught up in indictments to serve America in a leadership capacity. My evil homonym, having lost a vote to succeed DeLay as majority leader, is still that thing that so evokes flogging.
The Rapture: Lighten Up
U p here in the Northeast I spend most of my time in the company of Canadians, Quakers, secular Jews, alumni of progressive schools, media people, forlorn supporters of John Kerry, and consumers of artisanal bread. Let me say, categorically, that I hold these people, and the bread, in high esteem. (We don't sit around using the word
artisanal.
It just crops up lately on high-end menus and food-store labels. It means, I take it, handmade by people whose hearts are really into bread, or at least were when they started out.) I agree with these people that much of what holds sway in America today is deplorable. “What I don't always share is their consternation.
Take the Rapture. I mean the belief, as an appalled Bill Moyers has put it succinctly, that “once Israel has occupied the rest of its ‘biblical lands,’ legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the Rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.”
I don't find this scenario very credible myself. If you were almighty, would you want to sit around with all those pious people—each of them wearing nothing but a Reverend Jerry Falwell expression—stretching way off to one side? I have never met anybody who
isn't
almighty who would. How long would it be before the charm wore off even for the right-hand sitters? I know I would be too fidgety. I'd rather live with tribulations. But, hey, different folks hold different truths to be self-evident. I know that much, just being from the South.
Sometimes I run into someone who has just heard for the first time about the Rapture—and that 33 percent of the American people, according to a poll, already know about it and, what's more, believe in it. This person expresses outrage, in a “How dare they?” (how dare they already know about something this person doesn't, for one thing) sort of tone.
“Well,” I say, “it probably would relieve the tedium, come eternity, tobe able to look down on people hopping around having even less fun. But I don't think you have to picture them picturing you, personally, covered with boils, sores, locusts, and frogs. They're picturing maybe Hillary Clinton. Who has dealt with worse. By that I mean, they're picturing their conception of Hillary Clinton, which is important to them. Their conception of you is important to them, too, more important no doubt than it should be, as yours of them may be to you. I don't think they would personally cover you with boils, sores, locusts, and frogs. Though they might think of you generically as the kind of person who, if
they
were covered with boils, sores, locusts, and frogs, would not lift a finger to flick off the first locust. And they might be right, there, because you—who think more along psychological than abominational lines-would regard any such boils, sores, locusts, and frogs as illusory, hence unflickable.
“Then, too,” I
Or, getting back to my first thought, how about “lest thou dash thy foot on a ham.” That's not bad. “Hath flung the Ham that puts the Stars…” Maybe. Maybe. But “a ham look on the ham's face”? Nope. Doesn't work.
But I'll say this. If we had stuck by watermelon
and
ham, and the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years.
As I write this, DeLay has gone on to another stage of his career, too caught up in indictments to serve America in a leadership capacity. My evil homonym, having lost a vote to succeed DeLay as majority leader, is still that thing that so evokes flogging.
The Rapture: Lighten Up
U p here in the Northeast I spend most of my time in the company of Canadians, Quakers, secular Jews, alumni of progressive schools, media people, forlorn supporters of John Kerry, and consumers of artisanal bread. Let me say, categorically, that I hold these people, and the bread, in high esteem. (We don't sit around using the word
artisanal.
It just crops up lately on high-end menus and food-store labels. It means, I take it, handmade by people whose hearts are really into bread, or at least were when they started out.) I agree with these people that much of what holds sway in America today is deplorable. “What I don't always share is their consternation.
Take the Rapture. I mean the belief, as an appalled Bill Moyers has put it succinctly, that “once Israel has occupied the rest of its ‘biblical lands,’ legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the Rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.”
I don't find this scenario very credible myself. If you were almighty, would you want to sit around with all those pious people—each of them wearing nothing but a Reverend Jerry Falwell expression—stretching way off to one side? I have never met anybody who
isn't
almighty who would. How long would it be before the charm wore off even for the right-hand sitters? I know I would be too fidgety. I'd rather live with tribulations. But, hey, different folks hold different truths to be self-evident. I know that much, just being from the South.
Sometimes I run into someone who has just heard for the first time about the Rapture—and that 33 percent of the American people, according to a poll, already know about it and, what's more, believe in it. This person expresses outrage, in a “How dare they?” (how dare they already know about something this person doesn't, for one thing) sort of tone.
“Well,” I say, “it probably would relieve the tedium, come eternity, tobe able to look down on people hopping around having even less fun. But I don't think you have to picture them picturing you, personally, covered with boils, sores, locusts, and frogs. They're picturing maybe Hillary Clinton. Who has dealt with worse. By that I mean, they're picturing their conception of Hillary Clinton, which is important to them. Their conception of you is important to them, too, more important no doubt than it should be, as yours of them may be to you. I don't think they would personally cover you with boils, sores, locusts, and frogs. Though they might think of you generically as the kind of person who, if
they
were covered with boils, sores, locusts, and frogs, would not lift a finger to flick off the first locust. And they might be right, there, because you—who think more along psychological than abominational lines-would regard any such boils, sores, locusts, and frogs as illusory, hence unflickable.
“Then, too,” I
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