Count me in the “Reagan was terrible at virtually everything, either caused or worsened every major problem facing America today, and had nothing to his credit except for his ability to make Americans feel their country was great and noble regardless of what it actually did” camp.
Kinda native. I grew up speaking it, but I learned a bit of Quebec French from my father first. It was kinda funny because my first words were apparently very foul curses, and as a result my father started to slowly stop speaking Quebec French over the next three years. My mind still sometimes think in fragments of French though, so my English gets jumbled sometimes as a result.
Uh, isn’t that one tabernacle, though? So it’s a religious swear? I think Joyce might be concerned even though they don’t really use tabernacles outside of Catholicism last I checked.
Learned that there are Quebecois curses reading / listening to Louise Penny’s Gamache mysteries. Best to listen so you get the pronunciation right. Love the idea of curses that specific to place, as if Michiganers used different curses than the rest of the country.
Well, there’s the way Yiddish curses seeped into English in New York but only a few of them made it into general American English.
But a lot of them are fading out. Schmuck’s pretty well entrenched, and maybe putz too, but when was the last time you heard somebody get called a mamzer?
I think Rukduk means he presided over the *fastest* point of the decline (which, since we’re talking about the second derivative, is generally called an inflection point rather than a peak)
Trump is the inevitable result of decades of hate-fueled rhetoric, starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy and really kicking into high gear after 9/11.
It took a turbo boost after 2008, as well. As for the era of hyper-partisanship that helped make the vitriol grow worse at a faster pace, there’s a strong case to be made that lays the blame at Newt Gingrich’s feet.
Which inflection point do you want to look at?
There’s Nixon’s Southern Strategy.
There’s Reagan’s “nine most terrifying words”.
There’s Gingrich’s Contract on with America.
There’s the whole GOP reaction to electing a black president.
Probably others I’m forgetting.
Each built on the previous foundation and increased the vitriol even faster.
It all traces back to the realignment after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and “lost the South for a generation”, with the switch of Dixiecrats to the GOP.
Teller? (Whenever anyone mentions a scientist promoting the use of nuclear bombs for things you wouldn’t normally (or rationally) use them for, I assume Teller.)
What’s hilarious is that Reagan actually raised taxes, expanded government and couldn’t get elected dog catcher in the modern GOP, yet he’s still the patron saint of the party. It’s also hard to describe to people who didn’t grow up in it what living in the Cold War was like. I was in high school during the second Reagan term and had basically made peace with the idea that I, and everyone I loved would probably die in a nuclear fireball. Whatever else he was, he was one Hell of a public speaker. He’d come on the t.v. with that stern but kindly voice and basically tell us everything was going to be okay and we believed him. It took the end of the Cold War and the end of the threat of nuclear annihilation for a lot of us to grow up and take a second look at him and analyze who he really was.
Growing up in Germany in that time, we knew we’d be the first to go.
.
Some of the more rural areas in the US might have a chance to have survivors though we weren’t sure if they’d be thankful for doing so.
Some of the scariest moment in my life were shortly after he bombed Lybia when some fighter planes practicing bombing a river crossing near our house came in a 50m not the usual 200. (I tended to hate bright skies at the time because of those flyovers).
Say, can there be a connection between rising fundamentalism and apocalyptic beliefs and the fact that is much less likely the US and Russia will blow up the whole world than it was 30 years ago?
Like people somehow need an apocalyptic option?
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
For what its worth, I think Reagan is like 1000 times better than anything the GOP has to offer today. That’s more to do with my general feeling that the quality of the Republican Party has been plummeting in recent years and shows no signs of hitting a bottom any time soon. I’ve no great love or hate for Reagan himself, but I suspect I’d like him better than if all the 20 plus yahoos who’ve been grappling for the presidential nominations did the fusion dance and turned into one uber canidate. Still vote for Hillary, mind you. But I could happily tolerate Reagan, which is light years beyond what I can say for anything GOP related these days.
Future comics may prove me wrong, but I don’t think Roz is loving this. She’s trying to engage with Mary on reasonable terms, and it’s clearly a painful process.
But to form counterarguments would be acknowledging that her idol had flaws that needed explaining, and Mary doesn’t accept the idea that anybody she’d like would have flaws. And so as often happens when cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head, the preferred option is to just pretend the problem isn’t there.
No she needs to keep pushing so we can see the heavy artillery. She didn’t learn after messing with Carla, she won’t learn from Roz, and one day she will confront Mike and it will be the climax of the strip and then Willis will die of old age before the thread finished.
I would hold off on Mike. Mike’s an ass to everyone– he’ll change himself simply in order to discomfit you. If you were vegan, he’d eat a rare steak in front of you, if you were comfortable being a carnivore, he’d pile on about innocent animals, etc. There’s no core there, just “so long as I can get you to feel bad”.
Mary doesn’t deserve the out of ‘he’d say something mean, no matter what”.
She probably is, but there’s a weird sort of canonization that occurs on the right for Reagan despite or perhaps because of the many many awful qualities of his administration.
Well, most of the things I think were awful about the Reagan adminstration, they think were great, but the things they should think were awful seem to have vanished from memory in favor of the purity of the patron saint of the modern American party.
The real Reagan would never be able to compete with the imaginary one 25+ years of distance has created.
Conservatives in general like to disown George W. Bush. Otherwise, they like to pretend that they never supported him or, better yet, that his Presidency just never happened. There was 8 years of… something… then Obama ruined the economy and did a bank bailout.
Okay, that’s mind-boggling. I’ve heard the claim that it was Clinton’s fault, of course, usually with the accusation that he was getting Lewinskied when he should have been personally leading Seal Team 6 in the deserts of Afghanistan or somesuch. But this makes it sound like Obama took a side-trip in his time-machine (after going back to put the ad in the Hawaiian newspaper that announced his birth at a hospital in Hawaii) to personally make certain the Towers went down.
Did they confuse Obama with Clinton? Because if they really wanted to blame a democrat it would make more sense to blame the guy who was in office a few months before the event than the guy who wasn’t in office until eight years later…
If someone who was old enough to remember 2001/9/11 made that claim to me, I’d probably reply something like, “Thank you for invalidating any argument you have ever made and will ever make.” And then remind them of it any time they attempted to argue anything. Admittedly, I could see them eventually working their way out of it, but not without a pretty serious attitude change. (Of course I’d point out the flaw if they really needed it pointed out, but…)
Everything was Clinton’s fault, until sometime in late 2008 when everything became Obama’s fault. Bush was trying to clean up Clinton’s mess, but then the markets realized Obama was likely to win and collapsed.
In fairness, Democrats have blamed a lot of our troubles in the last 8 years on Bush – with I think more justification.
Both Democrats and Republicans are equally awful, just in different ways. It’s all political theater, and they’re simply WWE “Wrestlers” who fight on screen and go out drinking together offscreen. There is so little actual difference between the two major parties that it boils down to “Team Red” vs “Team Blue.” It’s just tribalism, and the biggest scam currently being run.
Ahh, the smell of false equivalence in the morning….
I’ve got a lot of problems with Democrats, basically because I’m far enough to the left that the differences do sometimes blur, but that idea’s ridiculous. Common, but still ridiculous.
How does it even make sense for them to be “equally awful, just in different ways”, but still have “so little actual difference”? Aren’t those different awfulnesses actual differences? Don’t they affect real people’s lives?
Yeah ever since the time I heard Democrats were trying to solve one of the latest budget crises (back in, I dunno, 2011-2012 or so?) by QUOTING REAGAN BACK AT THE GOP and that coming in as the voice of reason I’ve just been like “woooow you guys are losing your grip.”
Cant say I agree that anime style started with Walt Disney decades ago. The cells may have been drawn overseas, but there was no anime in the early movies ie: Bambi/Snow White/and I don’t really see anime in the newer ones either. Nemo?
Nah, Mickey-era, more. Remember that modern anime styles started during and just after WWII. A giant part of anime style is descended from Astro Boy, and doesn’t that look like early Disney to you?
“anime(shon) style” is as vague as “cartoon style”–there are SO MANY styles just in Japanese animation–but the big-eye thing is something specifically taken from Disney, because Japan loves things they[/we] don’t have: huge eyes, huge breasts, different colours of hair =p
anyway I think Mary learned to draw either from one of those terrible How to Draw Manga books or a Japanophile relative (just about the correct age)
If I remember right, it’s been established that she loves anime and she loves to draw. Which makes sense, even awful people are nonetheless full and complete people with loves and interests of their own…
It’s just a shame one of Mary’s biggest interest is enforcing the “morality” of everyone in a 20 block radius to her at all times.
Yeah, kinda still wondering how the hell she was allowed to even watch anime given her upbringing. I mean, if Joyce and Becky weren’t allowed to watch “Frozen”, how would Mary get away with watching things like “Dragon Ball Z”, “Berzerk”, “Hellsing”, “Neo Genesis Evangelion”, “Pokemon”, “Digimon”, etc. etc.?
There were a few christian themed anime, like Flying House and Superbook. Possibly she grew up on those, though her style doesn’t particularly resemble them.
Are those even really anime? They definitely seem to have been made with a western audience.
The one actual Christian anime I’m familiar with is Trigun. (who a certain reviewer on Channel Awesome reviewed and used the t-word in one of its jokes.)
Trigun is super Christian. Not explicitly so; I don’t remember anyone ever flat out talking about Christianity in it. But much of the plot consists of metaphors for Christian beliefs. Heck, the entire climax of the show is an analogy for the passion of Christ. But with spaceguns.
I guess it depends how you define “Christian” in the context of a show. My understanding of the Trigun manga is that Nightow had converted to Christianity and was exploring some Christian ideas about sacrifice and forgiveness. So maybe not explicitly retelling Christian stories, but still based on ideas that came from it. Unless I’m totally mistaken about that history.
There’s a pretty coherent thread of Christianity running through Samurau Champloo, but I wouldn’t call it Christian. But there are a lot of animes that like to explore Christianity (along with a lot of others that explore all sorts of other faiths)
Hyper-conservative morality doesn’t always mean hyper-strict parents. I have a “friend” who’s hyper-conservative – the type of conservative who anyone with any sort of training in science would decry as anti-science, who believes global warming is a conspiracy, etc – but she loves bands that my comparatively liberal parents would find questionable, and she loves anime and stuff
Could be that her parents aren’t as strict as Joyce’s. The “raging fundie” part of her character seems to be more personality than upbringing. You get the feeling she’d be annoying and hypocritical about basically anything.
Not even religious family is that crazy. In fact, I remember Willis mentioning Mary was mostly all right. Mary probably never learned anime is evil, and if there are any unchristian qualities on the ones she likes, she probably learned by herself how to rationalize it (like she does with Reagan).
Eh, it’s not uncommon. My friends growing up were mostly all raised by ultra fundie families, but love of anime was common, because that’s what all the nerds liked. My ultra-fundie roommate in college was a super big Naruto fan when he wasn’t praying over my bed in the middle of the night over my paganism (at the time) and my love of metal.
Makes sense to me. Orochimaru is Satan, because snakes, and Naruto/insert favorite character here prostrate themselves before the Lord, and/or meet the author’s Super Cool Original Character who will Show Them The Ways Of Christianity.
Also Amara and Michelle are just cousins because cousin friendships mean a lot or… something. I’m not sure that one Christian Sailor Moon fic I found once ever got to the Outers.
I mean, that’s basically what was done to Norse Myth (And is the version of it you learned, assuming you don’t have access to a time machine), so I presume you don’t think you’re kidding.
And yeaaaah making HaruMichi be cousins made the whole thing worse. Even among people who didn’t know they were gay, everyone thought they were gay – just also incestuous.
I remember during a bout of 3AM insomnia as a teenager encountering one that was about mechas with laser swords, and the good mechas were fighting to spread the word of god while the bad mechas were agents of the devil. And like all of the good mechas would recite bible passages whenever they attacked and the bad mechas spoke in a cartoonish parody of accents that WASPY white Protestant America wouldn’t like (there was one who was queer-coded, one who had a stereotypical Jewish accent, could go on…. but basically it was all of the racism and homophobia. And how they packed racism and homophobia into a show about giant robots where none of the characters were human I don’t know but they managed), and there was one female robot on the show who was drawn to have robot-boobs and robot-curves and kept getting deceived by the bad robots and needing to be led “back to the way of light” by the leader of the good robots.
Oh, and the good robots, when they powered up, formed a giant cross. Because of course they did.
I think it was made for Christian families who have kids who are into Transformers and Gundam type stuff to have something Jeebus approved.
(… I watched it for an hour and a half, laughing incredulously and saying stuff like, “What the hell am I even watching?” because to my sleep-deprived brain, it was the funniest shit ever)
It was Quick Draw McGraw yelling “I will MAIL you a Dawg Bisket!” That did it for me and my then-roommate. We had our entire circle of friends saying that for months!
I was wondering if anyone else remembered the hilarious and disturbing Shortpacked! strips after Willis discovered that particularly bizarre part of the generally bizzare Sonic fandom
Oops, just checked out those strips and apparently it was a particularly disturbing piece of christian Scooby Doo fanart that set off that particular sequence.
All fundamentalists are not cut with the same cutter. Mary’s beliefs, rather than being the result of immersion and constant reinforcement like Joyce’s, may have thrived amongst the mainstream filth as a bastion of truth and therefore despite having a similar belief/faith, has a distinct (and more recognizable) meme set than Joyce.
Yeah, that one really sticks in my craw. I’m not at all surprised that she’s using that argument, though, as she’s proven to be so morally bankrupt. I’m now rather curious what Mary’s family situation is like.
I think Willis said somewhere recently that her parents are together and aren’t *quite* as far-gone hateful as she is; they just somehow did a spectacular job screwing up in raising this kid.
My oldest brother was a bit like Mary. My parents were not strict fundamentalists while we were growing up. He was pretty clearly not actually devout, but used it as a kind of shield. “If I’m clearly so holy, nobody will notice how horrible I am.” To be fair, though, my brother was a bit more diplomatic. If you are clearly ax-crazy like Mary, they will look to see what wrong you’ve done.
Where divorce is a sign of a broken home and broken homes screw up kids, ergo any kid of a divorce can be safely looked down upon and bullied for being the product of a broken home and therefore less “moral” than the kids whose parents are in a hateful downward spiral but nonetheless still together.
Add to this all the other reasons a family may be deemed less “moral” and you have a school environment and overall community rife with bullying and petty displays of familial oneupmanship.
“She’s a fraud because your parents are divorced.”
“She’s not even married, and at thirty that’s… conspicuous.”
Impressive Mary, you just managed to out-Mary yourself even to someone who expects from you nothing but Mary-ing. You are REALLY being awful this morning.
Congratulations, you’re a fundamentalist bigot even beyond my wildest dreams of fundamentalist bigotry.
I mean this is less actively evil than the Carla stuff or her maniacal plotting outside Ruth’s door and blackmail, but at the same time it’s just “Oh. Yep. That shouldn’t surprise me as a belief because I’m familiar enough with these types to see why, but still the breadth of Mary’s Judginess never fails to astound me.”
Eh, that type was pretty common where I grew up. And just as awful. And there’s no doubt that the unmarried slight is 100% about assuming her to be a lesbian, which is also assumed by the fact that she’s working and not as a hate group coordinator.
No doubt whatsoever. Mary probably thinks The Handmaid’s Tale is a good idea (or would if she was allowed to read it, which obviously she wouldn’t be since it’s science fiction and y’know presented as a dystopia where Serena Grace is unhappy with it too).
I’m familiar enough with fundie types to set my expectations for her appropriately low, but every so often I’m just like “Wow. Another thing she disapproves of.” because even if I objectively know divorce is frowned upon by them because hahaha women having agency outside their Chosen Man it’s still one of those things I’ve never actually experienced myself so I’m like “Oh. Yeah. That is A Thing, isn’t it.” All the many many ways people fail Mary’s standards of Goodness, it’s hard to predict them all.
(I should probably note that while I’ve been exposed to fundamentalists, the religious breakdown of my family is culturally-but-for-the-most-part-not-super-serious Catholics on my dad’s side, Pennsylvania Dutch Anabaptists on my mom’s side, and both sides are either “pretty chill about these issues and I think always have been” – my maternal grandmother was supported through both her divorces and they liked her third husband – or calmed down around the point their grandchild was marrying a Catholic/non-Catholic because they then realized ‘but otherwise they’re pretty much perfect’.)
Pretty common where I grew up, too. I’m close enough to 30 with neither kids nor marriage (nor any inclination towards either) and with a career in a male-dominated field that certain people back home don’t allow their daughters to speak with me.
Protestantism, particularly fundamentalist, evangelic, etc., has a long history of hating the crap out of Catholics. You know, they’re “the anti-Christ”, Whores of Babylon, etc. etc. type stuff.
Those papists pray to Mary and the saints like they’re gods. Good down-to-earth Protestants reject them and their greedy churches and statues, and reject their tradition in favor of scripture alone. Only Jesus has the power to save, those bishops and the pope or whatever are frauds.
Or so I’ve heard. Lapsed Catholic myself, as well.
I was raised Protestant but because of Catholic family I went through a lot of the Catholic traditions as well. So I know how some of the more exaggerated people on both sides can be.
Just to note – I myself have no problem with Catholics or Protestants or whatever. Mostly because I left religion entirely but that’s a story for another time.
Yeah pretty much that. I remember getting witnessed to at a college campus in Florida by a pair of very naive idealistic teenagers. When I said I was raised Catholic, they said pretty much the only thing they knew about Catholicism is the veneration of Mary.
Nevermind that I’m now a weird humanist atheist who looks at the conservation of energy as a source of beauty and meaning in the universe. That left them boggled.
From the fundie view point the Catholic Church is the “whore of Babylon” mentioned in revelations. Basically, the narrative they tell us that Constantine hijacked the early church and secretly made it evil paganism while the “real Christians” were pushed underground until Luther’s reformation made it safe for them to emerge again. So basically, Catholics secretly worship multiple pagan gods who were just renamed “saints”, and the papacy sucks Satan’s evil cock. As a Jesuit educated Catholic, I find the idea laughable and easily debunked with even a lit bit of historical study and the barest attempt in order to actually understand Catholic theology, but there it is.
All of the above. Fundies hate catholicism, sometimes even more than they hate other groups unless they’re in the midst of hating another group they dislike. But there’s a lot of belief in the Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist set that Catholics are literally pagans who worship a false idol in the pope, who may or may not be the literal Anti-Christ.
And it’s really hard for them to recognize how hateful and bigoted their views are. I had a few friends spit out the most hateful stuff against catholics back in the day, taking special glee in the church molestation scandal because their church sold it as some ecclesiastical goal against the “other team” who then were shocked when their Catholic friend wasn’t particularly fond of their cheering.
It’s worth noting that pre-Vatican II, the Catholics weren’t very fond of Protestants, either. They were very reclusive to other churches, scared of the influence of their heresies, and Catholics were forbidden to step inside other Christian churches without good reason. Vatican II started an outreach period for the next few decades which made them much more open to the world and other religions, but I’m sure older Protestants are still suspicious of the older days when Catholicism must have seemed more cultish to them, with the elaborate dress and foreign language masses and so on and so forth. Just as much as older Catholics sometimes dislike the Church for abandoning all those things.
Protestants do not hate Catholics more than atheists, as a general rule. The Catholic church is, after all, playing the same game as the Protestant churches, they’ve just been at it a lot longer and have gotten more established. Atheists, on the other hand, want to end the game.
My father was a Catholic kicked out of the church for getting divorced. He wasn’t bitter, and he answered questions for me when I asked.
Imo:
The Catholics do worship statues representing their Saints. And if read as written, ‘place no idols before me”, this is not being followed.
The blood and flesh of Christ in Communion, sounds like cannibalism to me.
The Bible states that -read it -when Peter came to Jesus and said he would found his “church upon a rock”, it was Jesus who said to him “Get thee behind me Satan.” Read a bit deeper about the theology and discover that the end of the world was expected when Jesus’s last disciple died. Jesus was not looking to found a dynasty regardless of the popular beliefs.
Another thing I found odd: the Pope is the direct decendent of Peter and therefore this makes him the bodily representative of God. Sounds very Pagan to me.
The Church sat back and took no actions against the Nazi in WWII when they knew what the Nazi’s were doing to Homosexuals, Jewish, Teachers, and disables citizens. This was a very powerful force, they admit they should have done something and didn’t.
The Church did very well stamping out any religions (and yes Pagans are a religion) by just moving in, destroying their temples and building their own: by making the other religious holidays their own: Oster/Easter, Harvest Home/Halloween and more.
Finally: imo there is nothing more stupid then making healthy men stay celebate their entire lives. (The church discovered early that supporting a family of religious in their churches was expensive: so, no familys).
And today one of the biggest most terrible things laid on their doorstep is the coverup of the crimes some of these priests have commited.
No, I have no love for any religion. They all have their problems. There are many who try to live right by their rules. But we are all human. We pretty much end up like Mary or the go to church on Christmas and Easter sort.
Uh, no, there certainly isn’t worship of saints. Catholicism does believe in ghosts, though, and that people can watch the world from the afterlife. Logical conclusions from an immortal soul. And so they think it’s a good idea to ask holy people that God likes to pray for them, like asking a favor. (And if you think the statues are bad, you clearly haven’t read about the relics.)
Yeah, transubstantiation is kinda screwy. But the alternative is that Jesus was lying when he said “this is my body, this is my blood”, so it’s a curious case where Catholics are more fundamentalist than the fundies. Ain’t that interesting?
Okay, no, I think you need to re-read that. Matthew 16:18: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” What’s Peter’s Greek name? Petros. What’s Greek for rock? Petra. He said “You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church.” And then he goes on and talks about how the next few things are gonna go, because that’s how God wills it, and Peter says “I’d never let that happen” and Jesus is like “shut up fool, only Satan opposes God’s plans. Not only will all this happen, but you will deny me three times before the cock crows.”
Uh, the Pope isn’t like literally descended from Peter. It’s an elected position. The current Pope is from Argentina.
I see your Hitler’s Pope book and raise you Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Hear out both sides before you judge.
Well, yes, this was standard practice of the missionaries, don’t say “No! You’re wrong!”, say “Yes, but…” and then add the premises of your faith to theirs. It lets them make the faith their own, and keeps it from fading with time. And it worked, once areas turned Christian, they stayed Christian. Really, what’s the problem as long as the right supernatural entities are being respected?
I dispute that Halloween is based on anything, though, trust me, the Catholic invented stuff is much crazier than anything that came before it. Ghosts flying around and threatening to eat children because the next day was All Hallow’s Day (and Halloween is All Hallow’s Evening) and that’s when the dead saints would come out and chase away the evil spirits or something. Dia de los Muertos is an equivalently, but differently, crazy take on the same thing in Spanish-speaking areas.
Why would you think that a church couldn’t support a priest’s family? It’s not like the Church has ever really been strapped for cash. There’s a theological basis to it which is more likely than that, but I also think part of it has to do with the influence of sects of early Christianity believing that the world was soon to end (as you alluded to), and so there’s no point in having sex, subjecting children to the end of the world was a bad thing. Clearly this wasn’t sustainable, but I think the priesthood was influenced by it in the end.
Another thing is that priestly celibacy was not a requirement until the middle of the eleventh century, when noble dynasties were beginning to take power. It was a way of making sure a bishop wouldn’t have a son he might want the bishopric to go to, or that a local noble family didn’t turn a church into an estate. However, Eastern Rite Catholic Churches and the Orthodox churches do actually allow priests to be married. There have also been cases of married Protestant ministers becoming priests and continuing to be married, so the days of a celibate clergy may be numbered.
There’s mentions of celibacy as early as the 4th century, and one of the Eastern churches that decided to do away with celibacy in the 5th century made mention that celibacy was an ancient custom by then. So it certainly wasn’t started in the 11th century. It was definitely fairly lax around then, though, because for a few years the Popes had outright harems. That wasn’t considered pious, but I mean, even the Dalai Lama got away with it, people aren’t good at standing up to spiritual authorities without repeated abuse. I imagine the renewed enforcement around then was because of sheer red faced embarrassment.
Most definitely. Although apparently some people didn’t get the message because over four centuries later we got the Borgias. Still nowhere as bad as the Cadaver Trial, but still pretty bad.
I’m an agnostic Jew, but a practicing one who’s decidedly on the traditional side. Don’t feel it’s my place to comment on Catholicism here, but I would like to speak up in defense of religion and religiousness. It is possible to take one’s own religion seriously and practice regularly and honestly believe in the ultimate rightness of it without using it to hurt others -so long as you retain the awareness that others might not (and, indeed, probably don’t) believe the same thing; that they do not think you are helping them by trying to bring them into the fold -and if you RESPECT that, and leave your religion out of their lives.
Freshman year of college, I had a Baptist roommate who honestly believed that I was (and will be -we’re still in touch) going to hell. This came up once, by accident, in nine months (and towards the end of it, at that), and we shared a bedroom, interacted mostly with each other, and regularly discussed our respective religions. We both went to our own services every week. We both use our religions as stepping stones in the larger community to try and do good. I think it’s fairly reasonable to say that neither of us is a “twice-a-year” member of our respective faith, and I can say for sure that E is NOTHING like Mary. I don’t have the same level of perspective regarding myself, but I like to think that my belief of “my religion is between me and the god I don’t know if I believe in, and yours is not and hopefully never will be my business” is a different stance than the options presented above.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that religiousness/spirituality isn’t a scale of “apathetic about faith” to “asshole”. Being an asshole is on a scale of “nice/jerk”. Religiousness/spirituality is on numerous scales of its own like “practicing/not” “questioning/certain” “traditional/adaptive”, which should be of importance to an individual and whomever they choose of their own volition to authorize as a spiritual …ally? advisor? -not sure what to use there, but hopefully the sense conveys.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge the points that you bring up about some very bad things that have been done by the church in the past. It is important to remember that these things happened in order to hopefully never repeat the horrors that have been caused. Because you’re right, every religion does have it’s problems. But we can attempt to fix those problems. Secondly, I’m a little surprised that you did not bring up the Inquisition. That’s normally one of the first completely justifiable critiques others have of the Catholic Church. Thirdly, I would kinda like to explain the thing with saints from the perspective of how I was taught about it. Catholics do not actually worship saints. Whenever saints are prayed to, we are asking for their intercession on our behalf. We are, in a sense asking for the Saint to ask God on our behalf because we think a request or thanks means more when coming from a saint.
Most of the inquisition’s atrocities were held in secular courts, not the ones held by the Church itself, the Church had rules about torture which basically came to “only on those healthy enough to survive it, only for 15 minutes, and a trained physician must be there to tell the torturer ‘okay stop now.'” And the inquisitor was effectively a defense attorney for the accused heretic.
You have a very different definition of ‘effectively’, ‘defense’, or ‘attorney’ than me. Possibly all three. Or maybe you left out some words such as “seen as”.
My take on it is that medieval Catholicism – back when it was “the only game in town” – often was [i]fantastically[/i] corrupt, as giant entrenched monopolies like that tend to get, and that at least some of the Reformation was an entirely justifiable reaction to that. But as inevitably happens when you get a lot of people together and emotions are running high, some took it further: it wasn’t just that some Church officials were sinful profiteers, no, the whole thing was inherently false and capital-E Evil, a tool of/in league with Satan himself. So the original, factual grievances got lost in the din of accusations of idolatry, ritual cannibalism, etc as the new church(es) worked at establishing and building up their own (brand) identity as Not Those Guys (who are Evil and Wrong).
On the one hand, I am sad to think of Mary as a Sonic fan. On the other hand, when I was a Sonic forum moderator, we had a fundamentalist Christian member writing Christian Sonic fanfic, so real life already makes me sad.
I’d guess a bit of both. She doesn’t hate everyone, just everyone that falls outside of her very, very narrow view of what people should be (Protestant, nuclear family with no divorces, traditional gender roles, etc).
Yup, the theology she was raised with is very very hateful to anyone outside a very limited scope.
The irony is that she’s essentially just Joyce if instead of going “um, maybe my beliefs have flaws” she went “ah, hell yeah, I’m going to master the fuck out of ‘morality'”.
I looked it up, it’s a bible verse. Still though, some of the interpretations. To me, it sounds like by giving more of your life to God, you give less to your own life. That just sounds like giving up.
Submission to (rightful, because how could it be otherwise?) authority.
Humility before a higher power.
etc etc.
Authoritarian religions and cultures tend to be fairly successful, not least because they tend to get along well with each other – a secular leader is going to approve of a religion that teaches its followers to do as they’re told and and not cause trouble – until one side or the other decides that they want to be the higher authority / senior partner / “more equal” in the arrangement.
If I remember right from old friends, the bullshit goes “God is what matters most and a human’s purpose in life is to give glory to God in all things and to serve his will in all things. As man’s judgment is sinful and prone to deception at the hands of Satan, one must be careful to avoid serving one’s own interests in any manner and instead just prioritize a long list of hateful ideologies and small-minded suburban drivel in order to keep oneself pure for the upcoming Rapture”.
If this sounds like the Mad Libs of a garbage fire, you’re not far wrong.
I mean, given she’s probably the same general breed of fundamentalist as Joyce, women’s purpose is
1. To have babies and teach them in the Ways Of Christ as soon as possible
and
2. To only have sex in loving God-sanctioned marriage to a Proper Christian Boy.
So if Robin’s not married, either she’s having lots of premarital hanky panky (which is of course BAD) or she’s not interested in having sex with dudes, which can only mean -LE GASP!- LESBIANISM.
(Asexuality does not exist as a concept to these people, because humans at their core are of course Lustful Sin-Beasts and it is our duty to Go Forth And Multiply. Dating, even without sex, and it just Not Working Out is also unacceptable, because as The Woman you should bend on all things to your Moral Authority The Man Who Knows Best For You Because God Talks Via Penis or something. Being more interested in your career is unacceptable because that’s going against your duty as a woman.)
Well don’t forget that Homosexuality Is A Choice because any gay fundamentalists repressed it hard and assume everyone feels the same way, chalking it up to those dang Lustful Sin-Beasts again.
Aaah, yes. Can’t believe I forgot THAT little kernel of wonderfulness.
This is also where we get the whole “trans people are sex predators” thing because OBVIOUSLY it can’t be “trans people are actually the gender they say they are”, clearly it’s a choice and they’re using it as an excuse to Indulge In Their Lustful Sin-Beastfulness or whatever and probably perverts who get off on wearing Inappropriate Clothing as well. (Are kilts considered any different from skirts or is that like Insidious Catholicism or something?)
Kilts are very VERY different from skirts, they ARE mens’ attire, women do not wear them (at least, not historically, modern times is modern and awesome).
Of course the feeling you’ll get on this argument will be a lot stronger if you’re talking to an actual Scottish person. And of course, sadly, most non-Scottish who are the type of christian with their heads up their arses will be blatantly unaware of this, and misinterpret them as skirts, and on seeing a man wearing a kilt, go on an “STICK TO YOUR GENDER” rampage like the uneducated nitwits they are.
But the truth is they are strictly men’s attire in origin, as much as top hats and spats.
That’s just ^one^ kind (it doesn’t really look so much like a skirt when the legs are wrapped_up below the knees – for stuff like farmwork, or wearing in combat [under armor]).
The ^other^ one actually looks more like a long skirt (in spite of looking otherwise identical).
A samurai wouldn’t ordinarily need to wear either kind – unless he wanted to make sure he was ready for combat (like, say, duels against other swordsmen).
Special dispensation can be given to select women who “serve God” in the workplace by either serving as out-and-out Christian Dominionist candidates for public office or as major figures in anti-feminist hate groups, but otherwise, any working woman is a sign of sin and potential sinful practices such as lesbianism.
On the subject of asexuality, not only are they completely unaware of it, but when someone who is ace brings it up, all the arguments of “no breeding until marriage” become “be fruitful and multiply” and “you are committing violence to the Kingdom of Heaven” for not rushing into a marriage and breeding like you are “supposed to”.
I am so glad I got through my bad religious brainspace before I realized I wasn’t just ‘probably kinda gay’, but gay and ace. Because man, the shit my brain would’ve gone through to try and make sense of THAT one in its self-abusing neuroses.
Strange. It’s almost… nice to see Mary this way. I mean, she’s still an unpleasant person to her bitter, self-obsessed core (speaking of which, nice t-shirt, Mary) but here she’s not really doing anything… evil. She’s just bickering with her roommate.
And I’m… kind of enjoying her presence right now? And kind of want to see her and Roz butt heads more?
I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. Willis stop this is too confusing.
I mean, I still hate her. I’m just not immediately getting that violent urge to throw my computer out the window every time I see her right now.
I guess it’s just that I’m so used to her being The Absolute Worst that her just being An Asshole is kind of refreshing. Makes her more human (terrible human, but still human) and less of a black hole through which we can funnel our hatred.
Well, the last time anyone reacted like that to Mary was during the early days of the Mary-Carla war, and we all know how that ended up. So you’ll probably be wanting to throw your computer out the window before you know it.
I feel your pain. I’ve been secretly hoping for a cameo from someone who bears a striking resemblance to the supposed appearance of the historical Jesus.
It always amuses how much Reagan is continued to be revered as some sort of patron saint of conservatives, not because of the numerous flaws of his presidency (Iran Contra anybody?) but because of how many of his positions they conspicuously ignore, such as being incredibly pro-immigration (dude granted amnesty for over 3 million undocumented immigrants), or his pro-choice positions (he said he would pass greater restrictions while in office, but did nothing about it, and meanwhile greatly loosened restrictions on abortions while he was governor of California.)
It’s always funny to watch people struggle to justify the “Last Great President” having so clearly liberal positions.
There are no moderate Republicans, at least not on a national level.
I recall listening in on a conversation between two R party members (it was a noisy bar, and they raised their voices) on how to get rid of “the sneaky moderate wing” (exact words) of the Republican party. This would have been during the Clinton presidency.
At the beginning of his presidency, he was openly hostile to the USSR. He endorsed the hard-rights position of the day about strength and all that rubbish. Out of this desire to show strength, came the NATO exercise Able Archer 84.
The purpose of Able Archer was to have an all-countries, all-arms demonstration of NATO strength. The kicker was, they did not tell the Soviets that it was starting.
So, when the USSR heard the radio chatter and saw the troop movements, they really thought that a war was about to start. I think it got as far as the Soviets starting a weapons launch sequence when some mid-level commander began to question the whole thing.
When Reagan realised that the Soviets were more scared of the West than he was of them, and that he’d almost started WW3 by accident, he became a little more … conciliatory.
He and Brezhnev almost banned nuclear weapons COMPLETELY until our own bongo, Thatcher, put a spoke in the works.
Over in Shortpacked!, Robin got Reagan to record a “posthumous” video supporting her proposition to ban cancer forever (and force Ethan and another guy to smooch every day), which promptly caused conservative radio to declare Reagan a traitor to the Reaganesque principles of the GOP. Probably just the way it would happen now if Reagan were to come back and push some of those positions.
Seriously, if you look at their policies, Obama and Hillary Clinton are both to the RIGHT of Reagan. But that doesn’t matter, because the window’s moved.
It terrifies me to no end that there are now candidates who ARE to the right of Ronald “AIDS Who?” Reagan on LGBTQIA+ issues. c.c
Hyperbole, but yeah. They’ve done stuff that would have made them look like conservative-leaning moderates back in the eighties. It’s just that now, one can be seen as an archliberal anti-authority candidate for suggesting that we should maybe not abolish all taxes on the rich until next year. =/
Seriously, you’re wrong. Reagan may have signed tax increases from Congress but that was after cutting them, and he campaigned on low taxes and smaller government. Earlier he campaigned against Medicare as “socialized medicine”. He busted unions.
I’m with thejeff on this one. They have policies that are more moderate or conservative than Reagan did, which is what I was getting at. I maaay have engaged in hyperbole, but when it comes to, you know, drone striking, trade embargoing, couple of other things? Anyway, one can’t deny that the window has shifted a great deal.
He didn’t have drones to strike with. He did invade Grenada. He tightened sanctions on Cuba and imposed them on Nicaragua. He *opposed* sanctions on apartheid South Africa. He supported the School of the Americas, training people in torture and other evil shit. Iran-Contra. As you note, his response to AIDS was utterly shitty. His Secretary of the Interior was James ‘screw the environment, the Rapture is coming!’ Watts.
Yes, the window has shifted: the Democratic candidates support higher taxes on the rich, gay marriage and other gay rights, universal health care…
The drawing of the girl under Reagan makes me think of Lucky Penny by Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, although it’s probably not. I can’t imagine Mary approving of them.
Please tell me Mary’s about to go up in a flame like that one car fire from a few years back. Like a hate-flame just because nothing’s going her way. She’s lost to Carla, she’s losing to Roz, next: Amber/Amazi-Girl and then it ends with Mike. She’s going to end up burning out in a hate plague before she even comes close to hitting Mike’s buttons.
I know this is stupid, but what bothers me is that (excluding the Reagan bit), Mary is more ideologically consistent than real life fundies. Trump has won the fundamentalist vote over the other conservatives, even Cruz, despite being a thrice married, profane, reality show, tiny-handed monstrosity.
Particularly interesting is that regular church attendance makes you less likely to vote for Trump. And Fundamentalists really stress church attendance more than other Evangelicals.
That’s why I say that the thing that worries me is not the Right, who have lost a lot of their coalition, but those on the Left who won’t vote because Sanders didn’t win.
“Less than half of them” is the norm. With that many candidates, carrying a majority of any one group is one helluva feat. He placed strongly in Missouri and North Carolina. And I’m referring to Evangelicals in the particular here.
Trump got less than half the votes and still went on to win, in general. Because of course – there’s so many candidates that a plurality is the best you can reasonably expect. They preferred Cruz, but he wasn’t THAT much better – he was ‘only’ a theocrat, and one helluva motivated theocrat, not a fascist. And ‘only’ a theocrat is still pretty fucking bad, especially in a cosmopolitan country where there are people of many beliefs – especially given that to enshrine a particular Christianity means turning on every other variant of Christianity (and you can’t enshrine ‘Christianity’ because that’s too broad to be meaningful)
trlkly: Give the Bernie-Bros some time. The vast majority will come around. Emotions run high in the primaries and lots of people get caught up in how horrible the primary opponent is and swear to sit it out.
The polling I’ve seen suggests Democrats are actually less divided than in 2008 – when the Hillary supporters detested Obama. As I said yesterday, remember how the PUMAs swept McCain to victory? Nah, me neither.
Panel 1:I love this first little paragraph by Roz. Given this and her response to Riley when Riley was complaining about her posters, I really think that Roz has an impressive talent for being able to converse and think when still blearily asleep.
And I love the construction. She has no doubts on what Mary most despises about her and Mary has not been remotely quiet about her condemnations of Roz’s sex life and her hopes for her to be “punished” for it through a pregnancy (which is the pro-life viewpoint in a nutshell, they don’t care about kids, they just want those who have sex in “unapproved” ways to be punished by the pain of childbirth to “teach them a lesson”). But Riley? Mary has no reason other than the proximity to Roz, so underlining it and calling out Mary’s hate-based theology is a lovely little verbal play.
Panel 2: This has been hashed out above, but it’s really worth underlining just how much fundies hate Catholics. Like, Catholics are literally not considered the same religion to fundie types, so supporting Congresswoman DeSanto might as well be like voting for a muslim or a jew or a pagan to Mary.
And it’s also worth underlining that that “conspicuous” most certainly means “dyke” in Mary’s usage. There’s a common argument in fundie circles that those who are “confused about a woman’s role” by trying to become powerful politicians or work outside the home are also “confused about the sexual dynamics of men and women” and thus more likely to “choose lesbianism”. This is also why Hillary Clinton has been assumed to be a lesbian by the fundie community since at least 1991.
Panel 3: And it looks like hearing a rant about a religion she may or may not even still feel any connection to is where Roz draws the line on putting up with Mary’s crap. Rest assured she’s been “treated” to many variations of “catholics are the heralds of the Anti-Christ” rants before today.
Panel 4:Mary sucks at not walking straight into a trap.
Panel 5: That face. That face is what cognitive dissonance looks like.
Panel 6: Facts make Mary very angry due to their well-known liberal bias.
If I recall some of my Irish paganism right, basically when you died you went to visit Donn’s Hall – basically like visiting grandpa before a long trip – and then headed off to the otherworldl/be reborn. Which is a pretty nice view of death, really. (Although I have always have had a soft spot for the brand of Gnosticism where you basically die and then have to go and have cage matches with a bunch of angels in order to earn the right to merge with the gnosis.)
You have to be a gigantic asshole (to the gods) to get a punishment. You just reside as a shade unless the gods REALLY like or hate you – Elysium and I believe Tartarus, respectively.
Panel 6: Hey! Astrology is Biblical! It’s explicitly stated from Genesis 1 onwards that God put the lights (stars) in the sky (er, solid crystaline firmanent spheres encasing the Earth and dividing waters below from waters above, with windows that can be opened to let the rain fall through) to act as signs, and the ability to foretell the future from the stars is echoed over and over again throughout the Bible. Mary should know this if she’d ever read the Bible carefully, with an eye for correcting any errant views she had regarding it!
Annulment is usually only justified under certain circumstances. For example, remember that whole thing about how marriages must be consummated in order to count?
If a married couple produced no children, then it *could* be argued that the marriage was never consummated and, thus, was never a “true” marriage, in turn justifying annulment.
Stuff like that. Annulments were basically ways to abuse technicalities in order to label a marriage as “false” and thus excuse it – not to actually dissolve a marriage.
I.e. the divorce may be a legal one, but not recognized by the church.
Main justification is incomplete consent. If one of the couple did not intend to remain married til death do them part, then the other is entitled to an annulment. If one of them did not fully understand the ramifications of sacramental marriage, then they are both entitled to an annulment. If one makes getting / obtaining an abortion as a condition of maintaining the marriage, then an annulment is granted. If couples were just getting married to please their families and did not intend a sacramental marriage, then an annulment can be granted. (This happened in my family). Some of that has changed in the last 50 years, but what hasn’t.
These are not technicalities, but go to the core of Catholic understanding of sacramental marriage, as opposed to civil marriage. Many church weddings never ripen into sacramental marriage. Life is like that.
For many Christian denominations, marriage is just civil marriage with some extra trappings, so divorce isn’t that dig a deal. That comes from being the de-facto national religion of the US. Theology follows public opinion.
Subject to a lot of abuse. See Ted Kennedy and Newt Gingrich, whose third wife brought him into the church.
The idea that Mary feels the need to hate, demean, or “put back in their place” others because she secretly hates herself or views herself as worthless would be an interesting an entirely plausible insight. The idea that she may be more like a mean fundie Danny than a mean Joyce is actually a little horrifying and heartbreaking to me. And it may be true. But we don’t know. And until we do, I’d rather not empathize with her to much.
To be fair, many fundamentalist women never internalize it but use it against other women. Margaret Atwood talked about the phenomenon in her books and referenced it in the Handmaidens’ Tale.
A “the bullied becomes the bully” trope where the would-be bully terrorizes others in order to prop up their own nonexistent self-esteem?
… I could get behind this for Mary.
It never excuses the bully’s behavior or takes away from their being a shithead. It would just make them a (sliiiiiiiiiiiightly) sympathetic shithead.
Of course, if she’s intended to be a straight-up shithead, then Willis is God insofar as this comic goes.
“Everyone like me should shut up, except me, because … well, because me.” It’s not exclusive to women fundamentalists. There’s a whole subset of the lecture circuit that’s very lucrative for people who go around telling other people to do things they themselves wouldn’t do with a gun to their head. I personally have had fun watching Phyllis Schlafly make a very well-compensated speech telling an audience of women to go home, get into the kitchen and stay there. Guess somebody’s gotta make the sacrifice, eh?
Honestly, I think it’d be interesting if Mary really is the one who came up with all of this crazy for her family. It’d be interesting if her family were moderate or liberal Christians (or even atheists).
Most of the fundie women I’ve met who are like Mary don’t think they’re worthless, but it’s kind of like the non-fundie sexist argument from biotruth: Women and men are just different, because they are, because god and shut up that’s why. God decreed that women have a certain role and that women exist to help men. However, God also gave women the greatest power in the realm: The power to bring new life, which is a power men don’t have. Therefore, to balance the power, women are subservient in all other things to men, because they get to make babies and men don’t. It’s fair!
(… no really I’ve read essays, plural, by more than one fundie woman arguing that women shouldn’t have the right to vote or work outside the home or go to school or etc because baby-making is their power over society and people should be happy with that)
… also had my father once hand me one written by some US woman Republican under the guise of it being “very interesting” and him wanting me to think about it.
(That was around when I was starting to rebel against the sexism of my upbringing more but I hadn’t yet started actually learning about feminism or what have you but I was starting to say dangerous things like, “I don’t want to ever have kids” and “I want to work in science” and push back more against him and his beliefs… in retrospect, I think that was a not-so-subtle attempt to get me to straighten up and fly right with a female role-model telling me the things he wanted me to believe rather than him or my mother, who I’ve never gotten along with very well. I think he was trying a different approach because it’d become clear that the more he bullied and raged at me to do what he wanted the more I was becoming convinced he was wrong.)
Quick Roz, use more discomforting Reagan facts on Mary! Maybe it’ll cause her to explode due to the mental gymnastics she’d have to go through to try and justify everything.
Years back I had this girlfriend. One week I went with her, her mother, and her grandmother to her grandmother’s church.
I was Catholic, she and her mother were protestant, her g-mom was baptist. (I stuck out like a sore thumb as the only white person in the building and got some stares, but the story isn’t so much about that as…)
This preacher gave a big long sermon, and at the end crescendo’d quite a lot into this big speech, forget the exact content of it but it ended with something about the glory of heaven and how all the good people would end up there regardless of faith so long as you were good and all that. But specifically near the end he’s rattling off all these religions and it ended something like this:
“…and the Christians, the protestants and the batptists and the [some other denomination], and the Jewish, and the Buddhist, and the [like two or three other religious denominations], and *pause* some Catholics, will JOIN in the GLORY of…”
And my girlfriend and her mother had a silent mini laugh of hysterics that all these religions were a-ok in their book, but obviously you can’t mention Catholicism without a quick disclaimer.
I’ve said this before but, in the end, Mary’s problem is that she’s been raised to be an absolute bigot. Anyone and anything that is outside her cultural sub-group or is not so similar to them that they could be used as a mirror was ‘wrong’ and ‘sinful’.
I know people like her exist IRL, but… she’s just not an interesting character right now. She’s not even really fun to hate, she’s just turning into this black hole of awfulness that’s dragging down the scenes she’s in because basically everything she does on-camera is awful. That’s all I mean.
Besides connections to the mob (the MCA contracts in the early days), a snitch for the FBI, Reagan has a connection to Indiana.
One of his catchphrases was “Win one for the Gipper.” He played the Gipper in Knute Rockne, All American, the story of the coach of Notre Dame in the 1920s.
I did not know that Notre Dame was in Indiana.
And loving the fact that Mary has some self-awareness. Won’t stop the trolls though:(
Seriously, where does Mary come from? Afghanistan? Everybody not from exactly her own denomination is a fraud and evil, women who remain unmarried at thirty are obviously secret lesbians or/and sluts, getting divorced taints your descendants forever with a unholy curse…
She reminds of Serena Joy, from “The Handmaid’s Tale”. She’s one of the female televangelists and political leaders who help turn US into a fundamentalist theocracy inspired on the Old Testament. Her victory is her punishment: She loses her job, is forbidden to work and made into a stay-in-home mother, except she’s sterile, so she has to allow her husband taking a concubine for breeding purposes (sadly, other women who were blameless got it far worse).
I would like to see Mary transported to her ideal fundamentalist world like Serena Joy, but I’m afraid would manage to make her family more miserable than herself…
ah yes, 18 year olds who’re convinced a president they werent even alive for was the “last good president”. i know a few of those
(not saying anything about reagan; i dont know much about him myself. but sometimes its just so obvious when someones political views were blatantly handed to them by their parents)
When someone uses the phrase ‘Family values’, he or she is often most concerned with defining what constitutes a ‘family’ and not so much about their ‘values’.
No, see, it’s not values like things you think are important, it’s values like how much different kinds of families are worth. A family that’s just like yours has a high value, while a different family has less value, and a family that you don’t think of as a family at all (because you’re a shitstain) has no value at all.
(To clarify, in this post “you” means “the person talking about family values,” and does not refer to DoA commenter Charlie Spencer.)
I have read how some Republicans thought that they could attract the Hispanic vote using the ‘family values’ hook.
It turns that for most Hispanic voters ‘family values’ means caring for your relatives, supporting, feeding and educating your children, and taking care of your elders, while for those Republicans ‘family values’ meant mostly bashing homosexuals and single mothers…
So the Republican ideologists came to the conclusion that those Hispanic voters didn’t really support family, because you can’t support family unless your first worry is to bash gays and lesbians.
My impression is that two of the most important “family values” are “children are the property of their parents” and “wives are the property of their husbands”.
I’m sure it’s been said, and if not, call me crazy, but even if Robin were married (and to a man) Mary would be just as likely to complain, instead saying she can’t be the “family values” candidate when she obviously isn’t dedicated enough to her family. Because you can always come up with an excuse!
For a crazed fundamentalist like Mary, the points she brings up about Robin are about what I expected as her reasons for disliking her. But even in fundie-wacko land, how exactly is Robin’s parents being divorced her fault?
Does Mary’s shirt have a wrinkle across Less? Because it looks very much like the word Less is crossed out on the shirt…which would be quite accurate in her case because it’s all about her. Mary’s hypocrisy really does annoy the crap out of me though. In her mind what she says is the God given truth, even if it makes no sense.
I love Roz pointing out the fact that Mary seems to hate a lot of things…which is again annoying when supposed Christians hate things so strongly when in reality you aren’t supposed to. If there really was such a thing as the Rapture there would be an awful lot of hardcore Christians that wouldn’t go up in it.
The Rapture is a doctrine which is already born from exceptionalism. The idea there’s an “elect” and a damned. The idea God would want everyone to come is anathema to the ideals Mary espouses.
We’ve already established that her version of God wouldn’t let everybody come. Only Straight Protestants who marry early and start pumping out babies. (Le Sarcasm)
Never mind that people outside her gender and sexual preferences would enjoy it more if they got to be honest about what they actually desired. But really, come on.
I remember I had a really religious teacher back in middle school. She said that she liked George W. Bush because “from a Christian perspective, he was a really great president”.
She also used the Bible as an excuse to be homophobic.
Yes, she is the reason why I distanced myself from my religion, thank you for asking.
Was down in Waco just before Katrina protesting outside Bush’s studio set / ranch. Stopped at a local church to check service times. Ran into a woman who’s son was also deployed and we talked over shared experience. She was mostly convinced that Americans in Iraq would help open the country up for Christ. After all, Bush was a good Christian, so this would turn out for the good.
I almost cried when we left her, since I was certain that it would do the opposite. Sadly, I was right and Christian groups in Iraq are being exterminated. That flag decal doesn’t get you into heaven and the cross doesn’t mean you know shit about foreign policy.
Im actually confused about what Mary would have against the Bush brothers. Then I remember that George W. Bush was considered to be ultra-liberal by the standards of the Republican party and cry a little.
Huh, I always thought Mary was insincere and just picked up the Jesus stuff as the most convenient mallet with which to wield her hate. But this seems to indicate she….actually kind of cares about something? Weird.
I’ve never understood how people tout Reagan as one of the greats considering the Iran-Contra scandal. (Unless they just have a massive hard-on for the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, but those people are dicks.)
Except even in the last days of the carter administration the negotiations were already rapping up. Heck, released Carter admin files include briefings to the Reagan administration on the state of the hostage negotiations.
Iran/Contra was almost entirely about getting cash from Iran to give to the anti-communist Contra rebels without involving congress.
Iran/Contra broke two massively important laws. First, there was a weapons embargo with Iran (them being enemies of our state and the fact that many of those weapons were given to terrorists to attack our ally, Israel). The second thing was that Congress passed a law specifically banning sending money to the Contras. Reagan looked at both laws (that he actually signed, so he was well aware of them) and said, “I do what I want!!!”
Because Ollie North was turned into a sacrificial lamb, and Reagan supporters claim that “he didn’t know about it”. Which in my humble opinion would be worse, because then he was even more incompetent if something like that was able to be done behind his back.
*hugs* to all who were affected or knew people at Pulse. Between this and the LA Pride attempted bomber (from Indiana no less)… Everyone stay safe out there this year.
What also me is seeing people like Ted Cruz and Pat McCrory (North Carolina Pee Policeman governor) tweeting sympathies when Ted is allied with people who would quite literally sentence all of us to die, and Pat McCrory is the vanguard of anti-trans legislation. How dare they?
I know that the timeline for this strip doesn’t begin in 2010, but even if if it did there is no way Mary would be alive when Reagan was president so everything she knows about him comes from whatever biased resources she has at her disposal. Just like Jesus.
Which makes it easy to discount how dotty “The Gipper” was. Seriously in one instance where the US sub force was pitching very risky spy missions during the Cold War, all he wanted to really talk about were the sailors in the subs. AND then got off on a tangent about how he had played a WW2 Sub commander in the movie “Hellcats of the Navy”. Recounted in the book “Blind Man’s Bluff”.
And the reason why Reagan is sometimes called “The Gipper” at all is because of yet another movie he was in. “Knute Rockne, All American” where he played George “The Gipper” Gipp .
If someone “loves” the Republic Great President of Reagan, what they really love is the unfeeling political machine that used him as a figure head.
There was an SNL skit some years back – far after the Reagan years, but either before or shortly after his death, I think – which flipped that around for comedy. It purported to show that the “real” Reagan was a take-no-prisoners get-it-done hardass, who only put on the dotty-old-grampa act for the cameras or visiting Scout troops.
As for Mary suspecting that Robin is a lesbian…well, we have secret information from another universe that she is a lesbian. And it was obvious to other characters in that universe long before she admitted it. So, it is not impossible that in this universe she has shown signs that are obvious to others.
Look at a picture of Antonio Sabato Jr. If you do and one of the thoughts that cross your mind is, “I wonder what he tastes like”, you could be gay. Another possibility is that you might be a cannibal. I hope it’s the former and not the latter. Literally eating people isn’t cool.
He gets a lot of credit for his work with Habitat for Humanity. He was a decent, but weak, President. He’s a hard working ex-President that puts a lot of time in helping the less fortunate in ways that bring him no benefit other than the thanks of those he helps.
Actually, Reagan greatly benefited from following Carter. Some of the things Carter did to help rebuild the economy had started getting momentum when Reagan took power, so it looked as though Reagan was good for the economy. Another thing that benefited Reagan is that Carter successfully negotiated the release of the hostages in Iran, only for Iran to hold onto those hostages until Reagan’s first day of office as a final F*** you to Carter, which Reagan spun into “the Iranians are so scared of me that my merely taking office was enough to make them release the hostages”.
The hostage release was always liable to end up being completed after the Carter Admin was over. This is something born out in the Carter Administrations own files and briefing to the Reagan Admin which were written as a handoff of authority rather than a simple briefing.
Carter also massively underestimated how much Khomeini would throw him under the bus to shore up his own political posturing in his faction within Iran.
As for economics . . . eeehh? . . . Carter took some sensible steps but a lot of them weren’t going to be effective against the kind of stagnation spiral he was facing. If anything things were easier for Reagan simply because a lot of the negative factors beyond Carter’s control had begun to pass by the start of his presidency.
Bush is busy painting his feet and primitivist paintings.
Carter is doing this while fighting cancer. http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/index.html
Plus Carter is an Annapolis grad who served his country, not one who hid out in a safe place during Vietnam (Bush). He’s someone who takes his religion seriously and lives it out to great effect.
A bad president? Compared to Reagan? Compared to Bush I or II? Compared to Nixon? Sorry, I lived through those idiots and he was better than any of them, even when undercut by his own party.
I’d be super oaky with this being Mary from now on. Just this spiteful, frowning jerkface fueled by her own cognitive dissonance who gets pies to the face.
jfc she has a Ronald Reagan mural. I can’t even begin to perceive her as a credible threat. I half expect her to tattle to Ruth’s superiours only for them to physically toss her out of the room.
I’m pretty liberal, but I’ll still make that face if somebody says something about the game hunting and taxidermy hobbies of Theodore Roosevelt. And don’t even try to bring up that letter on eugenics! GR.
I just realize much of it was the culture of the time an not all of it was a mature as we have become. As far as the game hunting, yeah like so many others before and after him, he did it but out of it came an appreciation nature and a desire to protect and nurture it. Maybe it doesn’t excuse he did it but it doesn’t make him as bad as some who continue despite the situation getting bad. As far as eugenics, I applaud the goal of improving humanity but I often find the sin is in the means in trying to accomplish it. The fact most eugenics programs so often do so by stripping people of rights or even their lives, counteracts the more noble intents where they exist. Show me one where it raises humanity as a whole up with creating a new group of second class citizens (either by denying rights, reproduction, or advancement) or end up with a cleansing and maybe, just maybe it will be worth considering.
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←this monster here
also I wonder how Roz arrived at that conclusion… couldn’t possibly be that Shortpacked! poster on the wall?? XD XD XD
Count me in the “Reagan was terrible at virtually everything, either caused or worsened every major problem facing America today, and had nothing to his credit except for his ability to make Americans feel their country was great and noble regardless of what it actually did” camp.
Reagan was the peak of a decline that began with Vietnam and Watergate and is possibly still going on.
Peak of a decline…you mean a valley? A trough?
A nadir?
No, Nader was a different kind of problem
Ba-dum-pshh.
I was thinking more of a gorge or marine trench personally, but those work as well. Man I need to refresh my English skills.
Native or second language?
Kinda native. I grew up speaking it, but I learned a bit of Quebec French from my father first. It was kinda funny because my first words were apparently very foul curses, and as a result my father started to slowly stop speaking Quebec French over the next three years. My mind still sometimes think in fragments of French though, so my English gets jumbled sometimes as a result.
Hey, Quebec French has the best curses. Tabarnak!
Quebec French curses are hilarious. They’re things start-of-strip Joyce would hear and go, “…that’s a swear? How is that a swear?” XD
Uh, isn’t that one tabernacle, though? So it’s a religious swear? I think Joyce might be concerned even though they don’t really use tabernacles outside of Catholicism last I checked.
Learned that there are Quebecois curses reading / listening to Louise Penny’s Gamache mysteries. Best to listen so you get the pronunciation right. Love the idea of curses that specific to place, as if Michiganers used different curses than the rest of the country.
Well, there’s the way Yiddish curses seeped into English in New York but only a few of them made it into general American English.
But a lot of them are fading out. Schmuck’s pretty well entrenched, and maybe putz too, but when was the last time you heard somebody get called a mamzer?
Also, if he was the nadir, how would the decline be continuing?
I think Rukduk means he presided over the *fastest* point of the decline (which, since we’re talking about the second derivative, is generally called an inflection point rather than a peak)
If Trump is the natural progression from Reagan than you bet you sweet ass that “the decline is … still going on”.
Trump is the inevitable result of decades of hate-fueled rhetoric, starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy and really kicking into high gear after 9/11.
It took a turbo boost after 2008, as well. As for the era of hyper-partisanship that helped make the vitriol grow worse at a faster pace, there’s a strong case to be made that lays the blame at Newt Gingrich’s feet.
Which inflection point do you want to look at?
There’s Nixon’s Southern Strategy.
There’s Reagan’s “nine most terrifying words”.
There’s Gingrich’s Contract
onwith America.There’s the whole GOP reaction to electing a black president.
Probably others I’m forgetting.
Each built on the previous foundation and increased the vitriol even faster.
It all traces back to the realignment after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and “lost the South for a generation”, with the switch of Dixiecrats to the GOP.
Didn’t Reagan reach out to the fundamentalists as well?
Yeah. That was the rise of the Moral Majority and the Christian Right in general.
He did stop that scientist who was pushing for America to normalise the use of nuclear (as opposed to hydrogen) bombs in everyday warfare.
Teller? (Whenever anyone mentions a scientist promoting the use of nuclear bombs for things you wouldn’t normally (or rationally) use them for, I assume Teller.)
Teller was all about the hydrogen bombs, and the third generation nukes that would power death rays (yes, really).
What’s hilarious is that Reagan actually raised taxes, expanded government and couldn’t get elected dog catcher in the modern GOP, yet he’s still the patron saint of the party. It’s also hard to describe to people who didn’t grow up in it what living in the Cold War was like. I was in high school during the second Reagan term and had basically made peace with the idea that I, and everyone I loved would probably die in a nuclear fireball. Whatever else he was, he was one Hell of a public speaker. He’d come on the t.v. with that stern but kindly voice and basically tell us everything was going to be okay and we believed him. It took the end of the Cold War and the end of the threat of nuclear annihilation for a lot of us to grow up and take a second look at him and analyze who he really was.
Growing up in Germany in that time, we knew we’d be the first to go.
.
Some of the more rural areas in the US might have a chance to have survivors though we weren’t sure if they’d be thankful for doing so.
Some of the scariest moment in my life were shortly after he bombed Lybia when some fighter planes practicing bombing a river crossing near our house came in a 50m not the usual 200. (I tended to hate bright skies at the time because of those flyovers).
Say, can there be a connection between rising fundamentalism and apocalyptic beliefs and the fact that is much less likely the US and Russia will blow up the whole world than it was 30 years ago?
Like people somehow need an apocalyptic option?
His nickname in wonk circles was the “Great Communicator.”
I’ve posted below about NATO exercise Able Archer when we really did come close to the Apocalypse.
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
For what its worth, I think Reagan is like 1000 times better than anything the GOP has to offer today. That’s more to do with my general feeling that the quality of the Republican Party has been plummeting in recent years and shows no signs of hitting a bottom any time soon. I’ve no great love or hate for Reagan himself, but I suspect I’d like him better than if all the 20 plus yahoos who’ve been grappling for the presidential nominations did the fusion dance and turned into one uber canidate. Still vote for Hillary, mind you. But I could happily tolerate Reagan, which is light years beyond what I can say for anything GOP related these days.
That’s alright. Reagan couldn’t win a nomination today.
At least if he ran as he did back then. Likely he’d adjust, but then he’d come off looking worse to the rest of us.
Well, yes. But isn’t Mary also referring to herself? Some sort of self-awareness?
ain’t pleasant to to look at your own idols, eh.
I love tweaking hypocrites. Looks like Roz does too. 😀
Future comics may prove me wrong, but I don’t think Roz is loving this. She’s trying to engage with Mary on reasonable terms, and it’s clearly a painful process.
Indeed. Mary is less about “engaging” and more about “you listen to me because I am the paragon.”
I’m a little surprised she doesn’t have any pre-rehearsed BS comebacks for Roz’s accusations.
But to form counterarguments would be acknowledging that her idol had flaws that needed explaining, and Mary doesn’t accept the idea that anybody she’d like would have flaws. And so as often happens when cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head, the preferred option is to just pretend the problem isn’t there.
Hahahaha yes!
Just gonna put on my M. Bison hat…
*ahem*
YES! YES!!!
Ah, I used to pull this kind of shit on people in the Army all the time. Roz is my new favorite character! ^_^
Ronnie!
Yay Reagan cameo
with PATRIOTISM!
Mary just needs to stop now. Before Roz pulls out the heavy artillery.
No she needs to keep pushing so we can see the heavy artillery. She didn’t learn after messing with Carla, she won’t learn from Roz, and one day she will confront Mike and it will be the climax of the strip and then Willis will die of old age before the thread finished.
+ Internet
It won’t be an accident either. He’s going to time it that way.
Mike’s going to let her off the hook, on account of being able to piss more people off that way.
😆😅😂😂
Someone who understands.
Nah, I’m sure the buffer can keep going well into the next century.
so what you’re saying is that we’re going to obtain berserk boat arc levels of “this shit will never end”
I would hold off on Mike. Mike’s an ass to everyone– he’ll change himself simply in order to discomfit you. If you were vegan, he’d eat a rare steak in front of you, if you were comfortable being a carnivore, he’d pile on about innocent animals, etc. There’s no core there, just “so long as I can get you to feel bad”.
Mary doesn’t deserve the out of ‘he’d say something mean, no matter what”.
… oh no.
What if one day she ends up confronting Mike… and they fall in love and get married.
But it’s all an elaborate ruse so that Mike can divorce her?
Mary ain’t a fan of the Bushes?
She probably is, but there’s a weird sort of canonization that occurs on the right for Reagan despite or perhaps because of the many many awful qualities of his administration.
And yet when Catholics do something similar to someone we think was a good person, we’re servants of the devil. Kinda hypocritical in my eyes.
Also they probably weren’t hard enough on gay people. Remember, 9/11 was God punishing us for allowing homosexuals.
Well, most of the things I think were awful about the Reagan adminstration, they think were great, but the things they should think were awful seem to have vanished from memory in favor of the purity of the patron saint of the modern American party.
The real Reagan would never be able to compete with the imaginary one 25+ years of distance has created.
Conservatives in general like to disown George W. Bush. Otherwise, they like to pretend that they never supported him or, better yet, that his Presidency just never happened. There was 8 years of… something… then Obama ruined the economy and did a bank bailout.
9/11 happened on Obama’s watch! …is a thing I have heard argued (not just stated, argued when pointed out to be veryvery incorrect).
Technically, there have been seven 9/11s on Obama’s watch, and there’s about to be an eighth.
….
I’ll be leaving now.
…what was the substance of the argument?
Okay, that’s mind-boggling. I’ve heard the claim that it was Clinton’s fault, of course, usually with the accusation that he was getting Lewinskied when he should have been personally leading Seal Team 6 in the deserts of Afghanistan or somesuch. But this makes it sound like Obama took a side-trip in his time-machine (after going back to put the ad in the Hawaiian newspaper that announced his birth at a hospital in Hawaii) to personally make certain the Towers went down.
Wha… How…
Did they confuse Obama with Clinton? Because if they really wanted to blame a democrat it would make more sense to blame the guy who was in office a few months before the event than the guy who wasn’t in office until eight years later…
If someone who was old enough to remember 2001/9/11 made that claim to me, I’d probably reply something like, “Thank you for invalidating any argument you have ever made and will ever make.” And then remind them of it any time they attempted to argue anything. Admittedly, I could see them eventually working their way out of it, but not without a pretty serious attitude change. (Of course I’d point out the flaw if they really needed it pointed out, but…)
People, people! You’re forgetting the most important thing:
Obama is Black. So, of course it’s fault.
*it’s his fault…
(First time posting and I screw it up…)
Not to mention, a muslim and a communist!
Oh… I just mentioned it. Thanks, Obama!
*mutter mutter* Frikken’ muslim commies…
As Cheyney says, they create their own reality.
If you or I tried that trick, we’d be off to the doctors tout bloody suite.
I remember conservatives referring to the “Obama recession” as early as September of 2008.
Wow, 2008, really? Obama hadn’t even been elected yet in Sept. 2008. For all anyone knew then, McCain might have been elected.
It was the markets reacting to the chance of a
blackDemocrat being elected, of course.Everything was Clinton’s fault, until sometime in late 2008 when everything became Obama’s fault. Bush was trying to clean up Clinton’s mess, but then the markets realized Obama was likely to win and collapsed.
In fairness, Democrats have blamed a lot of our troubles in the last 8 years on Bush – with I think more justification.
No, the justification is exactly equal.
Both Democrats and Republicans are equally awful, just in different ways. It’s all political theater, and they’re simply WWE “Wrestlers” who fight on screen and go out drinking together offscreen. There is so little actual difference between the two major parties that it boils down to “Team Red” vs “Team Blue.” It’s just tribalism, and the biggest scam currently being run.
Ahh, the smell of false equivalence in the morning….
I’ve got a lot of problems with Democrats, basically because I’m far enough to the left that the differences do sometimes blur, but that idea’s ridiculous. Common, but still ridiculous.
How does it even make sense for them to be “equally awful, just in different ways”, but still have “so little actual difference”? Aren’t those different awfulnesses actual differences? Don’t they affect real people’s lives?
Mary may be evil, but she has standards dammit!
*insert joke about shaving*
Awww, Mary’s drawings are nice.
Now, now, Roz. Let people have their heroes.
Well, I mean, okay, except Mary was criticizing Roz’s family?
Oh, I’m not saying it was well deserved.
Actually I’m not entirely sure what I’m saying.
WASN’T well deserved.
Case in point.
I rather have a sub than a hero. 😛
I’d rather be a sub than a dom.
I’d prefer a sub to a jet.
I’d rather give that sub to Galasso.
I’d rather have a sub than a grilled cheese.
If I could, if I only coooould, I surely wooooould.
Soooo, does anyone else think maybe Mary is Willis in college?
Joyce is Willis.
Yes, but Mary was originally created to be his ideal girl at that time. That didn’t last long, though, as she showed up kinda late in Roomies.
A lot of characters carry shards of Willis, unsurprisingly. See: Amber’s overall anxiety (Not the DID, the regular anxiety).
Do we need a Quest to reassemble the True Willis?
Will a half-demon dogboy be useful?
…Willis si right there, exhausted and in the general vicinity of his children!
Does Mary write Reagan fan fiction? Or just has her own head canon?
Pretty sure the entire GOP has Reagan fanfiction as part of their core doctrine.
Yeah ever since the time I heard Democrats were trying to solve one of the latest budget crises (back in, I dunno, 2011-2012 or so?) by QUOTING REAGAN BACK AT THE GOP and that coming in as the voice of reason I’ve just been like “woooow you guys are losing your grip.”
Morals come and go, but partisan attachments are long lasting enduring commitments – Campbell et al. 1960, The American Voter basically.
…
I may not have been quoting the crap out of that book in some papers this last week >.>…cursed qualifying exams.
So, Mary draws people anime style, right? Does that mean she’s actually into anime, or is it just a quirk?
Trying to find a shred of humanity in her, some interest that isn’t just about self-righteousness, and grasping at straws here.
Some would argue that what we consider “anime style” started with UB Werks and Walt Disney decades earlier.
Cant say I agree that anime style started with Walt Disney decades ago. The cells may have been drawn overseas, but there was no anime in the early movies ie: Bambi/Snow White/and I don’t really see anime in the newer ones either. Nemo?
The way I heard it, Donald Duck was exceptionally popular in Japan, and much of what became the popular Anime style was derived from that.
Nah, Mickey-era, more. Remember that modern anime styles started during and just after WWII. A giant part of anime style is descended from Astro Boy, and doesn’t that look like early Disney to you?
“anime(shon) style” is as vague as “cartoon style”–there are SO MANY styles just in Japanese animation–but the big-eye thing is something specifically taken from Disney, because Japan loves things they[/we] don’t have: huge eyes, huge breasts, different colours of hair =p
anyway I think Mary learned to draw either from one of those terrible How to Draw Manga books or a Japanophile relative (just about the correct age)
ROFL at that first paragraph.
Yea, she probably had a bunch of Christopher Hart books.
‘UB Werks’? Do you mean Ub Iwerks?
Yeah. *shrug* My bad.
If I remember right, it’s been established that she loves anime and she loves to draw. Which makes sense, even awful people are nonetheless full and complete people with loves and interests of their own…
It’s just a shame one of Mary’s biggest interest is enforcing the “morality” of everyone in a 20 block radius to her at all times.
Yeah, kinda still wondering how the hell she was allowed to even watch anime given her upbringing. I mean, if Joyce and Becky weren’t allowed to watch “Frozen”, how would Mary get away with watching things like “Dragon Ball Z”, “Berzerk”, “Hellsing”, “Neo Genesis Evangelion”, “Pokemon”, “Digimon”, etc. etc.?
There were a few christian themed anime, like Flying House and Superbook. Possibly she grew up on those, though her style doesn’t particularly resemble them.
Are those even really anime? They definitely seem to have been made with a western audience.
The one actual Christian anime I’m familiar with is Trigun. (who a certain reviewer on Channel Awesome reviewed and used the t-word in one of its jokes.)
Musta been some form of Christian magic.
can’t be Trigun, Wolfwood is Catholic
…Trigun’s not Christian. Wolfwood is Catholic, but the show’s not Christian.
“It’s heavy because it’s filled with mercy :)” (lol just kidding his cross is heavy because it’s a giant gun with smaller guns on it)
Very merciful guns.
Trigun is super Christian. Not explicitly so; I don’t remember anyone ever flat out talking about Christianity in it. But much of the plot consists of metaphors for Christian beliefs. Heck, the entire climax of the show is an analogy for the passion of Christ. But with spaceguns.
I guess it depends how you define “Christian” in the context of a show. My understanding of the Trigun manga is that Nightow had converted to Christianity and was exploring some Christian ideas about sacrifice and forgiveness. So maybe not explicitly retelling Christian stories, but still based on ideas that came from it. Unless I’m totally mistaken about that history.
There’s a pretty coherent thread of Christianity running through Samurau Champloo, but I wouldn’t call it Christian. But there are a lot of animes that like to explore Christianity (along with a lot of others that explore all sorts of other faiths)
I wondering if Witch Hunter Robin would count, if you take it as a cautionary tale about the peril of using magic even in a good cause.
Or Chrono Crusade, about a covert demon-fighting paramilitary religious order.
(Though in both cases you need to overlook the Catholicism connection.)
Quite a few people have previously speculated that Mary’s parents are not as awful as her, and her terribility all comes from her.
I’m pretty sure it’s actually word of god that Mary’s ‘rents aren’t as bad as she is.
Yeah, I think the idea was that she ended up misunderstanding enough of her morality teachings to fill a season of a really cringe-y sitcom.
Hyper-conservative morality doesn’t always mean hyper-strict parents. I have a “friend” who’s hyper-conservative – the type of conservative who anyone with any sort of training in science would decry as anti-science, who believes global warming is a conspiracy, etc – but she loves bands that my comparatively liberal parents would find questionable, and she loves anime and stuff
Could be that her parents aren’t as strict as Joyce’s. The “raging fundie” part of her character seems to be more personality than upbringing. You get the feeling she’d be annoying and hypocritical about basically anything.
Not even religious family is that crazy. In fact, I remember Willis mentioning Mary was mostly all right. Mary probably never learned anime is evil, and if there are any unchristian qualities on the ones she likes, she probably learned by herself how to rationalize it (like she does with Reagan).
Eh, it’s not uncommon. My friends growing up were mostly all raised by ultra fundie families, but love of anime was common, because that’s what all the nerds liked. My ultra-fundie roommate in college was a super big Naruto fan when he wasn’t praying over my bed in the middle of the night over my paganism (at the time) and my love of metal.
Makes sense to me. Orochimaru is Satan, because snakes, and Naruto/insert favorite character here prostrate themselves before the Lord, and/or meet the author’s Super Cool Original Character who will Show Them The Ways Of Christianity.
Also Amara and Michelle are just cousins because cousin friendships mean a lot or… something. I’m not sure that one Christian Sailor Moon fic I found once ever got to the Outers.
I mean, that’s basically what was done to Norse Myth (And is the version of it you learned, assuming you don’t have access to a time machine), so I presume you don’t think you’re kidding.
And yeaaaah making HaruMichi be cousins made the whole thing worse. Even among people who didn’t know they were gay, everyone thought they were gay – just also incestuous.
I remember during a bout of 3AM insomnia as a teenager encountering one that was about mechas with laser swords, and the good mechas were fighting to spread the word of god while the bad mechas were agents of the devil. And like all of the good mechas would recite bible passages whenever they attacked and the bad mechas spoke in a cartoonish parody of accents that WASPY white Protestant America wouldn’t like (there was one who was queer-coded, one who had a stereotypical Jewish accent, could go on…. but basically it was all of the racism and homophobia. And how they packed racism and homophobia into a show about giant robots where none of the characters were human I don’t know but they managed), and there was one female robot on the show who was drawn to have robot-boobs and robot-curves and kept getting deceived by the bad robots and needing to be led “back to the way of light” by the leader of the good robots.
Oh, and the good robots, when they powered up, formed a giant cross. Because of course they did.
I think it was made for Christian families who have kids who are into Transformers and Gundam type stuff to have something Jeebus approved.
(… I watched it for an hour and a half, laughing incredulously and saying stuff like, “What the hell am I even watching?” because to my sleep-deprived brain, it was the funniest shit ever)
It was Quick Draw McGraw yelling “I will MAIL you a Dawg Bisket!” That did it for me and my then-roommate. We had our entire circle of friends saying that for months!
I want to be an evil gay black Jewish giant mecha when I grow up.
I want to know if she has a Mary the Hedgehog OC
I was wondering if anyone else remembered the hilarious and disturbing Shortpacked! strips after Willis discovered that particularly bizarre part of the generally bizzare Sonic fandom
Oops, just checked out those strips and apparently it was a particularly disturbing piece of christian Scooby Doo fanart that set off that particular sequence.
All fundamentalists are not cut with the same cutter. Mary’s beliefs, rather than being the result of immersion and constant reinforcement like Joyce’s, may have thrived amongst the mainstream filth as a bastion of truth and therefore despite having a similar belief/faith, has a distinct (and more recognizable) meme set than Joyce.
“It’s morning in America”…
And I, like Roz, was wondering the same thing.
Also, I like how her parents’ crime of divorce counts against Robin, like she has control or influence over that. Sins of the father, huh.
Yeah, that one really sticks in my craw. I’m not at all surprised that she’s using that argument, though, as she’s proven to be so morally bankrupt. I’m now rather curious what Mary’s family situation is like.
I think Willis said somewhere recently that her parents are together and aren’t *quite* as far-gone hateful as she is; they just somehow did a spectacular job screwing up in raising this kid.
Sometimes kids rebel by going in a very different direction from their parents. Or going crazier into a certain thing.
My oldest brother was a bit like Mary. My parents were not strict fundamentalists while we were growing up. He was pretty clearly not actually devout, but used it as a kind of shield. “If I’m clearly so holy, nobody will notice how horrible I am.” To be fair, though, my brother was a bit more diplomatic. If you are clearly ax-crazy like Mary, they will look to see what wrong you’ve done.
It’s a fundie thing.
Where divorce is a sign of a broken home and broken homes screw up kids, ergo any kid of a divorce can be safely looked down upon and bullied for being the product of a broken home and therefore less “moral” than the kids whose parents are in a hateful downward spiral but nonetheless still together.
Add to this all the other reasons a family may be deemed less “moral” and you have a school environment and overall community rife with bullying and petty displays of familial oneupmanship.
Ironic that divorce rates are high – the highest in the US? – across the bible belt.
They were clearly unworthy of the sanctity of marriage!
“She’s a fraud because your parents are divorced.”
“She’s not even married, and at thirty that’s… conspicuous.”
Impressive Mary, you just managed to out-Mary yourself even to someone who expects from you nothing but Mary-ing. You are REALLY being awful this morning.
Congratulations, you’re a fundamentalist bigot even beyond my wildest dreams of fundamentalist bigotry.
That’s the problem with fundamentalist bigotry. There’s *always* someone worse.
It’s like reverse dragon ball
Every new Mary appearance is her new worst appearance.
I mean this is less actively evil than the Carla stuff or her maniacal plotting outside Ruth’s door and blackmail, but at the same time it’s just “Oh. Yep. That shouldn’t surprise me as a belief because I’m familiar enough with these types to see why, but still the breadth of Mary’s Judginess never fails to astound me.”
Eh, that type was pretty common where I grew up. And just as awful. And there’s no doubt that the unmarried slight is 100% about assuming her to be a lesbian, which is also assumed by the fact that she’s working and not as a hate group coordinator.
No doubt whatsoever. Mary probably thinks The Handmaid’s Tale is a good idea (or would if she was allowed to read it, which obviously she wouldn’t be since it’s science fiction and y’know presented as a dystopia where Serena Grace is unhappy with it too).
I’m familiar enough with fundie types to set my expectations for her appropriately low, but every so often I’m just like “Wow. Another thing she disapproves of.” because even if I objectively know divorce is frowned upon by them because hahaha women having agency outside their Chosen Man it’s still one of those things I’ve never actually experienced myself so I’m like “Oh. Yeah. That is A Thing, isn’t it.” All the many many ways people fail Mary’s standards of Goodness, it’s hard to predict them all.
(I should probably note that while I’ve been exposed to fundamentalists, the religious breakdown of my family is culturally-but-for-the-most-part-not-super-serious Catholics on my dad’s side, Pennsylvania Dutch Anabaptists on my mom’s side, and both sides are either “pretty chill about these issues and I think always have been” – my maternal grandmother was supported through both her divorces and they liked her third husband – or calmed down around the point their grandchild was marrying a Catholic/non-Catholic because they then realized ‘but otherwise they’re pretty much perfect’.)
Pretty common where I grew up, too. I’m close enough to 30 with neither kids nor marriage (nor any inclination towards either) and with a career in a male-dominated field that certain people back home don’t allow their daughters to speak with me.
As someone who is a lapsed catholic. I wonder what is wrong with that.
Protestantism, particularly fundamentalist, evangelic, etc., has a long history of hating the crap out of Catholics. You know, they’re “the anti-Christ”, Whores of Babylon, etc. etc. type stuff.
Those papists pray to Mary and the saints like they’re gods. Good down-to-earth Protestants reject them and their greedy churches and statues, and reject their tradition in favor of scripture alone. Only Jesus has the power to save, those bishops and the pope or whatever are frauds.
Or so I’ve heard. Lapsed Catholic myself, as well.
That’s pretty much it from what I can remember.
I was raised Protestant but because of Catholic family I went through a lot of the Catholic traditions as well. So I know how some of the more exaggerated people on both sides can be.
Just to note – I myself have no problem with Catholics or Protestants or whatever. Mostly because I left religion entirely but that’s a story for another time.
Yeah pretty much that. I remember getting witnessed to at a college campus in Florida by a pair of very naive idealistic teenagers. When I said I was raised Catholic, they said pretty much the only thing they knew about Catholicism is the veneration of Mary.
Nevermind that I’m now a weird humanist atheist who looks at the conservation of energy as a source of beauty and meaning in the universe. That left them boggled.
From the fundie view point the Catholic Church is the “whore of Babylon” mentioned in revelations. Basically, the narrative they tell us that Constantine hijacked the early church and secretly made it evil paganism while the “real Christians” were pushed underground until Luther’s reformation made it safe for them to emerge again. So basically, Catholics secretly worship multiple pagan gods who were just renamed “saints”, and the papacy sucks Satan’s evil cock. As a Jesuit educated Catholic, I find the idea laughable and easily debunked with even a lit bit of historical study and the barest attempt in order to actually understand Catholic theology, but there it is.
All of the above. Fundies hate catholicism, sometimes even more than they hate other groups unless they’re in the midst of hating another group they dislike. But there’s a lot of belief in the Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist set that Catholics are literally pagans who worship a false idol in the pope, who may or may not be the literal Anti-Christ.
And it’s really hard for them to recognize how hateful and bigoted their views are. I had a few friends spit out the most hateful stuff against catholics back in the day, taking special glee in the church molestation scandal because their church sold it as some ecclesiastical goal against the “other team” who then were shocked when their Catholic friend wasn’t particularly fond of their cheering.
It’s worth noting that pre-Vatican II, the Catholics weren’t very fond of Protestants, either. They were very reclusive to other churches, scared of the influence of their heresies, and Catholics were forbidden to step inside other Christian churches without good reason. Vatican II started an outreach period for the next few decades which made them much more open to the world and other religions, but I’m sure older Protestants are still suspicious of the older days when Catholicism must have seemed more cultish to them, with the elaborate dress and foreign language masses and so on and so forth. Just as much as older Catholics sometimes dislike the Church for abandoning all those things.
It’s always a good to remember how much Vatican II changed, and how much this was (in my opinion) for the better.
It’s all Catholic to me.
Protestants do not hate Catholics more than atheists, as a general rule. The Catholic church is, after all, playing the same game as the Protestant churches, they’ve just been at it a lot longer and have gotten more established. Atheists, on the other hand, want to end the game.
My father was a Catholic kicked out of the church for getting divorced. He wasn’t bitter, and he answered questions for me when I asked.
Imo:
The Catholics do worship statues representing their Saints. And if read as written, ‘place no idols before me”, this is not being followed.
The blood and flesh of Christ in Communion, sounds like cannibalism to me.
The Bible states that -read it -when Peter came to Jesus and said he would found his “church upon a rock”, it was Jesus who said to him “Get thee behind me Satan.” Read a bit deeper about the theology and discover that the end of the world was expected when Jesus’s last disciple died. Jesus was not looking to found a dynasty regardless of the popular beliefs.
Another thing I found odd: the Pope is the direct decendent of Peter and therefore this makes him the bodily representative of God. Sounds very Pagan to me.
The Church sat back and took no actions against the Nazi in WWII when they knew what the Nazi’s were doing to Homosexuals, Jewish, Teachers, and disables citizens. This was a very powerful force, they admit they should have done something and didn’t.
The Church did very well stamping out any religions (and yes Pagans are a religion) by just moving in, destroying their temples and building their own: by making the other religious holidays their own: Oster/Easter, Harvest Home/Halloween and more.
Finally: imo there is nothing more stupid then making healthy men stay celebate their entire lives. (The church discovered early that supporting a family of religious in their churches was expensive: so, no familys).
And today one of the biggest most terrible things laid on their doorstep is the coverup of the crimes some of these priests have commited.
No, I have no love for any religion. They all have their problems. There are many who try to live right by their rules. But we are all human. We pretty much end up like Mary or the go to church on Christmas and Easter sort.
Uh, no, there certainly isn’t worship of saints. Catholicism does believe in ghosts, though, and that people can watch the world from the afterlife. Logical conclusions from an immortal soul. And so they think it’s a good idea to ask holy people that God likes to pray for them, like asking a favor. (And if you think the statues are bad, you clearly haven’t read about the relics.)
Yeah, transubstantiation is kinda screwy. But the alternative is that Jesus was lying when he said “this is my body, this is my blood”, so it’s a curious case where Catholics are more fundamentalist than the fundies. Ain’t that interesting?
Okay, no, I think you need to re-read that. Matthew 16:18: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” What’s Peter’s Greek name? Petros. What’s Greek for rock? Petra. He said “You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church.” And then he goes on and talks about how the next few things are gonna go, because that’s how God wills it, and Peter says “I’d never let that happen” and Jesus is like “shut up fool, only Satan opposes God’s plans. Not only will all this happen, but you will deny me three times before the cock crows.”
Uh, the Pope isn’t like literally descended from Peter. It’s an elected position. The current Pope is from Argentina.
I see your Hitler’s Pope book and raise you Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Hear out both sides before you judge.
Well, yes, this was standard practice of the missionaries, don’t say “No! You’re wrong!”, say “Yes, but…” and then add the premises of your faith to theirs. It lets them make the faith their own, and keeps it from fading with time. And it worked, once areas turned Christian, they stayed Christian. Really, what’s the problem as long as the right supernatural entities are being respected?
I dispute that Halloween is based on anything, though, trust me, the Catholic invented stuff is much crazier than anything that came before it. Ghosts flying around and threatening to eat children because the next day was All Hallow’s Day (and Halloween is All Hallow’s Evening) and that’s when the dead saints would come out and chase away the evil spirits or something. Dia de los Muertos is an equivalently, but differently, crazy take on the same thing in Spanish-speaking areas.
Why would you think that a church couldn’t support a priest’s family? It’s not like the Church has ever really been strapped for cash. There’s a theological basis to it which is more likely than that, but I also think part of it has to do with the influence of sects of early Christianity believing that the world was soon to end (as you alluded to), and so there’s no point in having sex, subjecting children to the end of the world was a bad thing. Clearly this wasn’t sustainable, but I think the priesthood was influenced by it in the end.
Another thing is that priestly celibacy was not a requirement until the middle of the eleventh century, when noble dynasties were beginning to take power. It was a way of making sure a bishop wouldn’t have a son he might want the bishopric to go to, or that a local noble family didn’t turn a church into an estate. However, Eastern Rite Catholic Churches and the Orthodox churches do actually allow priests to be married. There have also been cases of married Protestant ministers becoming priests and continuing to be married, so the days of a celibate clergy may be numbered.
There’s mentions of celibacy as early as the 4th century, and one of the Eastern churches that decided to do away with celibacy in the 5th century made mention that celibacy was an ancient custom by then. So it certainly wasn’t started in the 11th century. It was definitely fairly lax around then, though, because for a few years the Popes had outright harems. That wasn’t considered pious, but I mean, even the Dalai Lama got away with it, people aren’t good at standing up to spiritual authorities without repeated abuse. I imagine the renewed enforcement around then was because of sheer red faced embarrassment.
Most definitely. Although apparently some people didn’t get the message because over four centuries later we got the Borgias. Still nowhere as bad as the Cadaver Trial, but still pretty bad.
Wow, how had I never heard of this one!? 😀
Beautiful work, guys. Bring the rotting body to court.
Celibacy as a practice is as old as the Church, but it only became mandatory for priests in the 11th century.
I’m an agnostic Jew, but a practicing one who’s decidedly on the traditional side. Don’t feel it’s my place to comment on Catholicism here, but I would like to speak up in defense of religion and religiousness. It is possible to take one’s own religion seriously and practice regularly and honestly believe in the ultimate rightness of it without using it to hurt others -so long as you retain the awareness that others might not (and, indeed, probably don’t) believe the same thing; that they do not think you are helping them by trying to bring them into the fold -and if you RESPECT that, and leave your religion out of their lives.
Freshman year of college, I had a Baptist roommate who honestly believed that I was (and will be -we’re still in touch) going to hell. This came up once, by accident, in nine months (and towards the end of it, at that), and we shared a bedroom, interacted mostly with each other, and regularly discussed our respective religions. We both went to our own services every week. We both use our religions as stepping stones in the larger community to try and do good. I think it’s fairly reasonable to say that neither of us is a “twice-a-year” member of our respective faith, and I can say for sure that E is NOTHING like Mary. I don’t have the same level of perspective regarding myself, but I like to think that my belief of “my religion is between me and the god I don’t know if I believe in, and yours is not and hopefully never will be my business” is a different stance than the options presented above.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that religiousness/spirituality isn’t a scale of “apathetic about faith” to “asshole”. Being an asshole is on a scale of “nice/jerk”. Religiousness/spirituality is on numerous scales of its own like “practicing/not” “questioning/certain” “traditional/adaptive”, which should be of importance to an individual and whomever they choose of their own volition to authorize as a spiritual …ally? advisor? -not sure what to use there, but hopefully the sense conveys.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge the points that you bring up about some very bad things that have been done by the church in the past. It is important to remember that these things happened in order to hopefully never repeat the horrors that have been caused. Because you’re right, every religion does have it’s problems. But we can attempt to fix those problems. Secondly, I’m a little surprised that you did not bring up the Inquisition. That’s normally one of the first completely justifiable critiques others have of the Catholic Church. Thirdly, I would kinda like to explain the thing with saints from the perspective of how I was taught about it. Catholics do not actually worship saints. Whenever saints are prayed to, we are asking for their intercession on our behalf. We are, in a sense asking for the Saint to ask God on our behalf because we think a request or thanks means more when coming from a saint.
Most of the inquisition’s atrocities were held in secular courts, not the ones held by the Church itself, the Church had rules about torture which basically came to “only on those healthy enough to survive it, only for 15 minutes, and a trained physician must be there to tell the torturer ‘okay stop now.'” And the inquisitor was effectively a defense attorney for the accused heretic.
You have a very different definition of ‘effectively’, ‘defense’, or ‘attorney’ than me. Possibly all three. Or maybe you left out some words such as “seen as”.
My take on it is that medieval Catholicism – back when it was “the only game in town” – often was [i]fantastically[/i] corrupt, as giant entrenched monopolies like that tend to get, and that at least some of the Reformation was an entirely justifiable reaction to that. But as inevitably happens when you get a lot of people together and emotions are running high, some took it further: it wasn’t just that some Church officials were sinful profiteers, no, the whole thing was inherently false and capital-E Evil, a tool of/in league with Satan himself. So the original, factual grievances got lost in the din of accusations of idolatry, ritual cannibalism, etc as the new church(es) worked at establishing and building up their own (brand) identity as Not Those Guys (who are Evil and Wrong).
Wait, Mary initialed that picture of Ronnie. That’s not a poster she got somewhere. She actually drew Ronald Reagan fanart.
You say that like you’re surprised.
Honestly, I thought all of Mary drew was pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog prostrating himself before a cross.
Those are all just off-panel.
You know I could actually see Mary being an unironic fan of Sonichu.
Chis-Chan is too trans for her.
On the one hand, I am sad to think of Mary as a Sonic fan. On the other hand, when I was a Sonic forum moderator, we had a fundamentalist Christian member writing Christian Sonic fanfic, so real life already makes me sad.
*Writing with the goal to evangelize to other Sonic fans.
She also draws this regular comic that “pays homage” to The Oatmeal.
She draws too well to author that particular rip-off.
So Mary hates everyone? Or is her hate selective with blinders on?
I’d guess a bit of both. She doesn’t hate everyone, just everyone that falls outside of her very, very narrow view of what people should be (Protestant, nuclear family with no divorces, traditional gender roles, etc).
Yup, the theology she was raised with is very very hateful to anyone outside a very limited scope.
The irony is that she’s essentially just Joyce if instead of going “um, maybe my beliefs have flaws” she went “ah, hell yeah, I’m going to master the fuck out of ‘morality'”.
“I will make morality my bongo.
It just weird how someone brought up the fact that Robin and Mary support the same party the day right before this strip came out.
Clearly this is yet another example of David Willis’ time-travelling, reader-trolling, comic-editing ways.
Seeing Mary squirm at her own cognitive dissonance is easily the best thing.
roz could add a comment about ronald reagan’s acting
Not even Republicans pretend that Reagan was a good actor. There are limits.
They do, however, like to say actors should keep their mouths shut when it comes to matters political.
…That is, until they run for President.
I’m pretty sure they only mean that for actors who aren’t Republicans.
Another question, isn’t that level of devotion kinda breaking the whole “graven images” commandment?
Wait……. Her shirt “more him, less me” what’s that mean?
I hope it’s referring to God.
It’s still creepy as fuck that way, but less creepy than if it’s not.
I looked it up, it’s a bible verse. Still though, some of the interpretations. To me, it sounds like by giving more of your life to God, you give less to your own life. That just sounds like giving up.
That’s a standard Christian shirt. “He must increase and I must decrease” I believe is the actual quote from the Bible, but I have no clue where.
That’s sad
Not really if you believe in a life of service and justice.
Yet what she does isn’t Justice. It’s bullying.
More God, less Mary.
Actually, I think literally everyone would approve of that trade.
While I hate Mary with a passion, the whole “giving yourself over to god” thing just sounds like giving up.
If you assume God is good, not really.
Nope, I don’t care how good god hypothetically is. Everyone deserves their own life. I learned that the hard way.
If the God in question was Cthulhu, It’d probably still be better than Mary.
How so exactly?
To me, it’s the equivalent of just handing the reigns over to someone else. It’s truly coasting through life, letting someone else be in control
Submission to (rightful, because how could it be otherwise?) authority.
Humility before a higher power.
etc etc.
Authoritarian religions and cultures tend to be fairly successful, not least because they tend to get along well with each other – a secular leader is going to approve of a religion that teaches its followers to do as they’re told and and not cause trouble – until one side or the other decides that they want to be the higher authority / senior partner / “more equal” in the arrangement.
If I remember right from old friends, the bullshit goes “God is what matters most and a human’s purpose in life is to give glory to God in all things and to serve his will in all things. As man’s judgment is sinful and prone to deception at the hands of Satan, one must be careful to avoid serving one’s own interests in any manner and instead just prioritize a long list of hateful ideologies and small-minded suburban drivel in order to keep oneself pure for the upcoming Rapture”.
If this sounds like the Mad Libs of a garbage fire, you’re not far wrong.
If man’s judgement is sinful, does it not fall to reason that man will chose the wrong being to worship, since that comes of man’s judgement?
Yeesh, Mary is suspicious of thirty-year old single ladies.
Keep poking holes in her belief balloon, Roz.
Unfortunately Joyce probably holds similar beliefs.
Joyce has been through an awful lot already and she’s actually (though misguidedly) nice.
Mary’s attitude comes off like she has a piece of food stuck in her throat perpetually.
Joyce is genuinely nice and concerned with the wellbeing of others.
Mary is concerned with being right and winning and only uses the wellbeing of others (in the form of saving souls) as a cover.
Mary is concerned with being perceived as right.
If she were actually concerned with *being* right, she would behave very differently.
She’s concerned with being right, in that she’s concerned with her assumption that she’s right and whether other people acknowledge it.
Joyce’s beliefs have probably moved on to “poor woman…only ever met Walky’s in her life, not someone worth marrying”.
I mean, given she’s probably the same general breed of fundamentalist as Joyce, women’s purpose is
1. To have babies and teach them in the Ways Of Christ as soon as possible
and
2. To only have sex in loving God-sanctioned marriage to a Proper Christian Boy.
So if Robin’s not married, either she’s having lots of premarital hanky panky (which is of course BAD) or she’s not interested in having sex with dudes, which can only mean -LE GASP!- LESBIANISM.
(Asexuality does not exist as a concept to these people, because humans at their core are of course Lustful Sin-Beasts and it is our duty to Go Forth And Multiply. Dating, even without sex, and it just Not Working Out is also unacceptable, because as The Woman you should bend on all things to your Moral Authority The Man Who Knows Best For You Because God Talks Via Penis or something. Being more interested in your career is unacceptable because that’s going against your duty as a woman.)
(Fundamentalists can be seriously scary.)
Well don’t forget that Homosexuality Is A Choice because any gay fundamentalists repressed it hard and assume everyone feels the same way, chalking it up to those dang Lustful Sin-Beasts again.
Aaah, yes. Can’t believe I forgot THAT little kernel of wonderfulness.
This is also where we get the whole “trans people are sex predators” thing because OBVIOUSLY it can’t be “trans people are actually the gender they say they are”, clearly it’s a choice and they’re using it as an excuse to Indulge In Their Lustful Sin-Beastfulness or whatever and probably perverts who get off on wearing Inappropriate Clothing as well. (Are kilts considered any different from skirts or is that like Insidious Catholicism or something?)
Kilts are very VERY different from skirts, they ARE mens’ attire, women do not wear them (at least, not historically, modern times is modern and awesome).
Of course the feeling you’ll get on this argument will be a lot stronger if you’re talking to an actual Scottish person. And of course, sadly, most non-Scottish who are the type of christian with their heads up their arses will be blatantly unaware of this, and misinterpret them as skirts, and on seeing a man wearing a kilt, go on an “STICK TO YOUR GENDER” rampage like the uneducated nitwits they are.
But the truth is they are strictly men’s attire in origin, as much as top hats and spats.
😞I wonder what they’d think about traditional Japanese garments called “hakama”? 😕
Those appear to be pants, even though they’re wide enough to look like skirts at a glance. So Mary would probably be ok with them.
That’s just ^one^ kind (it doesn’t really look so much like a skirt when the legs are wrapped_up below the knees – for stuff like farmwork, or wearing in combat [under armor]).
The ^other^ one actually looks more like a long skirt (in spite of looking otherwise identical).
A samurai wouldn’t ordinarily need to wear either kind – unless he wanted to make sure he was ready for combat (like, say, duels against other swordsmen).
Horrible bigotry aside, “sin-beast” is a glorious word.
Ohhh, that’s what tim gueguen was talking about.
I have limited experience with fundamentalists to be honest and just find them too unbelievable to be true (and yet they are).
Lapsed Catholic here *show of hand*
All of this.
Special dispensation can be given to select women who “serve God” in the workplace by either serving as out-and-out Christian Dominionist candidates for public office or as major figures in anti-feminist hate groups, but otherwise, any working woman is a sign of sin and potential sinful practices such as lesbianism.
On the subject of asexuality, not only are they completely unaware of it, but when someone who is ace brings it up, all the arguments of “no breeding until marriage” become “be fruitful and multiply” and “you are committing violence to the Kingdom of Heaven” for not rushing into a marriage and breeding like you are “supposed to”.
I am so glad I got through my bad religious brainspace before I realized I wasn’t just ‘probably kinda gay’, but gay and ace. Because man, the shit my brain would’ve gone through to try and make sense of THAT one in its self-abusing neuroses.
I’m glad too. *hugs*
It was bad enough just growing up queer and ace in Fundieville without also believing in it.
Or poke holes in her.
Strange. It’s almost… nice to see Mary this way. I mean, she’s still an unpleasant person to her bitter, self-obsessed core (speaking of which, nice t-shirt, Mary) but here she’s not really doing anything… evil. She’s just bickering with her roommate.
And I’m… kind of enjoying her presence right now? And kind of want to see her and Roz butt heads more?
I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. Willis stop this is too confusing.
Don’t worry. If you wait long enough, she’ll do something utterly awful and you can go right back to hating her.
I mean, I still hate her. I’m just not immediately getting that violent urge to throw my computer out the window every time I see her right now.
I guess it’s just that I’m so used to her being The Absolute Worst that her just being An Asshole is kind of refreshing. Makes her more human (terrible human, but still human) and less of a black hole through which we can funnel our hatred.
… Nope, still profoundly uncomfortable.
Well, the last time anyone reacted like that to Mary was during the early days of the Mary-Carla war, and we all know how that ended up. So you’ll probably be wanting to throw your computer out the window before you know it.
So a Mary palate cleansing?
I mean I agree, but c’mon we couldn’t have a random old groundskeeper on campus who just looks suspiciously similar to Ronald Reagan?
…okay now that I’ve typed it out it starts to look silly >_>
I feel your pain. I’ve been secretly hoping for a cameo from someone who bears a striking resemblance to the supposed appearance of the historical Jesus.
It always amuses how much Reagan is continued to be revered as some sort of patron saint of conservatives, not because of the numerous flaws of his presidency (Iran Contra anybody?) but because of how many of his positions they conspicuously ignore, such as being incredibly pro-immigration (dude granted amnesty for over 3 million undocumented immigrants), or his pro-choice positions (he said he would pass greater restrictions while in office, but did nothing about it, and meanwhile greatly loosened restrictions on abortions while he was governor of California.)
It’s always funny to watch people struggle to justify the “Last Great President” having so clearly liberal positions.
Not to mention negotiating with the Soviet Union.
DIPLOMACY!? *hiss* Begone with thy fouling of PURE PRINCIPLES.
Nixon opened relations with the CCP and started the EPA.
Hell, the republicans of ’92 proposed a Public Option of health insurance.
The modern republicans are pretty fucking far right, even just the ‘moderates’ of their party.
There are no moderate Republicans, at least not on a national level.
I recall listening in on a conversation between two R party members (it was a noisy bar, and they raised their voices) on how to get rid of “the sneaky moderate wing” (exact words) of the Republican party. This would have been during the Clinton presidency.
Scare Quotes were there for a reason, yeah. Not surprised by that quote, given what keeps happening to less crazy folks /still/.
At the beginning of his presidency, he was openly hostile to the USSR. He endorsed the hard-rights position of the day about strength and all that rubbish. Out of this desire to show strength, came the NATO exercise Able Archer 84.
The purpose of Able Archer was to have an all-countries, all-arms demonstration of NATO strength. The kicker was, they did not tell the Soviets that it was starting.
So, when the USSR heard the radio chatter and saw the troop movements, they really thought that a war was about to start. I think it got as far as the Soviets starting a weapons launch sequence when some mid-level commander began to question the whole thing.
When Reagan realised that the Soviets were more scared of the West than he was of them, and that he’d almost started WW3 by accident, he became a little more … conciliatory.
He and Brezhnev almost banned nuclear weapons COMPLETELY until our own bongo, Thatcher, put a spoke in the works.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Over in Shortpacked!, Robin got Reagan to record a “posthumous” video supporting her proposition to ban cancer forever (and force Ethan and another guy to smooch every day), which promptly caused conservative radio to declare Reagan a traitor to the Reaganesque principles of the GOP. Probably just the way it would happen now if Reagan were to come back and push some of those positions.
Seriously, if you look at their policies, Obama and Hillary Clinton are both to the RIGHT of Reagan. But that doesn’t matter, because the window’s moved.
Some policies. The window has moved, but it’s moved in different directions on different issues.
Obama and Clinton are not to the right of Reagan on LGBT issues, to pick one example relevant to this comic.
It terrifies me to no end that there are now candidates who ARE to the right of Ronald “AIDS Who?” Reagan on LGBTQIA+ issues. c.c
Hyperbole, but yeah. They’ve done stuff that would have made them look like conservative-leaning moderates back in the eighties. It’s just that now, one can be seen as an archliberal anti-authority candidate for suggesting that we should maybe not abolish all taxes on the rich until next year. =/
Seriously, you’re wrong. Reagan may have signed tax increases from Congress but that was after cutting them, and he campaigned on low taxes and smaller government. Earlier he campaigned against Medicare as “socialized medicine”. He busted unions.
Obama and Hillary are well to his left.
I’m with thejeff on this one. They have policies that are more moderate or conservative than Reagan did, which is what I was getting at. I maaay have engaged in hyperbole, but when it comes to, you know, drone striking, trade embargoing, couple of other things? Anyway, one can’t deny that the window has shifted a great deal.
He didn’t have drones to strike with. He did invade Grenada. He tightened sanctions on Cuba and imposed them on Nicaragua. He *opposed* sanctions on apartheid South Africa. He supported the School of the Americas, training people in torture and other evil shit. Iran-Contra. As you note, his response to AIDS was utterly shitty. His Secretary of the Interior was James ‘screw the environment, the Rapture is coming!’ Watts.
Yes, the window has shifted: the Democratic candidates support higher taxes on the rich, gay marriage and other gay rights, universal health care…
Let’s not forget his stance on gun control.
“We have to prevent black people from owning firearms, because they aren’t trustworthy”
Only way to get Republicans to vote for it.
Wait, did she just confess to being a monster?
I’m glad I’m not the only one interpreting it that way, although it would be a shocking moment of self-awareness.
Now I get it, she’s the teenage female version of Stan from American Dad!
I was thinking more in the lines of Sam the eagle from the Muppet Show.
I don’t remember Sam the eagle being a blatant hypocrite.
The drawing of the girl under Reagan makes me think of Lucky Penny by Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, although it’s probably not. I can’t imagine Mary approving of them.
Fine, but I’m still holding out hope for Historical Jesus turning up in the background someday, completely unacknowledged.
Wait, Roz has a little sister?
Riley,, she’s a 12yo who loves cereals.
Possibly the one true character that is a parallel of us all before any sort of stuff happened to make us into a Roz or a Mary.
Well yeah, cereal is awesome.
Those that do not like cereal are not humans at all
Yes, Riley – the only true respite from drama the Dumbiverse has left after Willis started mixing in drama into Dina plotlines.
Yes, we’ve seen her, too, during the arc with the families visiting (iirc). She and Dina got along fabulously during breakfast.
I’d like to see more of her in the comic.
Ah…I get this reprehensible glow of joy when hypocrisy is called out.
The coloring on today’s and yesterday’s strips has been really pretty!
Please tell me Mary’s about to go up in a flame like that one car fire from a few years back. Like a hate-flame just because nothing’s going her way. She’s lost to Carla, she’s losing to Roz, next: Amber/Amazi-Girl and then it ends with Mike. She’s going to end up burning out in a hate plague before she even comes close to hitting Mike’s buttons.
For everyone who thinks Reagan was anything else than a slightly more charismatic George W. Bush, go read The Clothes Have No Emperor.
Also, watch How To Survive A Plague. It’s on Netflix. You’ll need a box of tissues.
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2124803/
Reagan was the Trump of his time.
“Make America great again”.
Yep, exactly!
*checking tags for other strips about Ronald Reagan*
And he was an actor and acting is a sinful occupation.
He was also a registered Democrat for a considerable portion of his life.
(My Father likes to complain about him being too liberal)
I know this is stupid, but what bothers me is that (excluding the Reagan bit), Mary is more ideologically consistent than real life fundies. Trump has won the fundamentalist vote over the other conservatives, even Cruz, despite being a thrice married, profane, reality show, tiny-handed monstrosity.
If you mean less than half of them, sure.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/march-web-only/actually-most-evangelicals-dont-vote-trump.html
Particularly interesting is that regular church attendance makes you less likely to vote for Trump. And Fundamentalists really stress church attendance more than other Evangelicals.
That’s why I say that the thing that worries me is not the Right, who have lost a lot of their coalition, but those on the Left who won’t vote because Sanders didn’t win.
… So it’s the “Christian Identity” folks who are voting Trump?
“Less than half of them” is the norm. With that many candidates, carrying a majority of any one group is one helluva feat. He placed strongly in Missouri and North Carolina. And I’m referring to Evangelicals in the particular here.
Trump got less than half the votes and still went on to win, in general. Because of course – there’s so many candidates that a plurality is the best you can reasonably expect. They preferred Cruz, but he wasn’t THAT much better – he was ‘only’ a theocrat, and one helluva motivated theocrat, not a fascist. And ‘only’ a theocrat is still pretty fucking bad, especially in a cosmopolitan country where there are people of many beliefs – especially given that to enshrine a particular Christianity means turning on every other variant of Christianity (and you can’t enshrine ‘Christianity’ because that’s too broad to be meaningful)
Minor correction: He placed strongly with evangelicals in general, but those are the ones your article mentions as proof they don’t support him.
trlkly: Give the Bernie-Bros some time. The vast majority will come around. Emotions run high in the primaries and lots of people get caught up in how horrible the primary opponent is and swear to sit it out.
The polling I’ve seen suggests Democrats are actually less divided than in 2008 – when the Hillary supporters detested Obama. As I said yesterday, remember how the PUMAs swept McCain to victory? Nah, me neither.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1:I love this first little paragraph by Roz. Given this and her response to Riley when Riley was complaining about her posters, I really think that Roz has an impressive talent for being able to converse and think when still blearily asleep.
And I love the construction. She has no doubts on what Mary most despises about her and Mary has not been remotely quiet about her condemnations of Roz’s sex life and her hopes for her to be “punished” for it through a pregnancy (which is the pro-life viewpoint in a nutshell, they don’t care about kids, they just want those who have sex in “unapproved” ways to be punished by the pain of childbirth to “teach them a lesson”). But Riley? Mary has no reason other than the proximity to Roz, so underlining it and calling out Mary’s hate-based theology is a lovely little verbal play.
Panel 2: This has been hashed out above, but it’s really worth underlining just how much fundies hate Catholics. Like, Catholics are literally not considered the same religion to fundie types, so supporting Congresswoman DeSanto might as well be like voting for a muslim or a jew or a pagan to Mary.
And it’s also worth underlining that that “conspicuous” most certainly means “dyke” in Mary’s usage. There’s a common argument in fundie circles that those who are “confused about a woman’s role” by trying to become powerful politicians or work outside the home are also “confused about the sexual dynamics of men and women” and thus more likely to “choose lesbianism”. This is also why Hillary Clinton has been assumed to be a lesbian by the fundie community since at least 1991.
Panel 3: And it looks like hearing a rant about a religion she may or may not even still feel any connection to is where Roz draws the line on putting up with Mary’s crap. Rest assured she’s been “treated” to many variations of “catholics are the heralds of the Anti-Christ” rants before today.
Panel 4:Mary sucks at not walking straight into a trap.
Panel 5: That face. That face is what cognitive dissonance looks like.
Panel 6: Facts make Mary very angry due to their well-known liberal bias.
What’s so bad about Paganism, Mary? Mad because they won’t be going to Hell?
It depends. If they don’t die in battle, they do go to Hel. Baldur has mitigated things I understand.
If I recall some of my Irish paganism right, basically when you died you went to visit Donn’s Hall – basically like visiting grandpa before a long trip – and then headed off to the otherworldl/be reborn. Which is a pretty nice view of death, really. (Although I have always have had a soft spot for the brand of Gnosticism where you basically die and then have to go and have cage matches with a bunch of angels in order to earn the right to merge with the gnosis.)
That’s only according to Asatru, specifically.
True. They nicely custom-tailor punishments in Hades, though. None of the generic fire and more boulders.
You have to be a gigantic asshole (to the gods) to get a punishment. You just reside as a shade unless the gods REALLY like or hate you – Elysium and I believe Tartarus, respectively.
Panel 6: Hey! Astrology is Biblical! It’s explicitly stated from Genesis 1 onwards that God put the lights (stars) in the sky (er, solid crystaline firmanent spheres encasing the Earth and dividing waters below from waters above, with windows that can be opened to let the rain fall through) to act as signs, and the ability to foretell the future from the stars is echoed over and over again throughout the Bible. Mary should know this if she’d ever read the Bible carefully, with an eye for correcting any errant views she had regarding it!
mary’s gaydar is pretty impressive
almost… conspicuously so…
“What monster isn’t [into Reagan]”
Implying that (she believes) everybody loves Reagan
Oh Mary
Mary is one of those people that doesn’t believe that people don’t believe in God.
Not gonna lie, I would totally watch a parody of Everybody Loves Raymond centred on Ronald Reagan.
It’s only a parody if it isn’t miserably factual.
the cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.
I can’t be the only one amused that the folds of Mary’s shirt effectively cross out the “less” in “less me”.
Lookit dat last panel – I knew it, Mary is a skeleton, someone bonk her on the head with a mace for the XP
But what if we’d rather have our LoVE raise?
I mean, some of us like to get that stat up as much as possible.
This strip is oddly satisfying
Mayhap the divorce was annulled?
Annulment is usually only justified under certain circumstances. For example, remember that whole thing about how marriages must be consummated in order to count?
If a married couple produced no children, then it *could* be argued that the marriage was never consummated and, thus, was never a “true” marriage, in turn justifying annulment.
Stuff like that. Annulments were basically ways to abuse technicalities in order to label a marriage as “false” and thus excuse it – not to actually dissolve a marriage.
I.e. the divorce may be a legal one, but not recognized by the church.
Main justification is incomplete consent. If one of the couple did not intend to remain married til death do them part, then the other is entitled to an annulment. If one of them did not fully understand the ramifications of sacramental marriage, then they are both entitled to an annulment. If one makes getting / obtaining an abortion as a condition of maintaining the marriage, then an annulment is granted. If couples were just getting married to please their families and did not intend a sacramental marriage, then an annulment can be granted. (This happened in my family). Some of that has changed in the last 50 years, but what hasn’t.
These are not technicalities, but go to the core of Catholic understanding of sacramental marriage, as opposed to civil marriage. Many church weddings never ripen into sacramental marriage. Life is like that.
For many Christian denominations, marriage is just civil marriage with some extra trappings, so divorce isn’t that dig a deal. That comes from being the de-facto national religion of the US. Theology follows public opinion.
Subject to a lot of abuse. See Ted Kennedy and Newt Gingrich, whose third wife brought him into the church.
I bet he’s working at Galasso’s Pizza (and subs).
I actually kind of worry that Mary genuinely thinks she’s worthless. Fundamentalist views of women aren’t exactly healthy to hold if your a woman,
The idea that Mary feels the need to hate, demean, or “put back in their place” others because she secretly hates herself or views herself as worthless would be an interesting an entirely plausible insight. The idea that she may be more like a mean fundie Danny than a mean Joyce is actually a little horrifying and heartbreaking to me. And it may be true. But we don’t know. And until we do, I’d rather not empathize with her to much.
To be fair, many fundamentalist women never internalize it but use it against other women. Margaret Atwood talked about the phenomenon in her books and referenced it in the Handmaidens’ Tale.
A “the bullied becomes the bully” trope where the would-be bully terrorizes others in order to prop up their own nonexistent self-esteem?
… I could get behind this for Mary.
I honestly want to see Willis depict that while still making her a shithead.
It never excuses the bully’s behavior or takes away from their being a shithead. It would just make them a (sliiiiiiiiiiiightly) sympathetic shithead.
Of course, if she’s intended to be a straight-up shithead, then Willis is God insofar as this comic goes.
IIRC she was introduced in Roomies as a perfect girl.
Oh, the irony.
“Everyone like me should shut up, except me, because … well, because me.” It’s not exclusive to women fundamentalists. There’s a whole subset of the lecture circuit that’s very lucrative for people who go around telling other people to do things they themselves wouldn’t do with a gun to their head. I personally have had fun watching Phyllis Schlafly make a very well-compensated speech telling an audience of women to go home, get into the kitchen and stay there. Guess somebody’s gotta make the sacrifice, eh?
Honestly, I think it’d be interesting if Mary really is the one who came up with all of this crazy for her family. It’d be interesting if her family were moderate or liberal Christians (or even atheists).
Most of the fundie women I’ve met who are like Mary don’t think they’re worthless, but it’s kind of like the non-fundie sexist argument from biotruth: Women and men are just different, because they are, because god and shut up that’s why. God decreed that women have a certain role and that women exist to help men. However, God also gave women the greatest power in the realm: The power to bring new life, which is a power men don’t have. Therefore, to balance the power, women are subservient in all other things to men, because they get to make babies and men don’t. It’s fair!
(… no really I’ve read essays, plural, by more than one fundie woman arguing that women shouldn’t have the right to vote or work outside the home or go to school or etc because baby-making is their power over society and people should be happy with that)
… also had my father once hand me one written by some US woman Republican under the guise of it being “very interesting” and him wanting me to think about it.
(That was around when I was starting to rebel against the sexism of my upbringing more but I hadn’t yet started actually learning about feminism or what have you but I was starting to say dangerous things like, “I don’t want to ever have kids” and “I want to work in science” and push back more against him and his beliefs… in retrospect, I think that was a not-so-subtle attempt to get me to straighten up and fly right with a female role-model telling me the things he wanted me to believe rather than him or my mother, who I’ve never gotten along with very well. I think he was trying a different approach because it’d become clear that the more he bullied and raged at me to do what he wanted the more I was becoming convinced he was wrong.)
Has anyone yet mentioned that Nancy Reagan was unmarried at 30?
*Searches for the word “Nancy” on this page.*
Nope.
And he apparently had sex outside of marriage with Nancy as their first kid was born well within their first 9 months of marriage.
You know, I wouldn’t mind if the entire rest of the comic was nothing but Roz slowly dismantling Mary while Mary tries to break her mind with illogic.
…and no, it’s totally not because almost all other storylines are incredibly depressing at the moment >_>
Quick Roz, use more discomforting Reagan facts on Mary! Maybe it’ll cause her to explode due to the mental gymnastics she’d have to go through to try and justify everything.
Years back I had this girlfriend. One week I went with her, her mother, and her grandmother to her grandmother’s church.
I was Catholic, she and her mother were protestant, her g-mom was baptist. (I stuck out like a sore thumb as the only white person in the building and got some stares, but the story isn’t so much about that as…)
This preacher gave a big long sermon, and at the end crescendo’d quite a lot into this big speech, forget the exact content of it but it ended with something about the glory of heaven and how all the good people would end up there regardless of faith so long as you were good and all that. But specifically near the end he’s rattling off all these religions and it ended something like this:
“…and the Christians, the protestants and the batptists and the [some other denomination], and the Jewish, and the Buddhist, and the [like two or three other religious denominations], and *pause* some Catholics, will JOIN in the GLORY of…”
And my girlfriend and her mother had a silent mini laugh of hysterics that all these religions were a-ok in their book, but obviously you can’t mention Catholicism without a quick disclaimer.
That’s an awesome story, I lol’d +1
I say as an ex-Catholic
I’ve said this before but, in the end, Mary’s problem is that she’s been raised to be an absolute bigot. Anyone and anything that is outside her cultural sub-group or is not so similar to them that they could be used as a mirror was ‘wrong’ and ‘sinful’.
…guys, I don’t know if Mary’s supposed to be a horrible person. It’s just too subtle.
Maybe she needs to bite the head off a kitten or something? You know, so we are sure?
… We really doing this again? Like… Really?
Someone hold me back.
I know people like her exist IRL, but… she’s just not an interesting character right now. She’s not even really fun to hate, she’s just turning into this black hole of awfulness that’s dragging down the scenes she’s in because basically everything she does on-camera is awful. That’s all I mean.
Besides connections to the mob (the MCA contracts in the early days), a snitch for the FBI, Reagan has a connection to Indiana.
One of his catchphrases was “Win one for the Gipper.” He played the Gipper in Knute Rockne, All American, the story of the coach of Notre Dame in the 1920s.
I did not know that Notre Dame was in Indiana.
And loving the fact that Mary has some self-awareness. Won’t stop the trolls though:(
Yup, south bend, Indiana
The President has no clothes!
Only in the drawings that Mary doesn’t put on display.
Maybe she writes Nixon/Reagan slashfic?
Finally, for at least a panel, everyone gets to love Roz as much as I do.
I’ve always loved Roz.
“Also, he works at a toy store now.”
Called it on the catholicism thing.
Though blaming Robin for her parents being divorced was kinda unexpected…
… so when are we gonna see Mondale in Dumbing of Age?
There’s a ‘We can do it’ poster staring at Mary’s Reagan drawing from Roz’s wall and I love that.
Imagine if that poster was a Roadblock one. Mary’s Reagan would probably roll away.
One does not simply stare Roadblock down.
Mary, he consulted an astrologist for advice on how to run the country. On a regular basis. That’s not “only a little”.
Seriously, where does Mary come from? Afghanistan? Everybody not from exactly her own denomination is a fraud and evil, women who remain unmarried at thirty are obviously secret lesbians or/and sluts, getting divorced taints your descendants forever with a unholy curse…
She reminds of Serena Joy, from “The Handmaid’s Tale”. She’s one of the female televangelists and political leaders who help turn US into a fundamentalist theocracy inspired on the Old Testament. Her victory is her punishment: She loses her job, is forbidden to work and made into a stay-in-home mother, except she’s sterile, so she has to allow her husband taking a concubine for breeding purposes (sadly, other women who were blameless got it far worse).
I would like to see Mary transported to her ideal fundamentalist world like Serena Joy, but I’m afraid would manage to make her family more miserable than herself…
Nice subtle racism.
What was racist about that?
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2015/06/afghanistan-country-women-150630115111987.html
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/Women's-rights-in-Afghanistan
http://www.trustineducation.org/resources/life-as-an-afghan-woman/
Trying to pin racism on someone making an anti-racist statement is a really tiring tactic.
You’re thinking of Saudi Arabia, where women aren’t allowed to go out in public unescorted or drive vehicles, not Afghanistan.
Well, the Taliban weren’t exactly kind to women (and aren’t to this day).
ah yes, 18 year olds who’re convinced a president they werent even alive for was the “last good president”. i know a few of those
(not saying anything about reagan; i dont know much about him myself. but sometimes its just so obvious when someones political views were blatantly handed to them by their parents)
When someone uses the phrase ‘Family values’, he or she is often most concerned with defining what constitutes a ‘family’ and not so much about their ‘values’.
No, see, it’s not values like things you think are important, it’s values like how much different kinds of families are worth. A family that’s just like yours has a high value, while a different family has less value, and a family that you don’t think of as a family at all (because you’re a shitstain) has no value at all.
(To clarify, in this post “you” means “the person talking about family values,” and does not refer to DoA commenter Charlie Spencer.)
I have read how some Republicans thought that they could attract the Hispanic vote using the ‘family values’ hook.
It turns that for most Hispanic voters ‘family values’ means caring for your relatives, supporting, feeding and educating your children, and taking care of your elders, while for those Republicans ‘family values’ meant mostly bashing homosexuals and single mothers…
So the Republican ideologists came to the conclusion that those Hispanic voters didn’t really support family, because you can’t support family unless your first worry is to bash gays and lesbians.
My impression is that two of the most important “family values” are “children are the property of their parents” and “wives are the property of their husbands”.
I was kind of hoping Mary would still be in a catatonic rage over the pie thing.
I’m sure it’s been said, and if not, call me crazy, but even if Robin were married (and to a man) Mary would be just as likely to complain, instead saying she can’t be the “family values” candidate when she obviously isn’t dedicated enough to her family. Because you can always come up with an excuse!
*Plays the Odd Couple theme song on the hacked Muzak*
(We’re not letting this joke die, are we?)
For a crazed fundamentalist like Mary, the points she brings up about Robin are about what I expected as her reasons for disliking her. But even in fundie-wacko land, how exactly is Robin’s parents being divorced her fault?
Does Mary’s shirt have a wrinkle across Less? Because it looks very much like the word Less is crossed out on the shirt…which would be quite accurate in her case because it’s all about her. Mary’s hypocrisy really does annoy the crap out of me though. In her mind what she says is the God given truth, even if it makes no sense.
I love Roz pointing out the fact that Mary seems to hate a lot of things…which is again annoying when supposed Christians hate things so strongly when in reality you aren’t supposed to. If there really was such a thing as the Rapture there would be an awful lot of hardcore Christians that wouldn’t go up in it.
The Rapture is a doctrine which is already born from exceptionalism. The idea there’s an “elect” and a damned. The idea God would want everyone to come is anathema to the ideals Mary espouses.
We’ve already established that her version of God wouldn’t let everybody come. Only Straight Protestants who marry early and start pumping out babies. (Le Sarcasm)
Never mind that people outside her gender and sexual preferences would enjoy it more if they got to be honest about what they actually desired. But really, come on.
I like Roz more just for getting those faces from Mary. ^_^
I remember I had a really religious teacher back in middle school. She said that she liked George W. Bush because “from a Christian perspective, he was a really great president”.
She also used the Bible as an excuse to be homophobic.
Yes, she is the reason why I distanced myself from my religion, thank you for asking.
Was down in Waco just before Katrina protesting outside Bush’s studio set / ranch. Stopped at a local church to check service times. Ran into a woman who’s son was also deployed and we talked over shared experience. She was mostly convinced that Americans in Iraq would help open the country up for Christ. After all, Bush was a good Christian, so this would turn out for the good.
I almost cried when we left her, since I was certain that it would do the opposite. Sadly, I was right and Christian groups in Iraq are being exterminated. That flag decal doesn’t get you into heaven and the cross doesn’t mean you know shit about foreign policy.
I sense a humanizing story arc coming.
Im actually confused about what Mary would have against the Bush brothers. Then I remember that George W. Bush was considered to be ultra-liberal by the standards of the Republican party and cry a little.
Huh, I always thought Mary was insincere and just picked up the Jesus stuff as the most convenient mallet with which to wield her hate. But this seems to indicate she….actually kind of cares about something? Weird.
I just love it when hypocrisy meets head on with reality.
I hate Mary more and more with each strip she’s in. She is such a jerk.
I’ve never understood how people tout Reagan as one of the greats considering the Iran-Contra scandal. (Unless they just have a massive hard-on for the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, but those people are dicks.)
The Iran-Contra scandal is not as hated as many people think since, well, it worked in getting the hostages back.
You just have to ignore all the horrific deceit and arms trading.
Except even in the last days of the carter administration the negotiations were already rapping up. Heck, released Carter admin files include briefings to the Reagan administration on the state of the hostage negotiations.
Iran/Contra was almost entirely about getting cash from Iran to give to the anti-communist Contra rebels without involving congress.
Iran/Contra broke two massively important laws. First, there was a weapons embargo with Iran (them being enemies of our state and the fact that many of those weapons were given to terrorists to attack our ally, Israel). The second thing was that Congress passed a law specifically banning sending money to the Contras. Reagan looked at both laws (that he actually signed, so he was well aware of them) and said, “I do what I want!!!”
Because Ollie North was turned into a sacrificial lamb, and Reagan supporters claim that “he didn’t know about it”. Which in my humble opinion would be worse, because then he was even more incompetent if something like that was able to be done behind his back.
Just heard about the shooting in Orlando. For the smallest measure of comfort, I hope it was at least no-one of the commentariat knew. 8(
*heart out*
*hugs* to all who were affected or knew people at Pulse. Between this and the LA Pride attempted bomber (from Indiana no less)… Everyone stay safe out there this year.
Yeah, I was thinking about that. “Oh, he’s from Indiana.”
What also me is seeing people like Ted Cruz and Pat McCrory (North Carolina Pee Policeman governor) tweeting sympathies when Ted is allied with people who would quite literally sentence all of us to die, and Pat McCrory is the vanguard of anti-trans legislation. How dare they?
Yeah, it’s especially galling.
Take care out there. Bad times.
Re: Mouse over text.
Reagan can be a daydream character, like Puppy Dorothy.
A strange, bizarre alternate universe where Roz is more likable than Robin and Ronald Reagan was not resurrected in 2005
I know that the timeline for this strip doesn’t begin in 2010, but even if if it did there is no way Mary would be alive when Reagan was president so everything she knows about him comes from whatever biased resources she has at her disposal. Just like Jesus.
Which makes it easy to discount how dotty “The Gipper” was. Seriously in one instance where the US sub force was pitching very risky spy missions during the Cold War, all he wanted to really talk about were the sailors in the subs. AND then got off on a tangent about how he had played a WW2 Sub commander in the movie “Hellcats of the Navy”. Recounted in the book “Blind Man’s Bluff”.
And the reason why Reagan is sometimes called “The Gipper” at all is because of yet another movie he was in. “Knute Rockne, All American” where he played George “The Gipper” Gipp .
If someone “loves” the Republic Great President of Reagan, what they really love is the unfeeling political machine that used him as a figure head.
There was an SNL skit some years back – far after the Reagan years, but either before or shortly after his death, I think – which flipped that around for comedy. It purported to show that the “real” Reagan was a take-no-prisoners get-it-done hardass, who only put on the dotty-old-grampa act for the cameras or visiting Scout troops.
Ronnie/Nancy OTP 4evar!
To respond to a couple points made way upthread:
The protestant claim that Catholic saints are just re-branded pagan gods is not entirely without basis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigit_of_Kildare#Historicity
As for Mary suspecting that Robin is a lesbian…well, we have secret information from another universe that she is a lesbian. And it was obvious to other characters in that universe long before she admitted it. So, it is not impossible that in this universe she has shown signs that are obvious to others.
robin is not a lesbian in any universe
And, unless Mary has more knowledge of Robin than she’s mentioned, she’s drawing that conclusion strictly on the basis of “not married at thirty”.
Does that apply to guys too? I’m well over 30 and not married. Maybe I’m gay? How can I tell?
Look at a picture of Antonio Sabato Jr. If you do and one of the thoughts that cross your mind is, “I wonder what he tastes like”, you could be gay. Another possibility is that you might be a cannibal. I hope it’s the former and not the latter. Literally eating people isn’t cool.
By the way, speaking of US presidents, why does Jimmy Carter have such good press?
He does?
He gets a lot of credit for his work with Habitat for Humanity. He was a decent, but weak, President. He’s a hard working ex-President that puts a lot of time in helping the less fortunate in ways that bring him no benefit other than the thanks of those he helps.
He was an awful president but a good human being. Personally I suspect being good at the job by definition means you have to be a bit of an asshole.
Actually, Reagan greatly benefited from following Carter. Some of the things Carter did to help rebuild the economy had started getting momentum when Reagan took power, so it looked as though Reagan was good for the economy. Another thing that benefited Reagan is that Carter successfully negotiated the release of the hostages in Iran, only for Iran to hold onto those hostages until Reagan’s first day of office as a final F*** you to Carter, which Reagan spun into “the Iranians are so scared of me that my merely taking office was enough to make them release the hostages”.
The hostage release was always liable to end up being completed after the Carter Admin was over. This is something born out in the Carter Administrations own files and briefing to the Reagan Admin which were written as a handoff of authority rather than a simple briefing.
Carter also massively underestimated how much Khomeini would throw him under the bus to shore up his own political posturing in his faction within Iran.
As for economics . . . eeehh? . . . Carter took some sensible steps but a lot of them weren’t going to be effective against the kind of stagnation spiral he was facing. If anything things were easier for Reagan simply because a lot of the negative factors beyond Carter’s control had begun to pass by the start of his presidency.
Bush is busy painting his feet and primitivist paintings.
Carter is doing this while fighting cancer.
http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/index.html
Plus Carter is an Annapolis grad who served his country, not one who hid out in a safe place during Vietnam (Bush). He’s someone who takes his religion seriously and lives it out to great effect.
A bad president? Compared to Reagan? Compared to Bush I or II? Compared to Nixon? Sorry, I lived through those idiots and he was better than any of them, even when undercut by his own party.
” the only man in American history … who used the United States presidency … as a stepping stone to greatness.”
I’d be super oaky with this being Mary from now on. Just this spiteful, frowning jerkface fueled by her own cognitive dissonance who gets pies to the face.
jfc she has a Ronald Reagan mural. I can’t even begin to perceive her as a credible threat. I half expect her to tattle to Ruth’s superiours only for them to physically toss her out of the room.
check the MB in the corner of it – it’s not just a Reagan mural, it’s a HAND DRAWN Reagan mural
maybe DoA’s Ronnie can be a lookalike galasso hired because he looks like Reagan
I’m pretty liberal, but I’ll still make that face if somebody says something about the game hunting and taxidermy hobbies of Theodore Roosevelt. And don’t even try to bring up that letter on eugenics! GR.
I just realize much of it was the culture of the time an not all of it was a mature as we have become. As far as the game hunting, yeah like so many others before and after him, he did it but out of it came an appreciation nature and a desire to protect and nurture it. Maybe it doesn’t excuse he did it but it doesn’t make him as bad as some who continue despite the situation getting bad. As far as eugenics, I applaud the goal of improving humanity but I often find the sin is in the means in trying to accomplish it. The fact most eugenics programs so often do so by stripping people of rights or even their lives, counteracts the more noble intents where they exist. Show me one where it raises humanity as a whole up with creating a new group of second class citizens (either by denying rights, reproduction, or advancement) or end up with a cleansing and maybe, just maybe it will be worth considering.
Yes. Yes Keep poking holes in her fragile little deluded world. Show her the hypocrisy of her views.
Is it weird that I read that in Emperor Palpatine’s voice
Men only become great in hindsight. Nobody really wants to put their faith in a man who’s still alive to possibly mess it up.
I’m sure there’s gotta be something about jelly beans in Leviticus
I already read the Reagan article on Cracked.