Let’s close out the day with some mockery of Harvard Satanists:
Dear Harvard Satanists: Go to Hell. I Hear You’re a Fan of the Management.
There are quite a few Christians (and non-Christians) who have offered thoughtful, sensitive, and intellectual responses to the aborted attempt to hold a satanic ritual on the grounds of Harvard University. See Kathryn Jean Lopez, Jonah Goldberg, and A. J. Delgado.
This morning, what I offer . . . is not thoughtful, sensitive, or intellectual. But it needs to be said, and I suspect most of you will enjoy it.
A reenactment of satanic rituals known as a “black mass” that had been scheduled for Monday evening on the Harvard campus was abruptly canceled amid a chorus of condemnation from Catholic groups and university officials and students.
Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the New York-based Satanic Temple, said in a phone interview that the event was canceled because organizers no longer had a venue.
Wait, they were New York-based satanists? And they expected a warm welcome in Boston? Perhaps they figured their pentagrams and horns would be less provocative than Yankees caps.
“Everyone involved, outside of the Satanic Temple, got really scared,” Greaves said.
Scared? Scared? You worship the embodiment of evil traditionally depicted with horns, fangs, claws, red skin, and/or as Willem Dafoe, and you’re scared? Of Christians? Of nuns? What the hell kind of Satanists are you?
“And I don’t necessarily blame them, because I understand that they were getting a lot of vitriolic hate mail, and I don’t think they expected it.”
What the [bleep] were you expecting? A lot of thumbs up and “attaboys”?
You just put out a public statement that you “didn’t expect” this kind of reaction? You realize what response you’re asking for, aren’t you?
“Vitriolic hate mail”? Wait, you aim to perform — I’m sorry, simulate the performance of — a tribute to the embodiment of evil that may or may not include the desecration of the Holy Communion, and you didn’t expect vitriolic hate mail?
Yes, part of your problem is that you’re morally inverted, and part of your problem is that you have no capacity to appreciate or respect a faith that you don’t personally practice. But another big part of your problem is that you’re really, really stupid.
But in a statement later on Monday evening, the cultural studies club said it was no longer sponsoring the mass after plans to hold it at the Middle East club in Central Square in Cambridge fell through.
The cultural studies club did not respond to an inquiry asking why it had decided to move the mass.
Ah, “the Middle East club” wasn’t such a good venue after all? Who could have seen that coming? Perhaps somebody called our Muslim friends, as I had suggested. They tend to get a little excitable when they think somebody’s mocking their faith, and they’re not as laid back and patient as we Christians are. When they turn the other cheek, it’s usually because they’re yelling about the new fatwa in a different direction.
Yeah, it’s a shame that all this hullabaloo could put the kibosh on somebody’s look-at-me-I’m-angry-at-my-parents performance art, but let’s face it, you anti-religious types took the easy shots at the pacifist Christians for a long time, and got way too comfortable doing it. Everybody knows you guys — with the possible exception of Bill Maher — don’t dare mock the Muslims, and everybody knows why. Back when he was anchoring “Weekend Update,” Dennis Miller joked that the last name of Salman Rushdie comes from an ancient word meaning “someone who is in a rush to die.”
You let’s-mock-religion guys set up the incentives for the faithful with your own behavior. If a religious person responds the way the loudest Muslims do, everybody’s too scared to mock them. If a religious person responds in the nice and tolerant way the Christians and Jews traditionally do, they’re the butt of every joke and everybody’s favorite punching bag. The satirists of organized religion must be astonishingly slow-witted if they thought other religions wouldn’t notice their habits of self-censorship.
“The Satanic Temple has informed us that they will stage their own Black Mass ceremony at an undisclosed private location to ‘reaffirm their respect for the Satanic faith and to demonstrate that the most powerful response to offensive speech is to shame those who marginalize others by letting their own words and actions speak for themselves,’” the studies club said.
You know, at this point it feels like there’s some malfunctioning automated political-correctness phrase-maker at work. What’s the offensive speech? Who’s supposed to be shaming who? Are we supposed to be ashamed because we don’t like them mocking our faith? We’re marginalizing them? You’re already marginalized, you’re friggin’ satanists.
These whiny entitled trustafarians are offended that we’re offended when they announce they’re going to act out a ceremony mocking and desecrating our connection to the Divine. Expecting us to not only permit it legally but take it all in with a smile like a bent-over fraternity pledge suggests that they have a bigger entitlement issues than the federal budget.
To hell with that!