Everyone says love is a labor

Everyone says love is a labor September 3, 2015

• For a bit more background on the white panic tantrum over finally using the Alaskan name for an Alaskan mountain, here’s some Northern Exposure from Julia O’Malley.

As many have noted, former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called Denali “Denali” — a word that also served as her Secret Service nickname during the 2008 elections. The Secret Service used that because Denali is a symbol of Alaska, whereas “McKinley” is not. Also, too, “McKinley” would be a terrible Secret Service nickname.

• So, OK, I took Randall’s survey. Looking forward to seeing what he does with all that.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley attacks the police: “‘Black lives do matter and they have been disgracefully jeopardized by the movement that has laid waste to Ferguson and Baltimore,’ Haley said, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington Wednesday.”

She may not realize she’s talking about the police, but they’re the only thing she could accurately be referring to when she says, “the movement that has laid waste to Ferguson and Baltimore.”

• Well said, Ben Corey:

GunClerkLauren Nelson takes a trip to Dick Land’s Land o’ Dicks. You remember our old friend Richard Land — former chief “ethics” spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention. He was forced out of that post due to his racist commentary about Trayvon Martin. The SBC didn’t fire him because his comments were racist, but because it turned out his racist commentary was plagiarized.

And Southern Baptists won’t tolerate plagiarism — which is why Land had to step down and become president of a Southern Baptist seminary.

Anyway, Land is apparently perplexed that Kids These Days still regard cheating, betrayal and infidelity as Bad Things, even though they don’t condemn gay people and sex-having womenfolk the way he thinks good Christians should. The man spent 35 years as a professional “ethics” leader, yet he remains utterly baffled by any consideration of consent. That’s pretty much all you need to know about supposedly conservative supposedly Christian supposed ethics.

• I love biblical studies mainly because I love the Bible, but I’m also fascinated by the puzzle-solving detective-work process of it. Making sense of Really Old Texts with partial, inadequate evidence is a challenge that can be, for want of a more academic word, fun.

Consider this, from James McGrath, on “The Gospel of Grondin’s Interlinear.” Remember the s0-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”? Well, it turns out to correspond a bit too closely with an English/Coptic interlinear tool for the Gospel of Thomas. When the primary source for a fragment of papyrus turns out to be something created on the Internet, that’s a pretty big clue that the fragment is not actually from the first century.


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