This began the other night when my usual source of “Progressive” information MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was presenting a propaganda show that night to tell of airline shootings of the last three or more decades and telling us directly or indirectly (subliminally) that America should not go to war with Russia over Malaysian Flight MH17 shot down over the Ukraine / Russian border by Russian terrorists.
Not satisfied with my own personal questions about this tragic act of Russian State Terrorism, I resorted to what I did in the dark days of George W Bush and sought foreign English Speaking news sites in the UK, Singapore and Australia to try and get a handle on the truth – something not available in America on this specific incident.
I realized that Rachel was doing a favor for the liberal/progressive party in general and maybe even specifically directly for the White House. That Professor Barry was not going to get off his ass and break a sweat over this one – he only will break a sweat doing hoops btw. But that is his style. George W. Bush’s style was similar as he sat in his tub and painted his toes etc.
I had to stand back and reflect on why I had sought Maddow as a news source and realized that I was seeking a comfort zone source and she had inherited that main source title at MSNBC after they hounded Olbermann into obscurity and back to the sports locker room gig – a job he was not best, but better suited for as far as the establishment was concerned.
But Olbermann was a shouter, a preacher and the sound of his voice gave comfort and his words too in most cases. Olbermann was a bit of a diva and they can easily be gotten rid of etc. – don’t you know.
But was it the sound of Olbermann’s voice that I trusted and maybe not all his words? That by default, Maddow’s voice had now become to me the surrogate Olbermann voice I suppose, (the ghost of Olbernmann past?) and or the surrogate voice of comfort available on the cable airwaves for me at least and my POV. And of course, it is a limited elite audience in America that can afford private cable news and or propaganda. I am certainly not your everyday hoi polloi. Yeah right.
I also in the case of comforting voices harkened back to something said by the Catholic theologian Bill Lindsey over at the Bilgrimage blog somewhere about how his assessment of listening to Rush Limbaugh on long car trips in the South put him to mind to analyze why a babbling tub of lard like Limbaugh had such a wide and hardcore group of listeners. The answer Bill had was that people fell in love with Rush’s voice and no matter what he says, no matter how vain, vulgar or stupid, it is the sound of the voice people are listening to and not the string of words that Rush outputs by the ton on a daily radio message day.
The trick to the magic of communicating at least in America was to trust the snake oil salesman or saleswoman and then the snake oil tastes like sugar candy from that point on in time.
And then there is Joel Osteen with his $100,000 perfect plastic teeth smile doing a nihilistic circle jerk of "success" with his Texas congregation – Christian??? - of reaffirming to his middle-class audience in an indirect oblique manner, that it is okay to cheat on your income taxes so long as you tithe to him - Joel - kindasorta religion?
Of course Joel is not political that I know of, but the Catholic U.S. Supreme Court has okay-ed anonymity in political PACs (Citizens United) these days even if tax exempt preachers, Salt Lake City temples or Russian dictators want to fund any looney these days in the Tea Party and its “I don’t give a shit about my neighbor” Ayn Rand pagan libertarian godless philosophy.
I hear he has something like a hundred million mortgage on the former professional basketball arena he calls a mega-church down there in sub-minimum wage Texas. When the founding fathers gave tax exemption to churches, meeting houses and synagogues and such, those congregations were in wooden buildings and memberships numbered in the hundreds each. How times have changed.
Funny thing. I heard a story about how the safe in his church got robbed one weekend recently in the News. The thieves got away with over half a million dollars which was supposed to be the weekly take for his local god business. So people start to think – wow – that times 52 weeks is like twenty six million a year.
Wow! That is success. Right?
Well being an old war horse in the mortgage business among other things over the years. The thing is this. Twenty-six million income on a 100 million mortgage represents four times income or so. That is the base bottom line for allowing any mortgage or it used to be until politics and the whoring banks along with politicians ruined the mortgage business in this country. Four times income. Joel is barely getting by - treading water. Not much of a success in terms of old mortgage business standards. But those are old standards.
Who am I to question the success that the lord has pissed out onto Joel Osteen standing on his humble solid gold preacher pedestal? lol
But many, many, many may never hear the word Jesus out of his mouth during his hour long success story homilies preaching thing – or understand the words. But he has one hell of a comforting voice. Amen?
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