I just love how this reads. It draws on the finest traditions of W.B. Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Jackie Collins, Dr. Phil, and, of course, World Magazine.
Six years ago, the shadow-dwelling beast got out; Mr. Burgin [a conservative pastor] was addicted to internet pornography. For the entirety of his ministry and even before, Mr. Burgin tumbled silently through a cycle of shame, repentance, and broken vows. Seasons of apparent victory collapsed in times of stress, when the comfort of habit proved too difficult to resist. Despite a guilt-ridden conscience, Mr. Burgin often preached on sexual purity, slogging through such sermons undetected. "I compartmentalized it in my mind," he said. "I rationalized. I minimized. I would stop while preaching and teaching on it."
Mr. Burgin's exposure came during a spell of particularly high internet activity. A series of stress-filled events—his father died, his eldest son left for college, and he relocated to a new church—drove him to new levels of daring. He left undone the practiced ritual of covering his tracks, failing to delete his computer's history and temporary internet files. "I got sloppy, and I got caught," he said.
Mr. Burgin's wife of 25 years did the catching and unlocked the cage of her husband's secret monster by releasing printouts of his activity to various church leaders. She then chose divorce, taking the couple's young daughter with her. His ministry and family lost, his reputation soiled, Mr. Burgin turned to the church for help and found little. "Churches didn't know how to handle me," he said.I feel for Mr. Burgin, I really do. His ex-wife and his former congregation seem less Christian than he is.
And as frequently happens with such excursions into "the dangers of" genre, the article occasionally veers dangerously close into the how-to rather than the how-not-to zone. It reminds me of one disgustingly instructive after school special-type program on binging and purging that featured a very young and credibly anorexic-looking Calista Flockhart. [Note to Calista: Don't ever let Harrison see the video. He'll be turned off forever, darling.]
And true to form, "Porn Again" points the way to the self-proclaimed #1 Christian porn site, XXXchurch.com. The site is supposed to be a self-help resource for those trying to kick their addiction to porn, but DVDs such as "Missionary Positions" promoted in detail on the site raise more than a few doubts.
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Over at BusyBusyBusy, the poet laureate of the left hemi-blogosphere, MJS, slashes David Gelertner's epaulets for his inaugural column at the LA Times, "Soldiers Do Us the Honor".
Here's MJS's comment:
Unless you understand what drives a man like Sgt. Smith to become a soldier, the honor you do him is honor with a footnote (he was a brave man, but obviously some kind of weirdo).
Gelernter's in my mind! Get him out! Get him out! He's reading all my thinking points! Get him out!
Here in academia, my colleagues seem determined to turn American soldiers into an out-of-sight, out-of-mind servant class who are expected to do their duty and keep their mouths shut.
Wow, dude, you got some gnarly colleagues. They probably strangle babies with recently discarded feeding tubes. You should, like, avoid them.
A few weeks ago, I spoke on the pro-Bush side of an informal debate at Yale, and an imposing middle-aged man with fierce white hair came up afterward to ask me where I got the nerve to support a president who sends young soldiers to their deaths?
That was God coming at you. He, and His Hair, are indeed fierce. You were right to feel threatened.
I do know that there is a time for every purpose under heaven, and that age 17 is a good time for caring about honor and duty and demonstrating the stuff you are made of and fighting to protect your country and rid the world of torture, terrorism and tyranny.
Hey, that's what that Iman was talking about in Fallujah! You like totally copied him. You should be a translator. Or maybe a copy machine. You guys both totally understand that "17 year-olds make awesome killers" thing. You guys rule!
This is David Gelertner's first regular column for The Times.
I'll alert the media. Oh, wait...
+++
MJS
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Today also brought us what must be the 764th column by Brent Bozell on the ineffectiveness of V-chips in preventing youngsters from watching the absolute F-I-L-T-H and V-I-O-L-E-N-C-E on American television. Brent moans: Parents do not know the V-chips exist, parents don't know how to program the chips, parents don't understand the coding system (D,L,S,V), the chips are useless, the parents are useless, and on and on.
I am not entirely unsympathetic to Bozell's plight. It seems to me that these days newborns come home from the hospital with a Social Security card and a platinum credit card tucked into their diapers and their very own color television set rope-tied to mom's discharge wheelchair.
Here is my humble suggestion, one predicated on the assumption that it's easier to exert control over your own home than it is to push around Hollywood and the corporate media.
The "official" TV -- the one with the cable or satellite connection -- stays in Mom and Dad's room under lock and key. (And if Mom and Dad are really serious about this, they should save money and skip the Playboy channel and all the other adult-oriented channels, just as an extra precaution.) Located in the living room or the family room, the "other" TV is not connected to cable or satellite. Think of it more as a video monitor than as a TV. Mom and Dad can create videotape archives of the shows they have personally watched and approved of and dole them out -- but only if homework and chores are done.
Another rule: No child should have his or her own TV set until he/she moves into his own place.
Voila -- problem solved. Of course, the TV manufacturers won't like this approach, and the cable companies won't like it, and the satellite dish companies won't like it, and the advertisers won't like, but screw'em.
Brent -- You have my permission to take this idea and run with it.
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The Daily Howler has anincomparably tart post up about the inclusion of "flamboyant public crackpot Ann Coulter [as] one of the world’s 'most influential people,' as Time magazine judges this week in its annual hackery issue."
Go read it and then ponder this question for the ages: does vouching for a media whore make you a media whore?
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