Various things

[rozk]

In a week which had the man-killing honey badgers of Basra story, you wouldn't expect it to get trumped by this Meanbastard new species of chimpanzee discovered. 2.5 meter sticks for fishing with - that's a spear...And the idea that the predators leave their ground nests alone because the predators have reason to fear them - chimps seen eating a leopard which they may have killed - that's quite scary.

They are in the middle of the Congolese Civil War, of course, so they may get wiped out next week. On the other hand, maybe the rival factions will decide that these are the great apes you don't mess with....

******

Pope Benedict's announcement that no other Christian churches save the Orthodox are actually churches at all in his eyes, and that the Orthodox church's status is 'badly deformed', is pretty much what you'd expect. One of the prime characteristics of Ratzinger is that he is a bully, and all the more one because it is not directly about his own ego so much as the institutional ego into which he has transferred his own.

Anyone, believing or secular, who thinks that there is any point arguing or negotiating with this man, is now demonstrably wrong - he only recognizes surrender as a valid response to his own utter righteousness.

*******

Someone somewhere is going to respond to the news that John Barrowman was considered for the role of Lee Adama with a list of the other shows in which he might have been cast. The alternate world which got Barrowman's Lee is one which inevitably would have a BSG with a sense of humour and with boyslashiness.

Imagine though Season 4 of Buffy with Barrowman as Riley, or Alias with Barrowman as Sark. Imagine Grey's Anatomy with Barrowman as Mark Sloane, or Farscape with Barrowman as Crais or Smallville with him as Pa Kent. Imagine all the knowing undercutting glances and sardonic smiles and big floppy-haired tart knowingness.

Someone really ought to write all of these and others, but it ain't going to be me. Questions?
Comments?

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

And of course, Barrowman as Will in Will and Grace, the part he was rejected for because the producers deemed him too straight...

[hilleviw.livejournal.com]

"Anyone...who thinks that there is any point arguing or negotiating with this man, is now demonstrably wrong - he only recognizes surrender as a valid response to his own utter righteousness."

Ah. Do you realize how well this also describes GWB?

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed. And also Blair - I wonder what the conversations between Blair and Benedict are like.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

All right, throw all three to the chimps...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Throw the Pope to the chimps and let God sort them out...

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

I thought Benedict's reiteration of that dogma was a hoot. It's a shot across the bow of that non-trivial segment of evangelical Protestants who go on about Catholicism being "idolaters".

On Non-EGO EGO Trips

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

One of the prime characteristics of Ratzinger is that he is a bully, and all the more one because it is not directly about his own ego so much as the institutional ego into which he has transferred his own.


He's not that rare in the RC Church just a shit-load more powerful. Someone should write a book about Institutional Egotism. RA Wilson could do it ;No he's dead

Re: On actually very ego Non-EGO EGO Trips

[(Anonymous)]

Roz,

Hang on a minute here -- I think your statement needs a little deconstructing. Benedict (in the context of my remarks the necessary reference) is the Pope. Therefore, especially given that he seems to actually believe in that nonsense about Papal infallibility, he is talking about himself. As Cardinal Ratzinger there may have been some point in the distinction. Now he is Pope Benedict, it is his personal as well as institutional vanity which is impinged by any restriction on papal authority -- and it is very noticeable that much of what he says concentrates on the issue of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. Amazing really, nearly five centuries after Luther's defiance and he still has not got the point,

Graham

Re: On actually very ego Non-EGO EGO Trips

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Also, of course, because he rejects modern philosophical thought, he cannot work his way out of this system by reflecting that, after all, he needs to be sceptical of something which so totally reinforces his own position. If you are infallible, then you are infallible about your own infallibility - unless you reflect that this is too convenient to be reliably true. Of course, he could get there through the Gospels and reflect that he is more likely, in the circumstances, to be the Pharisee of the parable than he is to be the Publican. One of the paradoxes of the papacy is that it is, almost by definition, a temptation to gross spiritual pride, one of the worst of sins.