L.B.: A Very Bad Reporter

Left Behind, pp. 292-298 (round 2)

Buck Williams, our hero, is a terrible reporter. During the past two days he has conducted two blockbuster interviews packed with astonishing revelations. He will not write about either of them. Ever.

First, back in London, he spoke with Inspector Alan Tompkins. Tompkins recounted scenes of brazen corruption, including his own eyewitness testimony of explicit death threats against police officers and their families. Those threats were made by a prominent public figure, Todd-Cothran, who as the head of the London Stock Exchange has to be concerned about his reputation and respectability.

Tompkins' allegations were so explosive that I could understand Buck hesitating to publish them without confirmation from an additional source. But then again the interview ended with Tompkins' execution, which would seem to provide at least enough confirmation to go ahead with publishing an account of his assertions about death threats moments before they were carried out.

But Buck never even considered doing that. Nor did he consider, at the very least, writing up his own eyewitness account of Tompkins' death. Buck's fleeing the scene made sense because the police were complicit in this murder, but that only makes this an even bigger story, a story that needed to be told.

Yet when he arrives safely back in New York, riding in a cab with his editor, neither of them even thinks of calling Todd-Cothran to force him to deny Tompkins' story. Neither of them gives Tompkins' story a second thought. Instead, they rush off to hear a speech about the history of the United Nations.

Now it's early Tuesday morning, less than 48 hours after the London interview, and Buck is sitting in the Plaza Hotel, talking to the president of Romania and with scarcely any prodding he begins telling Buck about the very same conspiracy that Tompkins told him about. Now he's got two sources telling him the same thing and he's still not interested in the story.

In Buck's defense, the authors hint that he may be under the spell of Carpathia's Antichrist mojo:

The Romanian sat forward and looked directly into Buck's eyes. That gave Buck such a feeling of peace and security that he felt free to tell him everything. Everything. Even that his friend Dirk had tipped him off about someone meeting with Stonagal and Todd-Cothran, and Buck's assuming it was Carpathia. ...

That was the news that put Buck Williams on a plane to England -- the hot tip that a banker, a stockbroker and a politician had attended a meeting. Riveting stuff. Very dog-bites-man, but without quite so much action. Here then is all you need to know about Buck's idea of what constitutes a story: "Businessmen conduct meeting" is big news; "Businessman kills police inspector with car bomb" is not.

"It was I," Carpathia said. "But let me make this very clear. I know nothing of any conspiracy. I have never even heard of such a thing. Mr. Stonagal felt it would be good for me to meet some of his colleagues and men of international influence. I formed no opinions about any of them, neither am I beholden to any of them."

And then, after clearly stating that he's never heard of any conspiracy, that he has no opinions about Stonagal's friends, and that he owes nothing to anyone, Carpathia goes on -- for the next several pages -- to sketch out the shape of the conspiracy, to provide his opinion of those involved, and to explain the rather large favors they are doing for him. Stonagal, for example, plans to use his wealth and leverage to ensure that the current secretary-general will step down and be replaced by Carpathia. The group will then, well, conspire to ensure that Todd-Cothran represents the U.K. on a reconfigured Security Council.

"Would that not be interesting?" [Carpathia] said. "A nonpolitician, a brilliant financial mind, one who was wise enough and kind enough and globally minded enough to allow the world to go to a three-currency system that did not include his own pounds sterling?"

So again, no conspiracy, nope, none at all. And he doesn't have any opinion one way or another about Todd-Cothran.

LaHaye and Jenkins used these interviews with Tompkins and Carpathia as expository shortcuts, a way of telling the readers about the machinations behind Nicolae's rise to the U.N. "throne." But in the course of this, Buck has learned about all of this too. He now knows all the details of an international conspiracy -- one that includes bribery, extortion and murder -- to alter the world's currency system. (He still doesn't know why these criminals would want a three-currency system, but he knows they're using criminal means to bring it about.) Any respectable protagonist at this point ought to be thinking that he's got to get out of there and find a reporter who will listen to his story, but of course Buck is a reporter.

We've all seen bad movies in which the plot doesn't make sense because they haven't provided a valid reason why the heroes don't just go to the police. This is that movie. Except here it's worse because the hero is a policeman and he won't even go to himself.

The authors haven't forgotten that Buck is a reporter, it's just that, like Buck himself, they can't seem to imagine how that might be relevant. In these same pages, while Carpathia tells of his past -- and of why he is deeply, massively "beholden" to Stonagal -- the authors try to portray Buck as a tough, probing investigative journalist. "This is the kind of thing I write against," he says at one point. And then, of course, he doesn't.

When he was younger, Carpathia says, he made some money as a businessman:

"I studied at night, many languages, the ones I needed to succeed. ..."

L&J seem to think that fluency in multiple languages is a path to riches. They should know better since, after all, they're millionaires and they're not even fluent in English.

"During the day I ran my own import-and-export business and made myself wealthy. But what I thought was wealth was paltry compared to what was possible. I needed to learn that. I learned it the hard way. I borrowed millions from a European bank, then found that someone in that bank informed my major competitor what I was doing. I was defeated at my own game, defaulted on my loan, and was struggling. Then that same bank bailed me out and ruined my rival. I didn't mean to or want to hurt the rival. He was used by the bank to lock me into a relationship.

"Was that bank owned by an influential American?"

Carpathia ignored the question. "What I had to learn, in just over a decade, is how much money is out there."

"Out there?"

"In the banks of the world."

"Especially those owned by Jonathan Stonagal," Buck suggested.

Carpathia still wasn't biting.

And he never does "bite." He never gives Buck a straight answer to his slanted questions about Stonagal. He never has to because Buck just lets it drop. The authors, or Buck, or both seem to subscribe to the Tim Russert school of journalism: As long as you ask the tough questions it doesn't matter whether or not you insist on, or receive, an answer.*

In all of this there is a seed of something better. There's a hint here of Carpathia as an idealistic man who has allied himself with powerful but ruthless men in the hopes that they will enable him to achieve his own aims without interference. That could have been an interesting story -- the Antichrist as a tragic figure. But the authors don't have time for that, and any hint that Carpathia's purported idealism is genuine gets blown away (literally) in the following chapters.

Carpathia prefaces the personal history above by asking Buck a question:

"I believe in the power of money. Do you?"

Buck says, "No." I take it he means that he believes that money is not the only power, or not the greatest power, because otherwise, for an investigative reporter who's been on the job for more than a day or two, that's the wrong answer. One of the fundamental rules of investigative journalism after all is, in the words of Deep Throat [in William Goldman's screenplay], "Follow the money." Buck himself says that he "writes against" this power. Why bother doing that if it wasn't real?**

For Buck, I suppose, money -- even the manipulation of international currency systems by a cabal of bankers and stockbrokers -- falls into the same non-newsworthy category as the assassination of police officers.

[CX: Fixed attribution for "Follow the money," thanks Stephen.]

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* If you're ever elected to office and subsequently caught red-handed in a lie, scandal or high treason, get yourself booked on Russert's "Meet the Press." Then, when he confronts you about it, say this, "I love America, Tim." He will, unfailingly, treat this non-sequitur as a satisfactory answer and -- for the rest of the interview and for the rest of your long, successful career in politics -- your lie/scandal/treason will miraculously be transformed into an "old story" that has been "dealt with."

** We tend to think of the monolatrous passages in the Hebrew scriptures -- things like 1 Samuel 5 or Psalm 82 -- as anachronistic remnants from before monolatry gave way to monotheism. But there's at least one such passage in the New Testament as well: "You cannot serve God and Mammon."

Comments

[Mark]

"L&J seem to think that fluency in multiple languages is a path to riches."

Well, no, not really. They think that fluency in multiple languages is a sure sign of nefarious intent. Because L&J are American, and, like all good Americans, they know that good guys always speak God's English.

[Jason]

"During the day I ran my own import-and-export business and made myself wealthy.

Like Vandaly Industries?

[damnedyankee]

That danged over-ejimacated furrin Yoo-nited Nations librul! Ah betcha he contributes to Wikipedia!

[cjmr]

Because L&J are American, and, like all good Americans, they know that good guys always speak God's English.

If they were that far gone, they'd've had all their characters speaking King James' English, wouldn't they?

[Evan]

Out of curiosity: Do we ever see the GIRAT write any news stories about anything? Or does he just run around making phone calls and catching planes?

[Vermic]

Here then is all you need to know about Buck's idea of what constitutes a story: "Businessmen conduct meeting" is big news; "Businessman kills police inspector with car bomb" is not.

Perhaps closer to the point, "Businessmen conduct meeting" is not a story likely to involve personal risk for the reporter; "Businessman kills police inspector with car bomb" is.

Buck is not merely a bad reporter, he's a wuss. For all Rayford's faults, and they are legion, I can't see him being this much of a sissy. I guess Buck feels he already has all the Pulitzers he needs.

Also: Buck is mind-mojo'd into telling Carpathia all the things that he had come there to talk about in the first place? Truly, the powers of the Antichrist are without peer.

[lou]

"L&J seem to think that fluency in multiple languages is a path to riches."

I think they think it is the path to riches for furriners. Americans, of course, only need to be monolingual.

PS I love your take on Tim Russert. I gave up watching him because I'd always scream at the TV: "Tim, why aren't you asking follow up question X or Y, you moron!"

[Josh D]

The point about Buck being such a bad reporter reminds me of the later books where he's no longer the GIRAT. He's now the GEWAT (Greatest Evangelistic Writer of All Time). Definitely Jenkins projecting himself on his character. ha ha.
What Buck lacks as an investigative journalist, he makes up for as a sycophant to other characters that become evangelists. The relationship, honestly, must be similar to the one between LaHaye and Jenkins in real life. LaHaye is the "Bible Scholar" and Jenkins is the "writer". The same relationship exists between Tsion Ben-Judah and Buck in later books. I think that Buck, in the mind of Jerry Jenkins, has to be a great writer (or the GIRAT) from the get-go so that he can fulfill the role of GEWAT later on. No local newspaper hack could possibly do the work of Jerry Jenkins, right? I mean, the writer for such a great evangelist would HAVE to be a great writer-- hand chosen by God. And God isn't going to pick just any loser. He's going to pick Cameron Williams.
Or maybe God really understands the meaning of 2nd Corinthians 12:9-- for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
One wonders whether Buck could benefit by selling his soul to the devil for a little talent. Or maybe he already did. Maybe rather than giving Buck real literary talent, Satan just gave everyone else really bad taste. I mean, which is easier?

[scyllacat]

O Hai.

I just needed to comment on my personal triumph at having read and caught up on the "Left Behind" blogging. Now I may actually have time to read the comments and participate in the conversation!

Sorry to waste the bandwidth pretending that it's all about me. Carry on.

[sarabeth]

i, too, have finally caught up on all previous posts. Hooray!

Out of curiosity: Do we ever see the GIRAT write any news stories about anything? Or does he just run around making phone calls and catching planes?

Oh, yes. He does, in fact, write more. And it's just as good as you'd expect any writing by the GIRAT, created by J&L, to be.

[Ken]

If they were that far gone, they'd've had all their characters speaking King James' English, wouldn't they?

King James English or KJV 1611 ONLY Kynge Jaymes Englyshe?

[scyllacat]

sarabeth: Crikey, you have my cousin's name. Are you my cousin?

Ken: I swear I dated a guy once who not only believed in the Young Earth, but that the perfection and completion of God's Bible was the KJV. Not the Hebrew Torah, nor any sort of original manuscripts; somehow, just as God picked a date to build the earth and did it all in a week, He wasn't done with the Bible until several thousand years of history, and several hundred years of mucking about by the Catholic Church, resulted in the idealized, perfect Bible. I can't even begin to list everything wrong with this idea, or the rest of the theology to which he subscribed.

[Ken]

What I read into this week's excerpt is an infodump attempt, an idiot-conversation between two talking heads. Only difference is this time it's face-to-face instead of yet another phone call.

(There's a older literary form called "epistolary novel", where the story is told entirely in the form of an exchange of letters between the characters. What would you call a version where the entire story is told entirely in the form of a phone-conversation transcript?)

[Chris Archer]

Does't anyone remember Richard Nixon? Nicky reminds me of Tricky Dick with his 'let me be perfectly clear' jive. Follow the money indeed. Jerry and Tim have followed it so closely that they're starting to draw their own maps. Galloping Christian paranoia is both popular and profitable.

[Ken]

Scyllacat: Last year I was visiting my writing partner, a soon-to-be ex-pastor of a rural Pennsylvania church. He showed me a "KJV 1611 ONLY!" church (congregation about a dozen)down the road from his and explained to me the difference between the KJV and its 1611 First Edition, and how that church taught *only* the KJV 1611 is God's Word (given as word-for-word dictation, like the Koran) and all other Bibles are Satanic. I trot that one out any time I encounter a "KJV Only!" type, showing the KJV/RTC that to a "KJV 1611 ONLY!" RTC, *his* KJV is a Satanic False Translation. (Still haven't gotten a substance strongly resembling guacamole to come out their ears, but I'm working on it.)

And in the Eighties, there was this filksinger named "Pastor Ron", a preacher at a church in Tulsa who wrote filksongs on the side. One of his filks was "Gimme that Old King James Version"; I only remember fragments of it like:

"There's ASV, and and RSV, and a Paraphrase or two;
All these new 'translations' that say what you want them to;
(missing line or three here)
But if John the Baptist used the King James Version
Then it's good enough for me!
Gimme that old King James Version,
Gimme that old King James Version,
Gimme that old King James Version,
It's good enough for me!"

P.S. Scyllacat: You wouldn't happen to have a partner named Charybdisdog, would you?

[heofmanynames]

Ken: No.

[the opoponax]

OK, wait.

Since when would the UN have the power to make fundamental currency changes?

even when the Euro came about, it was each member of the EU's choice to adopt it or not. This is why the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, etc. still use their old currencies. And of course, let's not forget that the EU and the UN are not in any way equivalent to each other in terms of powers held. Even if for some reason it had the power to implement such a thing, it would have no authority to make anybody adopt it. I mean, crap, the UN can't make even puny developing countries hew to their many human rights resolutions (let alone developed ones like the US). It can barely enforce the sanctions it imposes on totalitarian governments.

And there's no way that countries with (relatively) strong economies would go for this sort of scheme, anyway. You'd have the Dollar, the Pound, the Yen, the Euro etc. and then an additional group of "world" currencies covering various developing countries with extremely weak economies. And even those countries wouldn't be too thrilled with the idea, because it would tie their economic success or failure to that of other countries, some even weaker and more hopeless. The Euro works for a country like France, Italy, or Germany because they know that they're casting their lot in with stable economies in the same region and with a lot of general commonalities. What's good for Belgium is generally also good for the Netherlands. A "world" currency, even in a group of three, wouldn't have this benefit at all.

[The Old Maid]

Do we ever see the GIRAT write any news stories about anything?

He publishes his article on the disappearances, off-screen, in Volume 2. (Technically it's also a flashback, as Volume 2 opens two weeks after the rapture, so the magazine would be on its third issue since the event.) We don't see the article, but several villains and one neutral read it; they thought it was good.

[lou]

I think that Buck, in the mind of Jerry Jenkins, has to be a great writer (or the GIRAT) from the get-go so that he can fulfill the role of GEWAT later on. No local newspaper hack could possibly do the work of Jerry Jenkins, right?
Of course, this part of the problem with Jenkins. Being the greatest *writer* in the world is not the same as being the greatest *investigative reporter*. In fact, wasn't part of Carl Bernstein's duties to polish the staid writing of Bob Woodward?

[Dahne]

"L&J seem to think that fluency in multiple languages is a path to riches."

Mattaku! I sure hope so.

I think the issue here is a strange W-esque relationship with reality: saying it's true makes it so. Saying somebody is the GIRAT, or a real true Christian, or has been thinking about his suddenly dead... er, raptured wife all day, exists in a completely different space independant from a person's actions. It's a surreal approach often inadvertantly taken in bad writing, usually before the author has lived much or graduated high school. That they seem to consider an accurate reflection of the real world - or, worse, that acurately depicting human life or thought appears to be a superfluous consideration - is what's truly frightening.

[Ursula L]

Part of the problem L&J are having in writing the GIRAT may be from the odd perspective that some conservatives have of Woodward and Bernstein - that they're the ultimate expression of a liberal conspiracy out to get good, honest conservatives (like Nixon.) If you reject the example of the most successful investigative reporting in recent history, you're left with a very shallow GIRAT.

What would a GIRAT look like to people who reject the idea of the Watergate investigation being an example of effective investigative reporting? Someone like Buck, who goes for interviews with the rich and powerful that make the rich and powerful feel good, while ignoring those subordinates who question the abuses of those in power.

[Mau de Katt]

If they were that far gone, they'd've had all their characters speaking King James' English, wouldn't they?

Not at all. Everyone knows that KJV-ese is reserved for The Word Of God alone -- no one else ~ever~ spoke it but God when He dictated the KJV Bible.

(I forget -- do those prophet guys who show up later speak in KJV-ese? Or rather, are ~heard~ to speak in KJV-ese?)

[bulbul]

L&J seem to think that fluency in multiple languages is a path to riches.
Lord forgive me, but I wish they were right this time.
I can do about 10 active, some 25 passive and yet I barely made my mortgage payments for the third month in a row.
Ain't no justice in this world, I tell ya...

[Ken]

Someone like Buck, who goes for interviews with the rich and powerful that make the rich and powerful feel good, while ignoring those subordinates who question the abuses of those in power.

I always wonder if that's the reality that LaHaye & Jenkins (and their Celebrity Mega-pastor church leadership style) are used to. Celebrity Mega-Pastors being interviewed by yes-men for Celebrity Christian Media and anathemas for those subordinates who dare Touch the Anointed and/or Do My Prophet Harm.

While way up in heaven they lament these conditions
That come from changing a few prepositions.
"Not in it, or of it," Christian One thought,
But who in the world will know that he's not?
"In it, and of it," thought Christian Two.
But who in the world will know what he knew?
"Not in it, but of it," thought Christian Three.
But who in the world watches Christian TV?

And Jesus turns to Gabriel, shaking His head.
"'In it, not of it,' wasn't that what I said?"
-- John Fischer, "The Ins and Outs of It"

[the opoponax]

Bulbul, by any chance were you born in Romania, and do you have two gay dads and a really weird "aunt" whose name is a stupid anagram for 666?

Do you, in fact, bear a passing resemblance to A Young Robert Redford?

[Chan]

"Since when would the UN have the power to make fundamental currency changes?"

Since Ethiopia became a nuclear power and the Israeli desert bloomed.

[jw]

L&J seem to think that fluency in multiple languages is a path to riches. They should know better since, after all, they're millionaires and they're not even fluent in English.

Big grins here.

[bulbul]

opo:

No.
I have one dad who gets a little gay (in the original sense of the word) after a beer or two.
I have 5 aunts, 3 of them weird.
Passing resemblance? Sure, if you're passing me in a car driving 120 mph :o)

[bulbul]

"You cannot serve God and Mammon."
Yet apparently, you can pretend to serve God and pile up huuuge amounts of mammon. Hm.

This is a part of what pisses me off about the so-called conservatives in my neck of the woods: most of them are not Christians, yet all of them support the Christian Democratic Party (which, as you might have guessed, is neither). The only reason they do so is because they believe that Christianity is a safeguard for morals and a tool to control the masses ("mob", a guy I know callse them). As for their actual beliefs, they in fact do worship mammon - only they call it "free market".

[85% Duane]

I can do about 10 active, some 25 passive and yet I barely made my mortgage payments for the third month in a row.

You need to get a job with the U.S. CIA. They need folks like you.

[LMM]

I trot that one out any time I encounter a "KJV Only!" type, showing the KJV/RTC that to a "KJV 1611 ONLY!" RTC, *his* KJV is a Satanic False Translation. (Still haven't gotten a substance strongly resembling guacamole to come out their ears, but I'm working on it.)

It occurred to me -- is American fundamentalism the *only* religion in the world which believes that a *translation*, and not the original it was based on, was inspired by God?

In another lifetime, I'm going to start a fundamentalist church which actually reads the original *Greek* version of the Bible. It'd be truly hilarious to duke it out with the KJV people. (Incidentally, why doesn't the whole "Christian homeschooling" movement believe in learning ancient Greek and Hebrew?)

I have one dad who gets a little gay (in the original sense of the word) after a beer or two.

I had a number of friends in college who were the same way. The whole concept of a sexual identity isn't nearly as straightforward as American culture would like to believe it is.

[LMM]

I trot that one out any time I encounter a "KJV Only!" type, showing the KJV/RTC that to a "KJV 1611 ONLY!" RTC, *his* KJV is a Satanic False Translation. (Still haven't gotten a substance strongly resembling guacamole to come out their ears, but I'm working on it.)

It occurred to me -- is American fundamentalism the *only* religion in the world which believes that a *translation*, and not the original it was based on, was inspired by God?

In another lifetime, I'm going to start a fundamentalist church which actually reads the original *Greek* version of the Bible. It'd be truly hilarious to duke it out with the KJV people. (Incidentally, why doesn't the whole "Christian homeschooling" movement believe in learning ancient Greek and Hebrew?)

I have one dad who gets a little gay (in the original sense of the word) after a beer or two.

I had a number of friends in college who were the same way. The whole concept of a sexual identity isn't nearly as straightforward as American culture would like to believe it is.

[LMM]

Ack! Double post. My apologies -- I got an error the first time.

[the opoponax]

i don't think Christian homeschoolers are particularly against studying Greek and ancient Hebrew. It seems like a particularly apt thing for a seminary-bound teenager to get a head start on, and one of the best things about Christian Homeschooling is that it's a fast track to bible college.

of course, you also have the fact that a lot of Christian homeschooling parents educate their children simply by ordering pre-packaged RTC-approved curricula online, and secretly do have a lot of respect for the traditional American high school curriculum (they just wish it had more Jesus in it). So most of them don't get into Greek or Hebrew because it's an uncommon subject for typical high schoolers to take up, and/or because it didn't come in the mail with the Christian Algebra and Creation Science textbooks. it's funny to me how few Christian homeschooling parents have hit upon the idea that homeschooling doesn't have to be "High School, but in your house and without all that scary Evolution", but can be tailored to the student's individual interests.

not to mention that the standards for most of the fundamentalist "bible colleges" are a lot lower than most seminaries, and I have a feeling such students are not required to make a thorough study of languages found in ancient scripture.

[85% Duane]

I had a number of friends in college who were the same way. The whole concept of a sexual identity isn't nearly as straightforward as American culture would like to believe it is.

He didn't mean that kind of way.

[bulbul]

He didn't mean that kind of way.
Exactly.
And let me just say that thank God my dad doesn't speak English.

[Muse of Ire]

We've all seen bad movies in which the plot doesn't make sense because they haven't provided a valid reason why the heroes don't just go to the police. This is that movie. Except here it's worse because the hero is a policeman and he won't even go to himself.

OH BWAHAHAHAHA!

I've had a tough week, and that belly laugh loosened up a lot of tight muscles.

[Cactus Wren]

Scyllacat, point your KJV-only friend to this page, with some apposite lines from the translators of that very version:

For the very Historicall trueth is, that vpon the importunate petitions of the Puritanes, at his Maiesties comming to this Crowne, the Conference at Hampton Court hauing bene appointed for hearing their complaints : when by force of reason they were put from all other grounds, they had recourse at the last, to this shift, that they could not with good conscience subscribe to the Communion booke, since it maintained the Bible as it was there translated, which was as they said, a most corrupted translation. And although this was iudged to be but a very poore and emptie shift; yet euen hereupon did his Maiestie beginne to bethinke himselfe of the good that might ensue by a new translation, and presently after gaue order for this Translation which is now presented vnto thee. Thus much to satisfie our scrupulous Brethren.

Now to the later we answere: that wee doe not deny, nay wee affirme and auow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set foorth by men of our profession (for wee haue seene none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. As the Kings Speech which hee vttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian and Latine, is still the Kings Speech, though it be not interpreted by euery Translator with the like grace, nor peraduenture so fitly for phrase, nor so expresly for sense, euery where. For it is confessed, that things are to take their denomination of the greater part; and a naturall man could say, Verum vbi multi nitent in carmine, non ego paucis offendor maculis, &c. A man may be counter a vertuous man, though hee haue made many slips in his life, (els, there were none vertuous, for in many things we offend all) also a comely man and louely, though hee haue some warts vpon his hand, yea, not onely freakles vpon his face, but also skarres. No cause therefore why the word translated should bee denied to be the word, or forbidden to be currant, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it. For what euer was perfect vnder the Sunne, where Apostles or Apostolike men, that is, men indued with an extraordinary measure of Gods spirit, and priuiledged with the priuiledge of infallibilitie, had not their hand?

[sarabeth]

scyllacat, i don't THINK i'm your cousin. . .unless there are some serious skeletons in my family's collective closets. :)

We've all seen bad movies in which the plot doesn't make sense because they haven't provided a valid reason why the heroes don't just go to the police. This is that movie. Except here it's worse because the hero is a policeman and he won't even go to himself.

This might be the most wonderful thing i've read all week.

[aunursa]

Origins of the Left Behind Series

"As far as the reporter, when I sat down to write the book, I realized I needed a character who could go places Rayford couldn't. Rayford could go certain places as a pilot, but a reporter could go to international sites on assignment. So we added the Buck Williams character and switched perspectives back and forth between them, and it really gave a lot of flexibility. For me, it made it easier to cover the story."

See, the GIRAT's job is not to report the conspiracy to his readers, it's to report the conspiracy to L&J's readers.

[MikeJ]

Wow. They needed a reporter in the book because the pilot character couldn't go to "international sites".

Wow.

[Dahne]

I can do about 10 active, some 25 passive and yet I barely made my mortgage payments for the third month in a row.

Holy crap, man! I thought somebody here was saying not long ago that something like 7 languages was about as much as a person's head could be expected to hold at once.

[Sivi_Volk]

Dahne:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_noted_polyglots

Seven isn't hard, particularly if you're raised in a part of the world with a lot of languages in a small geographic area.

[Erick Oppeen]

One reason that "Christian homeschoolers" don't teach New Testament Greek (aka "Koine," which differs from Classical or Modern Greek, being about one-third of the way from Classical to Modern) or Hebrew to their children is they don't know it themselves!

The thing about homeschooling is that, when done right, it's wonderful. The children learn a lot faster when it's just them and the teacher (a parent, or whoever), without the endless stupid distractions built into our public schools as a means to keep the idiots under some sort of control. When I was studying Chinese, I learned a lot faster when I was in Taiwan, because it was just me and the teacher in a little cubicle; I couldn't slack off while the teacher went after someone else. There are reasons why homeschooled children generally do very well indeed on standardized tests.

Unfortunately, though, a lot of people don't do it well.

[starroute]

Given the upcoming CIA/Family Jewels document dump, I was doing a little googling around on Watergate-related matters and encountered this:

Zumwalt, Felt and McCord were by no means alone in their deep mistrust of the Nixon White House. Within the Pentagon, a military spy-ring was pillaging Kissinger's secrets on behalf of Adm. Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since 1970.

Within the offices of the National Security Council, and on secret missions to China, Kissinger's briefcases were rifled and his burn-bags ransacked. In all, perhaps a thousand top-secret documents were stolen and transmitted to Moorer's office (if not elsewhere, as well) by Yeoman Charles Radford, a young Mormon acting on orders of Adm. Robert Welander. . . .

So why did Radford do it?

According to the yeoman himself, his "superiors" were of the opinion that Kissinger's foreign policy was "catastrophic" by design. His own espionage activities, he said, were intended to defeat a conspiracy conceived by "the Rockefeller family" and orchestrated by the Council on Foreign Relations. The purpose of this supposed conspiracy, Radford said, was to win the Soviets' cooperation in guaranteeing the Rockefellers' "continued domination" over the world's currencies. In return for this, Nixon and Kissinger were to construct a foreign policy that would ensure eventual Soviet hegemony and a one-world government.

Yikes! It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for Nixon. But not quite.

It's one thing to get a snicker or two over weird fundie-Bircher theories about currency manipulation and one-world government. But to find them playing out in terms of someone actually swiping Kissinger's secret documents ...

Admiral Moorer, by the way, was long-time pals with General John Singlaub of the World Anti-Communist League. Shortly before his death a few years ago, he was pushing the notion that al Qaeda was a Chinese front -- which makes it hard for me to believe that he could have been the source of Radford's belief that Nixon and Kissinger were set on ensuring Soviet hegemony. A very strange business altogether.

[Stephen Frug]

...in the words of Deep Throat, "Follow the money."

Historical nitpick: the person who wrote those words was actually screenwriter William Goldman (yes, the same guy who wrote The Princess Bride, novel & film both). The words come from the film version of All the President's Men, for which Goldman wrote the screenplay. I remember sometime after Deep Throat was outed Goldman was quoted in a newspaper column as having asked the columnist to pay attention to the media circus and see if anyone remembered who actually wrote the famous words "follow the money" (the point being that screenwriters don't get no respect). Needless to say, no one did.

So perhaps we can all note that the famous Deep Throat slogan was actually written by William Goldman...

[thirstygirl]

Hmm, my father learnt Greek and ancient Hebrew on his path to his Doctorate in Divinity but he's a filthyfilthy Anglican Minister. You can't trust *them* -> they're the dithering academics of the Protestant world.

[insert "cake or death?" joke *here*]

[the opoponax]

thirstygirl, afaik, all students of seminaries that are affiliated with mainline Protestant denominations are required to learn at least one or the other. i'd even go as far as to say that just about all the "legit" seminaries of all denominations do, except for those really shoddy "bible colleges" that aren't even accredited institutions.

[Hasimir Fenring]

the difference between the KJV and its 1611 First Edition...the KJV 1611 is God's Word (given as word-for-word dictation, like the Koran) and all other Bibles are Satanic

I encourage you to check out Emo Phillips's 'Once I Was in San Francisco' routine. There's a bit of a build-up, but I promise it's completely relevant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_KnHgVZTwY

[damnedyankee]

The guy who wrote All The President's Men also did The Princess Bride? That's just begging for some kind of #$%@ed-up YouTube mashup clip.