Best Of The Fray

All Welcome in Hell

Subject: The Real End of the Road
Re:Ballot Box: Geography of Shame
From: Ender
Date:
Thu Feb 22  4:25 p.m. PT

Mr. Weisberg forgot to mention the one place that takes all comers no matter how heinous the crime: Hell. The revised last sentence of his article should read: “At which point, the next port of call is generally Caracas, Venezuela, or Zug, Switzerland, but these are all just way stations on the road to Hell.”

[Find this post here.]

Subject: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Coke

Re:
Moneybox: Harry Potter and His Marketers’ Tone

From:
Zeitguy

Date:
Wed Feb 21  7:49 a.m. PT

Potter, unlike Coca-Cola, is the Real Thing, a perceptive human in touch with the several numinous and phenomenal levels of post-industrial experience who is also capable of making kids feel OK about themselves at these different levels. That is subversive of the basic psychology of marketing any useless product. You have to make the kids feel inadequate and then give them a lifeline through the product back to social acceptance. Harry Potter tells the kids they are OK without buying anything (except more Harry Potter books—there is no perfection in this life). If the film handlers or Coke marketeers “win” they succeed in making the kids feel they need cokepotterabilia to be OK. Which is a repressive schema completely counter to the Potter paradigm.

[Find this post here.]

Subject: The Importance of Prayer

Re:
Bush Unveils Faith-Based Missile Defense

From:
Tom R.

Date:
Wed Feb 21  1:29 p.m. PT

We all need to write Congress to support a prayer based program for Civil Defense as a component for the Faith-Based Missile Defense System, because that is the only defense we have today against any present or future ballistic missile threat. I wonder if the government will install automatic bell ringers in all steeples, prerecorded calls to prayer in all minarets, and direct the radio listening audience to the locally available “Hour of Power” in event of a reported launch from a submarine just off shore, which will only allow a 3-5 minute prayer effort to avert national disaster?

[Find this post here.]

Subject: Un-American Activity

Re:
Sports Nut: Cricket—It’s Wicket Awesome

From:
Siddharth Chandramouli

Date:
Mon Feb 19  9:33 a.m. PT

[Robert Lane Greene] has (perhaps unwittingly) done the rest of the world a great disservice by revealing the magic of cricket to Americans. If we let the Americans in, it is only a matter of time before Uncle Sam Inc. buys its way to cricketing success. Poor nations such as Pakistan, India, Zimbabwe, and the West Indies would stand no chance against the marketing power of Corporate America. The last thing we need are suburban “cricket moms” with their Ford Expeditions, family values, and annoying brats.

[Find this post here.]

Fray Notes

We have a love-hate relationship with Religious Frays (see past comments), and they keep coming. Most Exciting Fray was on the faith-based missiles article by Gregg “Tool of Satan” Easterbrook. There were thousands of comments, many of them by readers who were not convinced the article was a joke. One poster, AlphaWolf (assumed not to be connected with Aragorn Icewolf, last week’s Wiccan), said,  “I hope Mr. Easterbrook finds a way to stockpile laughter before the true end times as he will need something other than his faith when his judgment comes.”

And about that Wiccan post: Jenna helpfully tells us the answer to our question about the benevolent activities of Satanist churches. At her local (“very high”) church they do “nothing. You know, Satanism really isn’t much for charitable endeavors. They believe that every man or woman should take care of his or her own self. Very Ayn Rand.” In the Fray Notes on a recent “{{The Earthling#97657}},”  we were wondering if there was any Fray topic that Ayn Rand couldn’t be dragged into. So now we know: This wasn’t it either.

When we stop seeing found poetry in the Fray, we will know it is time to quit the job. There was a paragraphing bug for a short time this week: Normal line breaks failed to appear. Self-help and shared tips were necessary, resulting in these lines—really, an ode to success:

To Mo:

I am testing the paragraph

To see if I understood it correctly

Even if it works, the old way was easier

But thanks for the advice

Scott (the other one).