Blog Spotlight: Cedric takes a look at megachurches and a megabully

One of the best things about having various people in the community run their own sites is that you can get a variety of takes. For instance, Cedric regularly addresses chuches and religion. Kat addresses music. Wally provides a jot of some key point. Seth brings several perspectives and topics to his site. We could go on, but we think we've made our point. We'll make one more point. Cedric's trying for a conclusion to his latest entry. He had hoped to finish it on breaks from helping with this edition. It will go up today and we told him quit worrying about links because he's still got to put more of those in. But you need to read his latest today and we will be spotlighting it next week.

"Megachurches and a megabully"
It's been a busy week so there's not been time to post or to remove a link until now. All week I kept thinking, "Tonight."
Tonight, we'll be at Three Cool Old Guys' nursing home. This is the first time we'll be trying out the Christmas program. We've also had to figure out which six songs to sing in church Christmas Day because since some megachurches seem to think you don't celeberate Jesus Christ's birthday in church, we got told we should add some more songs because we're expecting a few more people than usual. The Sunday school classes have been working on a play too. It's about the first Christmas, of course. The older kids have been working on sets and costumes and it's going to be the littlest ones playing the parts so that should be really nice. Our preacher's got a sermon he's working on and he always does a great Christmas one but with the news that some churches won't be having a service, he's really trying to make this one even better.
If you didn't hear about that, the McChurches decided Sunday's a day to close shop. They're sending out DVDs that people can watch at home instead of coming to church. I really don't get why a church would think a Sunday was a day they needed to close shop.
One woman who used to go to our church hinted to her aunt that she was interested in attending Christmas Day. She felt nervous because she left our church for a McChurch. They had stuff that she felt was important. I guess a bowling alley or a basketball court or something. But she didn't have to sound off. People are always welcome at our church and especially on Christmas Day. No one would have thought anything except maybe that she was celebrating Christmas with her aunt and that's why she and her kids were there.
Maybe I'm a Scrooge here but I never thought Jesus was concerned about whether or not your church had a game room. I did assume that he was concerned whether you met on Sunday or not.
But maybe when you're in one of those megachurches where you don't know each other, it's easy to skip a Christmas Sunday and so they figured they'd save some money on the electric bill?If you think I'm coming off flippant, you're right. I am really bothered by that and the message it sends. Both my grandmothers never made Sunday school if it fell on a Christmas Day because they were busy getting the big lunch ready but they did show up for the service. I've also know people who couldn't make it on Christmas Day for different reasons and that's cool. But isn't the point to know that each Sunday the church is there?
And what about people who travel? We used to go on a road trips a bit when I was a kid and on a Sunday, my dad would always look for a church and we'd go in there. What if someone sees a McChurch and they get excited and run up the steps only to find that the doors are locked?
So that bothers me.Here's another thing that bothers me. Pop Politics. I've pulled their link.
If you missed it, Kat wrote about people leaving comments on one post there were just dogging this one guy. And she also quoted me. I thought the guy who wrote the original post made a bad link between rap and Dylan. Now, I understand from Jess that they maintain they weren't suggestiong a link. Like when Bully Boy says "Iraq" and "9/11" in the same speech or sentence, he's not implying a relationship either? That's nonsense.
And it was nonsense that the guy Bernie tried to force Kat into correcting her opinion. First off, the only opinion offered (other than that people CAN have whatever opinion they want) was my opinion. And even though she provided a link to my site and clearly showed what I said, he didn't have the guts to demand I correct my comments. Instead, he just wanted to try to force a woman into making a correction. What a big man, huh?
So that could have been the end of it. Kat replied to his e-mail saying, "Write what you want and I'll post it at my site." But that wasn't the end of it. His boss had to come along and imply that Bernie was a better writer than Kat. Again, that's not what she says she said. But it was up there for anyone to see and everyone saw it. (Including Three Cool Old Guys who got a copy and paste e-mailed to them.)
So when she did that, and you read it right, "she." A "she" felt the need to say Kat couldn't write as well as her boy. And "she" wants to be considered a feminist. But I guess that was already a question after she was okay with him trying to force Kat to change her words.
So we did a roundtable on that and we did an editorial about adults who were too scared to write about the war. And then Sunday morning as we were ready to post, we had to stop. She went whining to C.I. C.I. writes her back in this long e-mail, I haven't seen it but we were waiting three hours because C.I. was trying to be fair the way C.I. always does.
I learn from Jess that she claims Sunday night she never got the e-mail so C.I. had to write her again. But she said she wanted "peace."
First thing she writes on Monday, Jess reads it, and she's just slamming Kat all over again. This is how she gets peace?
She keeps writing over and over and Jess said it didn't read like it was friendly e-mail. C.I. had told her that we contacted Ryan. That's the guy who was being dogged, the whole reason Kat wrote to begin with. She was really getting on Jess' nerves writing all the time.
So Jess didn't even reply. Then Monday Ava sees the thing where the woman still can't do her own work. Jess and C.I. have explained how Ryan was found via a google search. But that's not good enough for the woman who needs everything handed to her I guess. They went over how to find him in an entry at The Common Ills. But she's too lazy to do her own work.
I won't say busy since she had enough time to e-mail over and over.
So Ava writes Ryan and tells him that now she's claiming her e-mail to him got bounced back and can she give out Ryan's e-mail to her. Ryan writes Ava back and tells her to forward the thing to her.
Which Ava does with, and I did read this, the most dry e-mail in the world. Ava's aunt doesn't trust the woman and told Ava not to form any kind of relationship with her. So Ava writes her in this dry e-mail and the woman writes Ava back screaming at Ava in a "what's your problem!" e-mail. And still slamming Kat, according to Jess.Ava replies in a dry e-mail.
Remember this is all going on while the woman supposedly wants "peace."C.I.'s telling Jess and Ava, "Don't read her if she's upsetting you. I'm not reading her, you don't have to read her. We've replied to her. We'll just ignore her and see if the peace offer was sincere or not."
Then Tuesday evening or afternoon, Eddie e-mails to The Third Estate Sunday Review and to C.I. that this so-called peace includes the woman delinking from The Common Ills.
As Jess said, the woman wrote over and over and over. Everytime he went into the public e-mail account for The Common Ills, there was another e-mail from the woman. "It was like she was spoiling for a fight," Jess said. But in all those e-mails, it never occurred to her to say, "I delinked from you."
She had time, over and over, to run down Kat. That's all she really seemed to want to do, to gripe and scream and trash Kat.
And on top of this, she writes Ryan and calls the e-mail an "apology" in the title of the e-mail but all she does there is trash Kat and then, at the end, write, "I'm sorry you won't be visiting Pop Politics again." That was her apology? Why did she even write the guy. It really ticked off him and his wife. (Mike has the interview on that.)
So Jim calls Jess and asks if Jess has seen Eddie's e-mail? Jess hasn't but gets into The Common Ills members account and there it is.Like Jess said, she screamed, she griped, she couldn't stop trashing Kat all while claiming she wanted peace, the woman's name is Christine something, and though she e-mailed over and over Monday and Tuesday she never once says, "I'm delinking."
So that was it. It was obvious that there was no desire for peace.
It was all about, "I don't want people to know I say I'm a feminist but I trashed a woman at my site and compared her to a man while implying that she wasn't as good as a man. And I don't want people to know that as the boss of Pop Politics, I was okay with a man trying to force Kat to correct her opinion and that he wanted the correction passed off not as his comment but as if the thought just occurred to Kat herself."
Well I guess she wouldn't want people to know about that. I also bet she wouldn't want people to know that while on her site she acted like Ryan was treated poorly by the people leaving comments and that she didn't support that, when she herself writes Ryan she's rude to him and never once says anything about the way he was treated. She's too busy attacking Kat yet again.
And the best so-called feminist can do apology wise to Ryan is to say, "Sorry you won't be visiting Pop Politics anymore."
Wally's trying to figure out how to write about this instead of just linking. He doesn't want to upset C.I. C.I.'s not mentioning it at The Common Ills or hasn't so far. I told Wally that C.I. always tells us to write what we want at our sites.
C.I. says that and C.I. means that. If C.I. doesn't like something, C.I. just avoids it.
The way C.I.'s avoiding Christine now.
C.I.'s not going to be mad at me or Wally or anyone for writing what we think. C.I. knows that we CAN have opinions. Christine's the one who has a heart attack and explodes when anyone has an opinion she doesn't agree with.
I won't be quiet on this. It wasn't right what happened. It wasn't right that after Christine started saying she wanted peace, she keeps attacking Kat, she bites Ryan's head off in an "apology," and she screams at Ava in an e-mail. Christine needs to get a grip.
Is she too scared to write about the war? I don't think she is. I think when you trash people who speak out, Kat, Bright Eyes for "When A President Talks To God," go down the list, then it's clear where you are on the war. You support it. If you didn't, you'd say so. You've got time to write about every dopey TV show in the world.
Three years is coming up, three years of a war, and she can't weigh in on that. If she can't find her voice, people will have to go by her actions.
And I don't know what kind of feminist links to and promotes a magazine that wishes harm, violent harm, on Arudhati Roy?
So I think we have our answer. If it's the wrong answer, she needs to find her voice on the war.
And if she has any common sense or decency, she needs to offer Ryan a true apology. Not a lecture, not a thing on how awful a writer she thinks Kat is or how wrong she thinks Kat was.
By the way, Bernie and Christine have a problem that Kat didn't address Bernie's opinion. While he's demanding a correction, they're bothered that Kat focused on the comments and not the writing of Bernie. Is that not something?
So I delinked from Pop Politics. It was a bad site anyway.
The only reason I linked to begin with was because C.I. had asked us all to link to it. C.I. was trying to be supportive to Christine because she wasn't doing Ms. Musing anymore and she was depressed and trying to make Pop Politics into something. There's a guy there who had a thing on Bob Woodward that was worth reading. And Wally liked the sports. There was a woman who wrote seriously about issues and discrimination that transgendered persons face. But there was just a bunch of nonsense that wouldn't cut it as good conversation in a junior high cafeteria.
She's like a cheerleader for the mediocre. She can't write about the war but she can write about any medicore TV show.
So the link's gone and we're all the better for it. If she is pro-war, that certainly explains why her "peace" offer wasn't sincere. But, my opinion, it was never sincere. She just knew she had embarrassed herself and wanted to try to keep people from finding out. That's why she continued to attack Kat every chance she could grab after she initiated her "peace."
By the way, if she'd just taken the high road the way C.I. tried to, she wouldn't have the mess on her hands she does. C.I. didn't post about Bernie's demand of a correction. C.I. didn't even post about the fact that while demanding a correction from Kat, Bernie quotes her at Pop Politics and gets the quote wrong. He drops out a word and changes another one. And this is while he's demanding a correction? And at Pop Politics, you had no idea of how rude Bernie was to Kat and how he ran her down as stupid. He saves that for the private e-mail. So when Kat told C.I. about the second e-mail from Bernie, C.I. was already "bothered" and then Christine goes and posts, in reply to Maria, that Bernie only posted at Pop Politics because Kat doesn't have comments at her site so he couldn't get his say any other way. Which is a lie. And it's a lie because Bernie was demanding a correction. And it's a lie because Christine knows about it.
If she had just waited to see if Bernie and Kat could work out some understanding, if she'd stayed out of it, the way C.I. was doing, none of this would have happened. But she can't pass a chance to slam Kat and that comment showed it. She made the mess, she has to live with it.
She can scream at C.I. or Ava, at Ryan or Jess, but it's her mess and it's her problem.
And being okay with a man demanding a correction of a woman's opinion, especially when I'm the one commenting on Bernie in Kat's original post and Bernie was too scared to take it up with man but okay with trying to bully a woman, isn't feminism. She can claim it if she wants, but her behavior speaks louder than her words. And much louder than her words on really bad TV shows that she gushes over. But she couldn't stop focusing on Kat and start trying to figure ou what she created this whole mess in the first place.
I'll be posting before Christmas, but we're trying to really focus on getting our program together.
Happy holidays to everyone. Peace on earth. Despite Bully Boys and Christines.