Bill Donohue Can Write...Sort Of...

Bill Donohue, our perpetually livid friend from the Catholic League, has somehow managed to write a book. (I suppose that since Ray Comfort can apparently write a book a every couple of weeks, I shouldn't be surprised that Billy managed it as well.) To the astonishment of absolutely no one who's seen Bill's spittle-flecked tirades on various cable news shows, his new book is 272 pages of invective against secularism. Secular Sabotage is bound in human flesh and inked with human blood published by Faithwords, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group¹, and retails for something along the lines of $20 more than it's worth. I advise readers to mosey on over to the Amazon page linked above and use the Look Inside feature to have a gander at the first ten pages or so.

In addition to seeing wonderful image of the cover, featuring a striking black and white image of Bill looking like he just smelled a fart, curious readers will be treated to such delightful excerpts as this:

What we are faced with today is nihlism... [Bill goes on to wax poetic about how the Communist Revolutions in Russia and China were superior to modern secularism because they "at least had a game plan."]

Driving the nihlists is a tortured vision of sexuality that is so unhinged from reality as to be maddening...To reach their state of perpetual ecstasy, they need to take down Christianity and Catholicism: it is restraint that the secular purists find so objectionable. Make no mistake about it, what they desire is nothing less than full-blown genital liberation. They want it all -with whomever they want- and they want it now. Indeed, to deny them is to kill them.

Well, there you have it: Sexual perversion. That's the point of secular activism. Ideas like freedom of conscience, rationalism, and the explanatory power of science? Shills, the whole lot of them. Secular activists? We're all a bunch of slavering, oiled-up weirdos in assless chaps. Seriously, we are. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Chris Hitchens, PZ Myers, the Louisville Area Skeptics, the American Humanist Association, Americans United For Separation of Church and State, even your old pal Skippy...all we're after is the opportunity to bang kangaroos. Boy kangaroos.

If only the damn Pope wasn't guarding the zoo...

No wait, that's stupid.

Honestly, if I were going to write a book lampooning the rantings of hardcore Catholics, I'd probably make sure that I accused all of my ideological enemies of being genitally-liberated perverts by no later than page ten. Bill does it on page six. (If you're unsure as to why that's ironic, Google "Catholic Sex Abuse" and look at any of the 2,970,000 hits.) Shortly thereafter (on page seven) he hits his other two favorite talking points: The "War on Christmas" and how atheists are "afraid of the Muslims".² Say what you will about the guy, at least he doesn't waste time.

Bill Donohue has a made a career out of playing the indignant victim while simultaneously demanding that others scrape and bow before his inane beliefs. If the preview of his book in any indication (and I suspect it is), then it's nothing more than his stock Fox News rant wrapped in a dust jacket. I'll be keeping an eye out for this one at the library, but I don't know if reading Bill's bile-spewing will be nearly as enjoyable as actually watching him turn bright red while he raves on TV.

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1.) Hachette also owns the romance imprint Forever, publisher of such apparently theological works as To Desire a Devil, To Taste Temptation, and Sins of the Flesh.

2.) Nevermind, I suppose, that Sam Harris' book The End of Faith is specifically a discussion of the evils of fundamentalist Islam, or that Richard Dawkins' TV series Root of All Evil opened with a lengthy examination of fundie Muslim backwardness, or that the creation of freakin' Blasphemy Day was inspired by the insane overreaction of fundamentalist Islamists to the publication of handful of cartoons. Hell, nevermind that just last month New Humanist published a lengthy article kicking the intellectual ass of Muslim creatard Harun Yahya.

Bill Donohue's Mad...Again...

October is a pretty busy time for me what with all the...wait, what was that? I thought I heard some rustling over there in the bushes...there it is again! Hand me the flashlight and we'll find out what it is. Probably just the wind, or some kind of animal, or...

YIKES!!!

It's Bill Donohue, hiding in the shrubs and laying in wait so he can jump out and be offended.

Okay, so that was a (bad) attempt at humor, but I'm hardly exaggerating. Bill Donohue and his friends at the Angry Pansy Patrol Catholic League are hopping mad again, this time about something they saw on The Simpsons. Check out their press release. See, one of the stories on this year's "Treehouse of Horror" episode involved Bart being the only hope for humanity after a zombie plague, but only if people ate him to gain his immunity ffrom the zombie virus. So what? Well, it also included the line "What kind of civilized people eat the body and blood of their savior?” According to Billy, pointing out the grisly absurdity of Christianity's obsession with cannibalism/vampirism is "crossing the line" because it's "mocking the heart" of his religion.

All in all the "incident" has provoked a pretty stock response from Bill. Ranting and raving, followed by the e-mail address of some guy at FOX for the faithful to harass. (Though I note that Bill's e-mail address is nowhere to be found on the Catholic League site. Hmm...)

There's one thing I've never understood though. Bill claims to have a personal relationship with the Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, but somehow feels that this same all-powerful being needs a bunch of letter-writing ninnies to leap to its defense whenever a cartoon makes an off-color crack. Still, I suppose an angry e-mail campaign in preferable to going Old Testament on the rest of us.

It's Not Quite "King Kong vs. Godzilla"...

I saw over on Pharyngula today that my pal Ray Comfort and uber-Catholic venom machine Bill Donohue are currently locked in a brutal slap-fight about evolution. Since Ray is arguing for instantaneous special creation* and Bill is arguing for God-driven theistic evolution combined with the special ensoulment of humans, both of them are wrong, but it's still kind of an interesting match-up to watch.

I can see the resemblance, but it just isn't the same.

Actually, while I'm loathe those to type these words, I think Ray is actually right here. He's correct to note that the Bible is a purely creationist book, and that Donohue is trying to revise its meaning to fit in with findings of modern science and is therefore undermining the point of his own holy book. Unfortunately for Ray, stubbornly clinging to a literalist interpretation of the antiquated doctrines of of the ancient Hebrews doesn't make him any more correct about reality itself than Billy. It just makes him wrong in a slightly more philosophically honest way. Bill is trying to slyly modify his doctrines to fall in line with reality, all the while trying to pretend that his religion was correct all along. Ray, on the other hand, is content to fiercely insist that his religion is correct as-is without any need to dilly-dally with such buzzkillers as observable reality and the totality of geology, astronomy, biology, and genetics. Each one is still wrong, but Ray is closer to being correct about what his religion actually claims than Bill, while Bill is a baby step closer to being right about biological reality, despite having to be intellectually dishonest about what his own Holy Book says to arrive at that position.

Alas, I'm afraid that they're pretty unlikely to engage in a brutal death-struggle on top of Mt. Fuji before being plunged into the Pacific Ocean by a sudden earthquake.

*At least as far as I can tell. Ray usually doesn't pin himself down by taking positions that are more specific than "atheists/evolution/Catholicism/paintings of boobs are bad."

Not Even The Catholics Like Bill...

Even some Catholics are getting sick of Bill Donohue's perpetual outrage strategy.

Donohue, that is. A group called Catholics for Choice has released an fierce 26-page article decrying Bill Donohue and his Catholic League as little more than a reactionary attention machine dedicated to stamping out Donohue's own pet peeves through a bizarre combination of bullying people and claiming persecution. They further note that the Catholic League argues "for the right of conservative Catholics to impose their values in the public sphere, while arguing against the right of others in the public sphere to offer legitimate criticism of Catholics or Catholicism." Check out the full document here. The "key findings" listed on the second page are worth a look in and of themselves.

I can already see Donohue's reaction, though. Clearly these opposition Catholics have been infected by us evil secularists and are trying to destroy the church from within...

Another Hilarious Bill Donohue Tirade...

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I actually learned the word "apoplectic" in order to describe Catholic League President Bill Donohue in a previous post. On the other hand, it describes him so perfectly that it may as well have been invented for that sole purpose. Here's a new fire-breathing tirade from our pal Bill in which he works himself to a red-faced, saliva-spewing conniption fit about the American Humanist Association's "Be Good For Goodness' Sake" advertising campaign during a Fox News interview.

Aside from the usual Pol Pot and Hitler silliness, Bill also goes off on a short side rant about Jeffrey Dahmer, which is especially interesting because Dahmer was born into a devoutly religious family and was re-baptized while in prison for his spree of cannibalistic murders. (His father Lionel is still an outspoken creationist.) Bill then proceeds to tell the representative a representative of the AHA that atheists essentially need to sit down and shut up even as he simultaneously claims that freedom of speech and freedom conscience are Christian ideals and that atheists are only becoming outspoken in U.S. today because (foaming, ranting...?) Christians like himself deign to allow us to do so.

And, of course, it wouldn't be Bill Donohue if he didn't piss and moan that atheists don't complain about the Muslims enough. Really, Bill? Freakin' really?

Honestly, this guy is going to give himself a stroke on TV one of these days.