February 24, 2015
“Martin Luther toy becomes fastest selling Playmobil figurine of all time.”
Has anyone been keeping an eye on Germany lately? Because I think they”re getting even weirder than usual, and we all know what happened the last time (and the time before that).
“The unexpectedly popular Martin Luther figure … sold out its first edition run of 34,000 within 72 hours,” according to the Independent.
Remember: We”re not talking about some beloved Disney or Pixar or Marvel Comics character. This is a long-dead old white guy”a religious figure, no less.
Playmobil’s little “Hello Kitty”-looking Luther has such an adorable wee face, you just can”t imagine him thinking mean stuff about the Jews. He wears a period academic gown and cap, and”cue Saturday morning commercial announcer’s voice circa 1972″comes complete with accessories: a white quill pen and an open Bible. I don”t read German, so for all I know, those squiggles read, “F—- the Pope!” and “I”m running off with a nun.””
Come on, lighten up. Wait, I forgot: Protestants aren”t allowed to. “Sex might lead to dancing” and all that. It annoys me no end that when Jews make fun of “the Gentiles””with their white bread and white mayo and white golf shoes”they dump us Catholics in with them.
I may be the world’s worst Catholic, but, as Hilaire Belloc said, at least we papists know how to party. Check out The Simpsons“ classic “Catholic vs. Protestant heaven“ sequence”which, come to think of it, probably only Catholics find “funny “cuz it’s true.”
When we split up, we kept the best painters, writers, and, later, filmmakers, from Coppola and Scorsese to John Waters”plus the jokes, (most of) the booze, the smokes, and the food.
Protestants ended up with Thomas Kinkade, Jack Chick, grape juice, and marshmallow & Jell-O “salad.” And, weirdest of all to us, they seem pretty goddamn (I mean, darn) self-satisfied about that arrangement.
Yep, Protestants even swapped out swearing”one of life’s under-sung delights”for a supposedly more edifying ejaculatory habit: quoting scripture chapter and verse with compulsive, military precision, like a drill sergeant with Bible Tourette’s.
That’s one of those dubious “talents””like the ability to refer to flowers by their Latin names”that’s best kept under a bushel, if you ask me. (Or is that “buried in a field”? If only I wasn”t using my concordance as a coaster …)
Twenty years after the allegedly hugely influential and deeply shaming The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, our cute little Protestant friends have managed to cough up”what?”Jim Bakker, “Christian rock,” and I can”t think of a third thing. (I won”t hear a word against Tammy Faye, mind.)
Yeah, I call them that. “Our Cute Little Protestant Friends” is one the oldest categories at my personal blog. It’s reserved for news stories like “Progressive Evangelicals Spot Anti-Christ Message in John McCain Ad,” or, more recently, that super helpful and compassionate reminder by and for Southern Baptists that those recently slaughtered Copts weren”t really Christians. (So, ha! Joke’s on YOU, stupid ISIS guys, I guess!):
Frankly, now is not the time to confuse for the entire blooming world what it means to be a Christian. We cannot consider the Coptics an unreached people group (…) one day and then call them Christian martyrs the next.
