Pastor of Puppets

The media circus surrounding Pastor Terry Jones and his proposed homage to his favourite movie Fahrenheit 451 (aka "Flamey Flamey American Life Endangery Day") has now become a pantomime.

Will he burn the books?  Won't he?  Will Jones get a last minute sign from God telling him not to do it?  (I've tried to trick Jones into stopping his ridiculous actions via the act of text messaging but I'm not sure he's convinced by my subtle subterfuge).

Last night it looked like Jones had finally seen reason.  He's spent days waiting for a message from God, apparently, and that this sign had finally come in the form of a local imam who said that they would relocate the proposed Ground Zero mosque.  The people behind said Mosque however deny that such a conversation has ever taken place to their knowledge.

Now the reality of this "Ground Zero Mosque" (although I'm loathe to call it that - the phrase has so much grounding in reality I may as well refer to it as the "Islamic Infideliminator-3010 Super Laser") has been documented at great length.  Jones may as well be waiting until the End of Days for such a thing (something which he may well be ushering in far sooner than scheduled) because there is no Ground Zero Mosque.  It's not at Ground Zero, and it's not a Mosque.   But we all know that, because we're not fucking retards, right?

However, now he has declared that the event may still go ahead but is "on hold".  He has also pointed out, however, that he's refuelled his Zippo especially and even got a new flint for it.  And has a spare in his jacket pocket.  And the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse tut loudly, take their jackets off, sit down and play another game of cards whilst they wait.

If he's that desperate to burn something, I've got a huge stockpile of unwanted books that he's more than welcome to.  There are even a few really thick ones in there that would go up a treat.  "Network Design and Principles" is a good one - It's hardback, around 800 pages long and was out of date the moment I enthusiastically purchased it in my first year of University.  And I sincerely doubt the lecturer at my university who wrote it will be that annoyed - although he did have slightly dark skin and a foreign sounding surname, so might be one of those suicide bombers.  Who just happens to know a lot about outdated concepts in computer networking.  I'll tell you what, Pastor Jones, I'll even marinade them in Gasoline in advance to make your life easier.

Perhaps Jones could even consider burning copies of his own lovingly crafted testament to religious tolerance.  He must have a fair few copies lying about, I imagine.  And then he could declare a fatwa on himself.

Pastor Jones.  If every tolerant and reasonable person screaming at you not to burn the books can't be considered, in your eyes, to be a message from God, you're clearly not very good at reading the signs. 

I hate you

I hate you. Yes, you. You, with your stupid face and arms. And I hate what you’re doing now, because you’re probably doing it wrong. An idiot who had never even done that thing before could do it better. I have a special cupboard at home which I’ve designated “The Special Hate Cupboard” which is filled with photographs of you (and some of your personal belongings, probably things you thought you’d lost). There’s one of you with your stupid face and arms. There are a few of you doing things wrong, which I sneer at loudly. There are one or two of you doing things right, but I destroy them. They don’t belong in my Hate Cupboard, because looking at them might make me hate you less.  There aren’t any photographs of anybody else in it, other than those unfortunate souls you hang around with who happen to have been caught in the same photograph. They only put up with you through pity. Oh no, the Hate Cupboard isn’t big enough for anybody else. My hatred is entirely focused on you.

“That’s not very nice”, I hear you cry, “But I’m reading your blog and everything, and no bugger else does. And I was sure I was doing this thing that I’m doing right. And your face is pretty hateful as well”.

You’d probably rather have not known of my hatred for you now, right? To be fair, I wish I hadn’t told you at all. You’re going to make it more difficult for me to take photographs of you now, and I can probably rule out sneaking into your house any more when you’re out and stealing your stuff.  If you hadn't known, we could have both carried on with our little lives, me pretending to like you if we meet, etc.

I am going somewhere with this, honest. Here we join Pastor Terry Jones, fresh from his Monty Python Fame (not really), and his latest crusade. He and his church the Dove World Outreach Center have made the news with their plan to burn copies of the the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11, and this has naturally sparked worldwide controversy. Hillary Clinton and several Military Leaders have condemned the action, and a school teacher in Afghanistan has gone on the news telling Pastor Jones “Your actions endanger my life”.

Now the church in question, The Dove World Outreach Center (which is a brilliantly apt name, incidentally – their outreaching clearly only extends to stretching their arms over shop counters to buy delightfully flammable holy texts) has a congregation of 50 people. Just 50 people. 50 fucking idiotic, misguided and bigoted people who need the phrase ‘Love thy neighbour’ tattooed on their stupid faces admittedly, but that’s still just 50.

World Press – You know me, I’m loathe to tell you what to do. And you rarely listen anyhow. But what you should have done in this case is let Pastor Jones burn his copies of the Koran. Without complaint. Let him burn anything he wants – The works of Dan Brown, the complete Harry Potter, anything. But here’s the trick. Don’t report it.

You see the thing is he’s a little unimportant twerp who is the head of a little unimportant church and if we didn’t know about his little happy burny book day, nobody would be offended – because we wouldn’t have known about it. Let Jones and his congregation gleefully stoke up the fires and dance happy lightbulb changing dances of joy as paper ignites, but let’s not give them the satisfaction that they think we care.

Because the instant it makes local news, it’ll make nationwide American news. And then it invariably becomes World News. And when this happens, it becomes a dangerous thing. The actions of a few idiots are suddenly exhibited to the world as representing the opinions of a larger group. An action by some attention seeking idiots could have gone mostly ignored and unnoticed, except for the staff of the local Muslim bookshop that would have noticed a slight increase in sales ("Softback or hardback, sir?"  "Errrmm.. which will burn quicker?").  But suddenly the eyes of the world are suddenly watching Pastor Jones and his insignificant little church - and those same flames that turn books into ash will ignite a fire way more powerful, and one that’ll take far longer to put out.

News Networks have a duty to report the news, but I think they also have the duty, or even the responsibility to contemplate whether in some cases they should simply disregard it for the greater good.  To continue the pained fire metaphor, without the oxygen of publicity Pastor Jones flames of hate would have been extinguished long ago, but for every interview with him or a member of his loathsome brethren, the flames continue to get fanned.

This subject will undoubtedly get blogged to death by people way more knowledgeable or eloquent than myself, I just thought it worth saying.  The next few weeks will be interesting, and not in a nice way.

And on a closing note, I don't really hate you.  I think you're ace.  I just said that to make a point.  Your hair looks really good like that, and that outfit really suits your complexion.  In fact, I think I love you.

Come back.