What if you had a “best blog contest” and Hitler won? Neo-Nazis will have to stick to wishful thinking and settle for second best: hate-spewing anti-Muslim blog Little Green Footballs wonWashington Post’s reader poll for “best international blog” with bon mots about Palestinians and other Muslims such as “I’ve been fond of transfer of these subhuman[s] for a while. Perhaps something more like targeted genocide… will become necessary” and “How can these vermin have a country? How can these vermin be allowed to live?” It’s a truism by now that liberals sling around Hitler accusations too loosely, but LGF quacks like a Nazi duck. Its win in the poll proves only that there was a campaign on its behalf, as there surely was for the all the “liberal” blogs to the left of Goebbels. But the fact is that LGF is one of the most popular blogs on the web, one of the most popular conservative blogs, and stands unrepudiated by most other conservative bloggers. This is a big religion story, and it’s a big political story, but it goes mostly unreported on the grounds that it’s best to ignore raving wingnuts. That’s fine — until the wingnuts have gathered so many supporters that respectable conservatives are afraid to stand up to them.
Hundreds of former Khmer Rouge fighters involved in the massacres that led to the Killing Fields have been baptized this year and now consider themselves evangelical Christians. In the four years between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge attempted to eradicate religion by destroying cathedrals, Buddhist temples and killing Muslim clergy, but now, after visits from U.S. missionaries, 70% of the converts in some areas are former Khmer Rouge, including the party’s premier radio propagandist, Kun Lung. Lung now runs two daily radio programs describing God’s work.
A British naval officer has just become the first registered Satanist in England’s military. The recognition gives him the right to perform satanic rituals on board, and entitles him to have his funeral carried out by the Church of Satan should he be killed in action.
Yesterday Kerry made perhaps “the most overtly religious speech of the campaign by either candidate,” in calling for a government that fulfills its moral and social obligations to “the least” of American people. “‘The Bible tells us that in others we encounter the face of the God,'” Kerry said, and ended by asking voters to pray for both candidates. The prayer, report Jim VandeHeiand Mike Allen of The Washington Post, was interrupted by rally-participants chanting “‘No More Bush.'”
As a finale to Black History Month, New Nation has published a list of the 100 greatest black icons ever. Jesus tops the list, followed by Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali.
380 tons of explosives — one pound of which is enough to destroy a 747 — have gone “missing” from a known bomb-making factory left unguarded by U.S. forces. Department of Defense explains that bad guys “stored weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other locations.” Right. Such as bomb-making factories. NYT and “60 Minutes” will get kudos for this important scoop, but we’re just as pissed at the press as we are at our secretary of “defense,” whose title must be from now on written at all times with “irony quotes.” Maybe it’s because we just watched the second season of “24,” which includes both a terrorist nuclear bomb and a mosque-stomping scene, but we’re thinking: Couldn’t someone have interrupted the very important mosque-and-school searches to say, “Hey — who’s keeping an eye on thebomb-making factory?” We’re media critics here at The Revealer — frightened media critics — so we’ll focus on what we wish journalists had done a little earlier: Demand to know where the bombs are. Then you can write the stories about how the call to prayer sounds so, like, medieval.
A small, fascinating story of how a holy war in the Balkans led to The Cleveland Plain-Dealerendorsing Bush.