Marcus Bryant
10-01-2004, 10:59 PM
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110005700
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
The Iconoclast's Icon
A Baptist-bashing Crawford, Texas, newspaper endorses Kerry.
BY DAVE SHIFLETT
Friday, October 1, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
Traditionalist Christians have had a trying week. After a poll by the Gallup Organization put President Bush eight points ahead of Sen. Kerry, Moveon.Org took out an ad noting the evangelical religious credentials of a Gallup family member. Would such a thing happen to Jewish, Islamic or Episcopalian pollsters?
Then came the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, in which Joan Rivers is quoted as saying, "I hate Jesus freaks. They're ugly," adding: " 'Jesus loves me,' they say. If he loved you so much he would have given you a f---ing chin."
And on Tuesday, a Texas weekly called the Lone Star Iconoclast, which is the First Methodist's hometown rag, endorsed John Kerry for president. The endorsement brought the left-leaning paper immediate fame, including a warm write-up in the New York Times. Interestingly enough, however, the Times, which carried the anti-Gallup ad, failed to mention the Iconoclast's religious and racist heritage. Local Baptists might suspect a coverup.
As its Web site reports, the paper takes its name from a Waco publication founded in the 1890s by William Cowper Brann, "one of the most intriguing writers of his era." Brann is also highly admired by another good liberal, Texas columnist Molly Ivins, who invokes Brann from time to time, especially when flogging Baptists and other religious types.
In one column, for instance, Ms. Ivins found it "a shame we have no William Brann or H.L. Mencken around to mock some of the more patent idiocies advanced in the name of organized religion." In another she noted, somewhat mockingly, that "Fundamentalist Christian missionaries are now salivating over the prospect of going to Iraq to convert the hapless heathen. This is guaranteed to make America as popular as the clap in the region. The Southern Baptists are poised to deploy en masse, reminding us of Texas newspaperman William Brann's famous comment, 'The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough.' "
Ms. Ivins typically refers to Brann as a "populist." But he was much more than that. He was as vicious a race-baiter as ever walked the Earth. In an essay titled "Beans and Blood," for instance, Brann attacked Bostonians who have had the temerity to suggest that blacks are "beings born in the image of God" and entitled to a fair trial. The Bostonians had been outraged over a spate of public burnings of black rape suspects.
Brann argued that the Yankees knew blacks only from a distance and were therefore unaware they have "no more conception of morality than a hyena." Indeed, he added, "you can no more educate honor and chastity into a c--- than into a brindle cat." The "civilization of the black man, such as it is, is due to his enslavement by a superior race."
Brann and his fellow superiors, he said, had tried due process of law on the "lecherous devils 'born in the image' of Boston's deity." They had shot them, sent them to the gallows, "flayed them alive, and all without effect. Having found the law a failure and respectable lynching futile, we have begun to kerosene 'em and set 'em on fire." Other passages simply cannot be printed in this newspaper.
Brann's ferocity places him in an elite class of especially toxic racists, and Ms. Ivins is forgiving a great deal to invoke and indeed praise him. One senses that his saving grace is a shared and abiding prejudice against traditional believers, one that is quite respectable in the circles Ms. Ivins runs in.
Brann brought an equal fervor to his Baptist-baiting. In one of his milder columns, he noted: "One cannot write philosophic essays while dallying with the Baptist faith. It were too much like mixing Websterian dignity with a cataleptoid convulsion or sitting on a red ant hill and trying to look unconcerned."
His attacks were so persistent that eventually a group of students from Baylor, the nearby Baptist school, abducted him. He survived that ordeal but his luck ran out after another Baylor partisan, Tom Davis, challenged him to a duel, which transpired on the streets of Waco. On the fateful day, both men fired, both men fell and both men died. One lives on, thanks to his latter-day fans.
Mr. Shiflett is a free-lance writer and member of the White House Writers Group.
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
The Iconoclast's Icon
A Baptist-bashing Crawford, Texas, newspaper endorses Kerry.
BY DAVE SHIFLETT
Friday, October 1, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
Traditionalist Christians have had a trying week. After a poll by the Gallup Organization put President Bush eight points ahead of Sen. Kerry, Moveon.Org took out an ad noting the evangelical religious credentials of a Gallup family member. Would such a thing happen to Jewish, Islamic or Episcopalian pollsters?
Then came the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, in which Joan Rivers is quoted as saying, "I hate Jesus freaks. They're ugly," adding: " 'Jesus loves me,' they say. If he loved you so much he would have given you a f---ing chin."
And on Tuesday, a Texas weekly called the Lone Star Iconoclast, which is the First Methodist's hometown rag, endorsed John Kerry for president. The endorsement brought the left-leaning paper immediate fame, including a warm write-up in the New York Times. Interestingly enough, however, the Times, which carried the anti-Gallup ad, failed to mention the Iconoclast's religious and racist heritage. Local Baptists might suspect a coverup.
As its Web site reports, the paper takes its name from a Waco publication founded in the 1890s by William Cowper Brann, "one of the most intriguing writers of his era." Brann is also highly admired by another good liberal, Texas columnist Molly Ivins, who invokes Brann from time to time, especially when flogging Baptists and other religious types.
In one column, for instance, Ms. Ivins found it "a shame we have no William Brann or H.L. Mencken around to mock some of the more patent idiocies advanced in the name of organized religion." In another she noted, somewhat mockingly, that "Fundamentalist Christian missionaries are now salivating over the prospect of going to Iraq to convert the hapless heathen. This is guaranteed to make America as popular as the clap in the region. The Southern Baptists are poised to deploy en masse, reminding us of Texas newspaperman William Brann's famous comment, 'The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough.' "
Ms. Ivins typically refers to Brann as a "populist." But he was much more than that. He was as vicious a race-baiter as ever walked the Earth. In an essay titled "Beans and Blood," for instance, Brann attacked Bostonians who have had the temerity to suggest that blacks are "beings born in the image of God" and entitled to a fair trial. The Bostonians had been outraged over a spate of public burnings of black rape suspects.
Brann argued that the Yankees knew blacks only from a distance and were therefore unaware they have "no more conception of morality than a hyena." Indeed, he added, "you can no more educate honor and chastity into a c--- than into a brindle cat." The "civilization of the black man, such as it is, is due to his enslavement by a superior race."
Brann and his fellow superiors, he said, had tried due process of law on the "lecherous devils 'born in the image' of Boston's deity." They had shot them, sent them to the gallows, "flayed them alive, and all without effect. Having found the law a failure and respectable lynching futile, we have begun to kerosene 'em and set 'em on fire." Other passages simply cannot be printed in this newspaper.
Brann's ferocity places him in an elite class of especially toxic racists, and Ms. Ivins is forgiving a great deal to invoke and indeed praise him. One senses that his saving grace is a shared and abiding prejudice against traditional believers, one that is quite respectable in the circles Ms. Ivins runs in.
Brann brought an equal fervor to his Baptist-baiting. In one of his milder columns, he noted: "One cannot write philosophic essays while dallying with the Baptist faith. It were too much like mixing Websterian dignity with a cataleptoid convulsion or sitting on a red ant hill and trying to look unconcerned."
His attacks were so persistent that eventually a group of students from Baylor, the nearby Baptist school, abducted him. He survived that ordeal but his luck ran out after another Baylor partisan, Tom Davis, challenged him to a duel, which transpired on the streets of Waco. On the fateful day, both men fired, both men fell and both men died. One lives on, thanks to his latter-day fans.
Mr. Shiflett is a free-lance writer and member of the White House Writers Group.