Kim Jong Il and Christopher Hitchens

“The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy — the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head . . . . And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. . . . that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquize the divine and tell us what to do.”        

      - Christopher Hitchens, final interview (with Richard Dawkins, New Statesman, Dec. 2011)

Odd that the space of a scant few December days has seen the passing of two notoriously godless men, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, and Christopher Hitchens of the United States by way of Oxford University and London. Hitchens was the atheist who famously trashed Mother Teresa as "a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf." Kim was the world leader who threatened reprisals against his neighbor should it persist with plans to decorate the 38th Parallel for the holidays.

Beloved Leader's autodeification, like all such attempts to storm heaven, has inevitably been subverted by the death of the subject and chief witness, unless of course it was merely a standard transfiguration and shuffling off of this mortal coil for a better and more comely form. Kim was a contradictory fellow, an orthodox Marxist atheist and a theocrat at once, his political and personal instincts (so far as they are distinguishable) being as theocratic as any personal cult invariably is. Thinking about himself was, for Kim, the same as praying. His death was announced by a dutifully tearful announcer on state television (the very same announcer, as it happens, who announced the death of Jong Il's father, Kim Il Sung in 1994). He follows in the footsteps of other deified rulers such as Augustus Caesar, Elogabalus and Caligula, the latter pair known more for carnal excess than for piety, for a complete lack of sanity more than for their abiding sanctity.

Hitchens was also a Marxist (he thought "Marxist" more to the point than "liberal") and an atheist. He scorned the prospect of his own deathbed conversion and found it in poor taste when the well-meaning made the ghastly suggestion that perhaps, in the face of his mortality, he might find comfort in a reconsideration. Hitchens' godlessness was born of the rational Enlightenment and he employed it to spread light rather than a medieval darkness. He hated superstition and sentimentality because they make us pig-headed and blind us to the facts - they allow us, for example, to beatify those whom he considered utter charlatans, like Mother Teresa, whom he aspersed on the grounds that she subverted genuine efforts to improve the lot of the poor and of women, and that she diverted money intended for them to found numerous convents elsewhere.

Sisters of Perpetual Motion

Hitchens was one of the "New Atheists," the more militantly anti-religious breed who consider religion a case of arrested development in the evolution of the fully realized human being. His main beef with religion was that it is totalitarianism, unfailingly enlisted on the side of political repression, intellectual arrest, moral ignorance and the sort of unmerited privilege evident in capitalist societies. He may not have been entirely fair or correct about all of that, but he was passionate about it and undeniably offered a clear, if partial, description of some of the recent history of the world. "If," he argued, "you're writing about the history of the 1930s and the rise of totalitarianism, you can take out the word 'fascist,' if you want, for Italy, Portugal, Spain, Czechoslovakia and Austria and replace it with 'extreme-right Catholic party.' Almost all of those regimes were in place with the help of the Vatican and with understandings from the Holy See." Hitchens had no particular animus against the Catholic Church any more than against American evangelicalism, or fundamentalism of any stripe. He found it all infuriating.

In that sense, he was a culture warrior always contending with the forces of willful ignorance, scarcely ever prevailing in turning the tide. He seemed not to realize, or simply chose to ignore the fact that humans aren't religious or irreligious or nonreligious on philosophical considerations alone. We are, in the end, rational, superstitious, craven and sentimental in varying degrees. Arguments only go so far. But they're all we have.

On a cheerier note, a man's affianced in Great Britain managed to disinter herself from a shallow grave by using her engagement ring to cut her taped wrists and ankles after her betrothed tasered her with a 300,000-volt taser gun and buried her inside a cardboard computer box in woods about 100 feet from the nearest road. I can't wait for 2012. Unless it's the end of the world.

I'm With Kim Jong Il

The holidays arrive at Chateau de Montaigne like a slow bruise. The feverish post-Thanksgiving cheesiness that prevails across the landscape is easily ignored for a spell, until at last the inexorable choral hosannas of herald angels and assorted celestial castrati obtrude on the ambient air, my mind frayed like a worn sock, barely covering the blistered heel of my heathen sensibilities. Christmas again, I grouse silently.

By the time my neighbor Zeno's basement disgorges its trove of lawn decorations and Zeno strings lights all over his house, I am undone, irritable, my denial obvious even to myself. Zeno gives full scope to a crow-like penchant for gaudy holiday accessorizing. I long to be under the bedclothes until it's over.

Chateau Zeno

Zeno is a puzzle to me - he goes through all this trouble each holiday even though in most things he seems to be agnostic. He showers anathemas on both parties in Washington without favor or partisanship; he is suspicious alike of evangelical, Unitarian, Baptist, Bahai and Buddhist; he neither believes in life insurance, the Chinese economy nor the universal sororo-fraternity of humankind. He is, in a word, a hard sell on almost every topic - excepting the sole matter of Christmas. It beggars my understanding, but I'm told there are a good many people just like Zeno in that single regard.

For my part, the only solution I can see to this annual assault on good taste, modesty and general decorum is to become the fully invested potentate of my own nation, another Prince Leonard I of Hutt, and on about the same scale as that august and benevolent ruler. I wouldn't need a lot of space, and I wouldn't exactly outlaw the observance so much as I would mute it considerably in my immediate vicinity. (And having my own nation is more Christmasy than Texas secessionist trash-talk.)

Prince Leonard I, Santa Claus to his grateful people

 Having envisioned this state of blissful political equilibrium, it occurred to me that the exemplar, paradigm, type, foreshadowing, cynosure and perfect instantiation of the Glorious Leader is indeed the Glorious Leader himself, Kim Jong Il. Christmas in North Korea - heaven on earth for the Christmas agnostic.

"Get your filthy reindeer off my DMZ!"

The notorious 38th Parallel has become the locus of tensions so typical of family holidays everywhere.  "Tensions," I read, "arose between North Korea and South Korea following a proposal by a South Korean church group to place Christmas lights on a watchtower along the DMZ. “The enemy warmongers,” stated the North Korean government’s Uriminzokkiri website, “should be aware that they should be held responsible entirely for any unexpected consequences that may be caused by their scheme.” 

 The Enemy Warmonger

I'm with Kim Jong Il and frankly I couldn't have put the case for nonintervention more succinctly myself. Especially that part about "unexpected consequences," which, considering this is North Korea, could open up a world of inventive possibilities - everything from a nuclear winter to swarms of mutant frogs. 

As for the neighbors to the south, it's a darn shame that there are just some people who can't say "Merry Christmas, y'all!" without making it sound like fightin' words.

Update (Dec. 19): A scant four days or so after this post appeared, Kim Jong Il died secretly. Or (to succumb to an awful pun), Kim Jong Il is now plain Kim Jong, no longer ill so much as downright dead. Coincidence, I suppose. Still, his loss is mourned in much the same way that Herman Cain's withdrawal from the ranks of GOP presidential contenders was mourned - in both instances, the comedic possibilities in the world are thereby diminished.

The Devil at the DIA

"Fire is the Devil's only friend."  -  Don McLean, "American Pie"

 Oh, not again!

Living (as I do) within hailing distance of a large U.S. Army base, two Air Force bases, a major military academy and a semi-obsolete NORAD installation, I had thought that my demise, should it come from beyond these shores, would put a warmish thermonuclear period to an all too brief span of years, a fiery atomic punctuation mark at the end of a pleasant life sentence. To my horrified surprise, I have learned that it is my proximity to Denver International Airport that may cause eternal night to rain down upon my grizzled head - not at the hands of the Russians or the North Koreans, but from the very Hand that wields the Thunderbolt.

No, not him.

The Reverend William Tapley, a frequent face on YouTube productions and world-class nutter who assumes a Jungean gravitas as the "Third Eagle of the Apocalypse," has uncovered "phallic symbols" cryptically embedded at DIA. These symbols are unquestionably the work of Satan, who plays with more than just fire. But since Tapley provides no logical connection between phallic symbols and Satan, his argument evidently assumes that a) the phallus is undeniably principal among Satan's works, b) Satan's work is generally accomplished with that tool, and c) only Satan's acolytes employ it. (Quod erat demonstrandum.)

Tapley's mind is rich compost for his self-appointed role as penis-sniffer. The video that unmasks this conspiracy has went viral, as they say in Texas.

Exhibit A is a mural in the air terminal which Tapley has named "The Birth of the Antichrist," that depicts among other animals the great auk, extinct since the mid-nineteenth century. Its scientific name (Alca impennis, later changed to Penguinis impennis) is a boner to the reverend, the Latin nomenclature really a satanic snigger. The mural also depicts a naked woman in a red blouse and black slacks, presumably another of the Devil's works, as clothed women are the work of a benign Creator.

. . . this is actually the figure of a naked woman. And the crotch is formed by a bird form. But right opposite the woman is a penguin . . . . This sign on the penguin's cage constitutes a phallic symbol. It in fact represents the male genitalia.

Right opposite the woman are her clothes, as well. This is the offending mural:

The "crotch" of Tapley's dream is the bird in flight just to the left of Dick the Penguin . . .

 Exhibit A - Penguinus Impennis (Great Auk)

. . . which is in fact Dick the Great Auk, whose flipper-like wing, lacking flight feathers (pennae), rendered the bird flightless. 'Impennis' means 'without pennae'. (Neither 'Dick the Penguin' nor 'Dick the Great Auk' refer to well-known fraternity drinking games of the same name.)  

Please note that the Latin name for this bird includes the word 'impennis.' Now that is not accidental. The artist chose this bird for a reason . . . . The bird standing upright is phallic, the shape of the sign [a rectangle on the bird's cage] is phallic, and even the name is phallic.

Tapley's tendentious explanations invite one to surmise that a) his own penis is a blue rectangle similar to the sign on the bird's cage, and b) Tapley himself has never attempted to put a square peg in a round hole.

Exhibit B is Luis Jiminez's fiberglass mustang in the median of the Pena Boulevard airport approach.

 Exhibit B - Luis Jiminez's Blue Mustang

Many of the shapes on the horse's tail and mane are phallic shapes - and of course it is a masculine horse. 

Not that a 32-foot blue fiberglass stallion with eyeballs that glow red in the night is in particularly good taste. But whether "masculine" or equine, a stallion is a stallion, a Devil's Tool being standard issue. A phallus, particularly one in its usual location, is not a phallic symbol. Still, the horse has done the Devil's own work - Tapley notes with relish that in assembling the sculpture in his New Mexico studio, the sculptor was crushed when a section of the torso fell on him.

Exhibit C is a subtle matter, something the design team nearly got away with until Tapley uncovered their little game. An aerial view of the airport reveals, not only that the footprint is a swastika, but also . . .

. . . the outdoor baggage-handling area is in the shape of a phallus. . . . Up here, we see the testicle area, out here the phallus.

Exhibit C - DIA ('baggage handling area' at bottom)

Flanking the white building jutting to the south of the main terminal are two loop roads (the "testicle area") which feed into long, straight parallel roads off to the left at the bottom of the photo (the "phallus").

There's no doubt that the designers of this airport had something other in mind than making an efficient baggage area. . . . I think you can see what they're getting at.
 
We have known from infancy the wiles of Satan, but this is pushing the envelope even for that old traducer. And to think that he even enlisted our fellow mortals as his henchmen in this hellish scheme - a muralist, a sculptor, a team of airport designers - Hell's bells, even an extinct species of subarctic bird you'd probably never even heard of until now because it has the word 'penis' - well, 'pennis' - staring brazenly from its binomial nomenclature. Was the great Linnaeus, who named it 250 years ago, a party to this as well (in spite of being a somewhat casual orthographer)?

But for the rest of us innocents abroad, we can only thank . . . actually, I'm not certain who to thank for the Transportation Security Authority, but the TSA should require from now on that female passengers traveling through DIA be accompanied in the airport by male chaperones of a pure mind . . .

(Only looks like Larry Craig)

The TSA might further require that Denver staff the airport with castrati as insurance against any occult forces that may cause a woman's dress to wobble unaccountably (a TSA agent's hands not being officially an "occult force").

Baggage handler

Still, one might wonder, as did a student in my late friend Ed's literature class at the University of Denver, overheard as she was coming out of a classroom saying, "I know it's a phallic symbol, but a phallic symbol of what?" Is it a satanic conspiracy, an elaborate practical joke orchestrated over the centuries, or just the fevered dream of a poor superstitious sod who dreams, night after night, the same dream bearing the same promise:

Baggage handler