Batshit of the Year Award

(I know; I said these pieces were too hard to research, and didn't get anywhere near enough response - and while all that is still true, I had to drag this column out of retirement to bestow the Batshit of the Year Award.

 In doing so, I had to consider three things - first, there were a LOT of bugfuck-nutsoids and batshit-crazoids to choose from.   I mean, there's Rick Perry, who came in a close #2, for terminating 6,000 firefighters when half of his state was on fire, then renting a *whole friggin' stadium* to beg his Invisible Friend for rain - so whatever the winner did, it had to really stand out as true, unadulterated, no-holds-barred-and-hold-your-nose batshit.  

Second, the award had to have meaning - in that, it had to go to a party which had really earned it, by the twin-virtues of being bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy all the time - as well as having performed a jumping-the-batshit-shark piece of egregious craziness which left everyone else wondering what happened.

Last, it had to reflect a microcosm of a much bigger, more significant - and hence, dangerous - bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy  segment of society.  So, submitted for your approval is my Batshit of the Year Award - The Duggars)....

Before I get started here, I'll (re)clarify a couple of things.

First, (as if the regular readers of this small corner of the 'sphere don't already know by now), I'm an atheist.

This means that I don't believe in ghosts, angels, phantoms-of-any-stripe, and especially gods - I'm convinced they're the creations of people who were seeking in the main to subject other people to their whims.

This means all of them.  I'm an equal-opportunity dismissive in this sense;  I've got next to no use for the rantings of a misogynistic pederast (Mohammad); the rantings of a group of social-overlords who turned both classism and racism into an art (the Bhagavad-Gita); the rewritten, recycled rantings of a bunch of bronze and iron-age goat-herders (the Bible), or the current rantings of the handful of mystics, charlatans and other "holy people" tramping the earth today, busily buggering truth for money when they've never so much as held a real job or balanced a checkbook (I'm putting everyone from the late 'Osho' to the Dalai Lama in this last category).

Today, however, I'm going to comment on one of my most-encountered (and hence, least-favorite) of these, the American Fundamentalist Christian.

Most of us are pretty well-aware that Fundies are a fucked-up bunch.  First off; they hate a lot of things - gays; most modern culture; the American political system - the list does go on (I know; there'll be at least one of them who'll say, "But we don't!  We just hate the 'sin'!  We love everyone!"  That's bullshit - but it's also not the purview of this piece.)

On the other hand, there are things they love.  Lawrence Welk.  Side-hugs.  Purity rings (even if they don't work).  And fetuses.

Damn, but Fundies love fetuses.  

All kinds of fetuses.  Big ones that are just about to be born.  Small ones that would never live on their own.  And, in the case of this tale, in-between ones that look like little humans.   They love 'em so much, they'd like to pass a law against getting rid of one, no matter what.   They even support organizations which sponsor some pretty twisted laws; amendments to State Constitutions which would grant these things the same rights as people-walking-upright.

Now, the other day,  the Mom and Dad in this family suffered a miscarriage.  That's a sad event, and something which should be left to the persons involved to deal with in private.

But that's not their style.

See, they've already bred 19 other humans, and in spite of the fact that this ultimate piece of 'family values' arrogance (the average American consumes 300 times the resources of his/her Third World counterpart - sort of like taking the food/clothing/shelter allowance from 5,700 other people; a reverse-World Vision sort of thing; seeing how much they can take away, rather than donate, to starving children elsewhere) is already an egregious example of the command in their 'book' to 'conquer the earth and subdue it', they've also done this in the public eye, spawning (pardon the pun) one of the worst examples of a dismal medium, their own 'reality-tv' show.

So, it shouldn't surprise us that they pulled off a piece of theatre to capitalize on what would have been a very private, grieving moment for most sane families.

Nope, they took fetus-love to a whole new level.   They insisted on cleaning it up immediately after 'the event'; then had a 'naming ceremony' where they gave it a name.

Then, they hired this outfit to do a photo-shoot.

That's right - they named the aborted fetus, then had a company which specializes in such things take pictures of It.

Events didn't quite end there, either.  Afterward, they had a 'funeral' for it (much, I suppose, like Trimalchio's feast in Petronius' "Satyricon", or Virgil's funeral for his pet-fly (but hey - at least Virgil's funeral meant that with a mausoleum on his land, the government couldn't confiscate his property - a good-old-fashioned-and-understandable ulterior-motive - but again, I digress.)

Opinion:

Words fail here.  They really do.  I've heard of and seen some pretty fucked-up things in my life, but this takes the entire prize.  I do not understand this fascination with all-things-fetus; I really don't.  I understand that Christianity is a catch-all religion, with innumerable branches (and more being founded, it seems, by the year); I understand that there are Christians who won't 'claim' other Christians because of their behavior.  

Sitting on the outside of things, however, makes me wonder why, after a three-ring circus like this, every branch of the religion on the planet didn't gang up and disown these people outright.

As mentioned, this takes the prize - at least, in my own mind - for the Most Fucked-Up Thing Anyone Did in 2011- beyond Michele Bachmann's insane rants; beyond the donut-shovelling and gay-hating of Rick Warren; beyond the ultraRight sentiments of people like Matt Barber and Bryan Fischer, and the idiocy of people like Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan - these Duggar-people take the cake. 

And yes - in case you are wondering - yes, I'm better than they are - because I (an atheist), unlike they (members and practitioners of a supposedly life-loving religion), actually respect the dead - in whatever form.

(So, even though 2011 is not-quite-done, I'm awarding this year's Batshit of the Year Award to the Duggar Clan - especially Mom and Dad Duggar - because of all the bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy stuff I've reported this year, this has to be the creepiest, skin-crawliest, dead-disrespectful-ist, bugfuck-nuttiest and batshit-craziest thing I've seen in a long-assed time.  

Also unlike them, I have propriety.  If you want to see the aforementioned photos, go here - I won't post them.)