“Sociologists studying the movement - preeminently David Martin - suggest that the popularity of these churches is related to the way in which Christianity is linked to access to power. People are drawn to the neo-Pentecostal movement because they believe that their participation will result in some tangible results: financial success, health, successful marriage and so on. It is perhaps thus unsurprising that, generally speaking, individuals in less developed countries, particularly those making the transition from rural areas to large urban centers, are most likely to attend neo-Pentecostal churches.”
There are all kinds of ways to argue about what the original gay rights movement was about. But if you look at it collectively from the buttoned-up Mattachine Society to the hippie drag queen kids who threw bottles at Stonewall and you put them all together I think they could all come to the conclusion that, yeah, marriage should be an option for us because what’s at the core of this? “Oh, my full citizenship,” some would answer. Yes, there’s that. But what is at the even deeper core? “My romantic heart,” is my answer. It’s all about who you love. At its core, the gay rights movement is the most romantic revolution of all time.
“
| — | David Drake |
The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.
“
| — | David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” |
CNN’s Nancy Grace and Ashleigh Banfield Hold Split-Screen Interview in Same Parking Lot
Check out the “same bus in both shots.”
More: The Atlantic Wire
CNN’s problems, in animated GIF form.
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