Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.
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That’s one preacher I would be willing to listen to.
Brilliant. I was beginning to wonder what the hell I was inflicting myself with and then he busted out the S-bomb
I watched the first half of it and he sounded like the usual run of idiot. When does the funny happen?
The usual run of idiot is actually the point. The twist happens at a minute before the end. No spoilers.
Oh, he brought the right notes, all right. Crazy like a fox. Totally punked everyone. Freaking Tight!
I think he brought those notes on purpose. If that was his intention, then I think he got the point across pretty well.
Awesome.
Looked deliberate to me and very well done.
A very class act. It is essential to watch right through to the end. A brilliant bit of testimony. the “wrong notes” was a particularly nice touch.
But possibly too subtle for the audience.
He was honest, that is all the anti-gay rights banter is… Repeats of history. History can and does repeat itself, and just like the fact that segregation and “separate but equal” was abolished, so too with be the prohibition against gay marriage. When they are borrowing lines from those against the equal rights of others from ages past and fights lost it only shows how they are doomed to fail. Further damning is that he admitted it, highlighting why it’s wrong.
Even though I don’t know what the ordinance in question entails, I noticed that he introduces himself as speaking in support of it, yet describes it negatively in his speech.
So I thought he was just confused over whether he supports it or not…which would be kind of boring, but in the end, it’s just so much better.
Nothing obvious on his blog about it all…
http://philsnider.wordpress.com/bio/
.. Cool speech tho!
Nicely done.
Ahh his church is quite clear on their beliefs
http://brentwoodchristianchurch.wordpress.com/welcome/welcome-statement/
If only all christians were like them!
Fucking cool.
But it seems like the audience took a while to catch up.
That was art. Pure performance art of awesome.
Amazing how fast one’s impression of a person can go from “what an idiot” to “this guy’s a genius” in a split second…
What a lazy ass. If someone feels really compassionate about an issue, they would write the speech from their heart and not read from decades old speeches with substituting a few words.
@18: I can’t tell whether you missed the point, or are going for double-irony there.
@billyvee #18:
The point. You’re missing it.
Lazy like a fox! That was friggin’ brilliant. Billvee, you need to become acquainted with the concept of irony.
Would that the nearby town of Traverse City MI had this clergyperson speaking during their GLBT-rights ordinance flap. (Happy ending: the ordinance had to go to a plebiscite, but passed by a comfortable margin. Unhappy sequel: the Rs in the state legislature have proposed taking non-discrimination ordinances out of the hands of locals. [These Rs are the same guys who throw their colleagues out for using Latinate words like “vagina” on the House floor.])
That… Was… Beautiful!
I’m in awe. That is ‘vilest’ trick he could play on his opponents. We need more people like that.
Slick.
Classic!
I’m left torn between wishing he had gone on at greater lengths to hammer it home for the dullards and loving the way he walks away with the stiletto inserted up to its hilt.
The guy deserves an “A” for the idea, but a “C-” for the execution. The point of attempting irony is to make it overwhelming and obvious why something is wrong.
The educated people in his audience got the point he was trying to make. But those who were bigoted against gays are as likely to be bigoted against non-whites, so the irony was lost on them.
I thought it was great – and well executed.
I’m pretty sure much of the audience “got it” – at least I hope so. I hope this got a lot of local press.
The analogy to civil rights is somewhat problematic though – not in it’s accuracy, but because bringing up the analogy is not considered a good tactic for changing people’s minds.
I have difficulty seeing how one could not “get it”. It really is glaringly obvious.
Dean Jaensch [retired professor of politics in South Australia] used to pull similar stunts at political rallys. He would read out the party’s manifesto and the members would cheer and cheer as each point was mentioned
…and then he would suddenly discover that he’d brought the wrong notes with him. “I’m sorry,” he would say, “This is not your party’s manifesto, it’s the manifesto of the opposing party.”
Soul Coughing (the band) did something similar at their concerts on the “Snow Core” – or whatever it was – tour. (They were sandwiched between Red Man and Everclear; the opener was DJ Spooky).
Anyway – he started out with – “Who smokes weed” – or something like that. Lots of people cheer. Then he kept just going further up the drug hierarchy, mentioning harder and harder drugs until the cheers started getting less and a few people (like me) were a bit confused. Then he yelled, “Who doesn’t do any of that shit!?”
Brilliant.
That was awesome.
The effect simply will not work on the brainwashed. People who are part of a strict dogmatic authoritarian structure will not pick up on irony.
Notice the stone-faced people sitting behind him. Their facial expressions did not change one little bit when he revealed the actual source of his speech. It appears that they heard nothing at all.
The fact of the matter is that those people really did not hear a word that this man said.
I have been re-watching this video, and looking at the sources a little more, and he did this on purpose. His church is for homosexual people, and he said that he “supports the ordinance”. The ordinance is for protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. I did it on purpose to prove that the arguments against gay rights are the same ones as against racial integration. I am damn sure that he is making a point that the ordinance is necessary… He says support, and then ends with that little piece, it’s pretty clear to me that he is in support of, not against it. Wow, that was even more cool seeing it from that light. Although I think he could have done a better job at making it clear that it was wrong, but it was still an awesome speech.