One Low Bar.

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.” (Oscar Wilde). When it comes to christians, you’re hard pressed to find that line, it’s tiny, barely visible, and waaaaaay down there.

Charisma magazine’s Steve Strang appeared on Jim Bakker’s program today to promote his forthcoming book, “God And Donald Trump.”

My bleary eye, early this morning, read that as “God Ate Donald Trump.” Now there’s a reason to wish gods existed.

“Lori and I are on the advisory council,” Bakker said. “We don’t talk about that a whole lot, but he has so many of us … He has so many pastors and preachers on his advisory boards, his spiritual advisory boards, that they all can’t come to meet at one time.”

Yes, he does, because he knew you idiots would support him, so he gave you all a meaningless position. I truly hope you all aren’t that bloody dense.

Strang said that he couldn’t say for sure whether Trump is a Christian because that question is “between him and God, it’s not for all of us to judge him,” but did note that while there were things in Trump’s life “that we don’t approve of, you don’t hear those things in the last 10 years and his language has improved.”

It’s not for you to judge? Since when? All of you mega-assholes do nothing but judge people, always finding them wanting, or evil, or demon-possessed, and wailing for that psychogod of yours to rain down some sort of punishment. As that never works, you try to figure out how to oppress and punish people yourselves.

So…Trump hasn’t mouthed off about grabbing women by the pussy for a while (that anyone knows about), and his language has improved (Really? The man can barely form a sentence), and that’s enough for you! I’m not even sure one can consider that to be a low bar, more like no bar at all. “Gosh, the noted vulgarian hasn’t been quite so pungent with his vulgarities lately, so he’s great!” A person does not need to cuss in order to let loose with vile, poisonous words. Sugar-coated poison is still poison.

Strang also pointed to the firing of Scaramucci in the wake of a vulgar rant he unloaded on a New Yorker reporter as further evidence of Trump’s deepening faith, asserting that Scaramucci’s termination was a sign that Trump “didn’t want his key people talking like that in public.”

Oh FFS, and you expect people to believe that? Ah, well I suppose all the christians who listen to you idiots will swallow that one whole, too. The line is drawn, at being prudish over salty language. This is now the mark of deepening faith. The desperation coming off you folks is palpable, it’s difficult to see just how much lower you will go, but I expect we’ll all be entertained watching that tiny line dwindle into nothingness.

RWW has the story, and video.

Intro to Faust.

The Trouvelot astronomical images end today, and tomorrow, we’ll start with Harry Clarke, a prolific and incredibly talented stained glass artist and illustrator. Clarke died very young, age 41, but left an amazing amount of work, and most of the books he illustrated are still in print today. Clarke had a habit of incorporating self-portraits into most all of his work, including his stained glass work:

Left: Photograph of Clarke in the posture of crucifixion. Right: Detail, Crucifixion (1920).

All of Clarke’s illustrations are amazingly beautiful, even when they depict the macabre. In 1914, a decade before he would illustrate Goethe’s Faust, Clarke depicted himself as an absinthe drinking Mephistopheles:

Mephisto (1914), Clarke’s self-portrait as an absinthe drinking Mephistopheles.

Clarke’s The Last Hour of the Night (1922), the frontispiece for Dublin of the Future, the prize-winning design for an urban planning competition staged in 1914 (but not published until 1922 because of the intervening violence and devastation).

It took me a while to decide on doing Clarke’s illustrations, simply because it would make for a very long series, but they are all exquisite. So, we’ll start with Faust, then move on to the illustrations for Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, then on to Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. We’ll be traveling with Harry Clarke for a bit over three months.

Most of the posts will have more than one image – opening pages will be together, as will decoratives, and beginning and chapter ends.

The Christian Contagion: Globalizing Hate.

Good old American style Christian hate, it’s never enough, it must be contagious, on a pestilential level.

In the latest sign that the U.S. Religious Right increasingly views its anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice activism as part of a global culture war, American activists will be part of the training team at next month’s European Advocacy Academy, which is designed to make European advocates for “traditional” views on sex, gender and family more effective—and to make them “part of an international network that transcends country borders.” U.S.-based Religious Right groups have actively promoted anti-LGBTQ equality measures in Europe under the banner of protecting the family.

It’s bad enough that the Religious Reich has the amount of power they do in uStates, without it spreading the message of its diseased thinking elsewhere. All societies have their problems, but most of the ones in Europe are light years ahead of uStates, progressively speaking. These Americans are very bad news, and should be considered to be a contagion in the proper sense, and turned away.  The worst dregs of societies everywhere embrace this poisonous hate, drinking down the toxic kool-aid with nary a thought. Fascists of all stripes grab onto such venomous thinking like it was a lifeline, and it does provide them with even more excuses for their particular brand of hatred.

The European Advocacy Academy is organized by European Dignity Watch, a Brussels-based nonprofit group founded in 2010 that says it “defends the most vital foundations of a free society: fundamental freedoms and responsibility, marriage and the family, and the protection of life from conception to natural death.”

Oy. Short form: we don’t give a damn about you, or what you believe, you must live your life the way we say!” RWW has the full story, along with details on some of the speakers.

Renaissance Superheroes.

These amazing photos rocked my world, and there are so many of them! These are not paintings, they are photographs. From Vintage News:

The project named  Super Flemish by Goldberger has created a series of photographs that portray ultimate pop culture characters of the caliber of Spiderman, Yoda or even villains such as Darth Vader, in a Flemish treatment. The photos largely resemble 16-th century paintings, and it has taken Sacha two years to complete the ambitious project. A team of twelve people has put efforts in making the flawless makeup, hair and special effects that can be noticed on the photographs.

“A lot of the job was done before and during the shoot. Pierrick and Sebastian, my digital retouchers, helped me to get the precision and the perfection I was looking for in this series,” says Sacha. “All of it was incredible; it was like a dream come true.”

“When you see the Hulk in front of you and you, ask him to look romantic, it’s crazy. The Joker was also very impressive. He endured three hours of make-up and started to act like Heath Ledger in the movie, The Dark Knight,”  adds the French photographer.

And from Sacha Goldberger’s site:

What if Superman was born in the sixteenth century?
And what if the Hulk was a Duke?
How might Van Eyck have portrayed Snow White?

Sacha’s discovery of these characters, which goes back to childhood, gave birth to a desire
to re-appropriate them, to take them back to a time forming the cornerstone of modern western art. Sacha wants to confront these icons of American culture with contemporary painters of the Flemish school. The collection demonstrates the use of 17 century techniques counterpointing light and shadow to illustrate nobility and fragility of the super powerful of all times. It also invites you to celebrate the heroes of your childhood. These characters have become icons to reveal their humanity: tired of having to save the world without respite, promised to a destiny of endless immortality, forever trapped in their character.
The superheroes often live their lives cloaked in anonymity. These portraits give them a chance to « fix » their narcissism denied. By the temporal disturbance they produce, these images allow us to discover, under the patina of time, an unexpected melancholy of those who are to be invincible.

As science fiction meets history of art, time meets an inexhaustible desire for mythology which is within each of us.

Oh, go have a wander and look at all of them! Super Flemish and Sacha Goldberger’s main page, and Flemish in the Stars (Renaissance Star Wars).  Look at everything! And thanks to PZ for yet another timesink, I really needed another one. (Just a pinch of sarcasm there…)