After a devastating fire laid waste to much of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, three spectacularly wealthy French industrial families pledged 700 million euros to re-build the iconic structure. It was a generous gesture. But it was disconcerting that purse strings would open so quickly to repair a damaged building while so many actual living breathing human beings in France were suffering that the so-called “yellow vest movement” was rioting in the streets of Paris just a few weeks earlier.
Broke? Declare Yourself a Church and Burn
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Yeah, it’s sad – but not at all surprising. Poor kids are starving all across this country, they’re homeless and sick and we collectively ignore them.
But let one of those kids fall down a well, and suddenly the whole country mobilizes. I don’t think it’s hypocrisy, I think that we couldn’t function if we consciously thought about each and every one of those kids, each and every hour of the day.
Put a face on one, and it’s different. Perhaps we can safely unbottle our emotions, knowing that it will be over soon, one way or another.
Fact is, we weren’t built to handle all the grief of the entire world. It’s simply too big. We were “designed” to operate in small tribes, where any one tragedy is up close & personal – but also rare. Some other tribe somewhere might be starving, but we wouldn’t even know they existed.
Today, we’ve got global media to bring us all the grief in the world, and unfortunately if it ain’t painful it ain’t news.
Perhaps the Pope could see one or two paintings?
Notre Dame cathedral? One more thing I was never going to see in person. Did I want it to burn? No. Do I care? Pfui. I have a lot more concern about paying off my student loans. (And if the French actually gave a real shit about it, they would have had an effective fire-monitoring system in place.)
I realize a lot of people need a place to go and pray and stand and sit and genuflect and do like the guy in the costume at the front of the room tells them to, but I’ve had it with all this nonsense. It’s a building used for centuries to make sure the Catholic Church could consolidate political and economic power and tell every single one of us exactly what we could think and who we could sleep with, while some of the priests passed the altar boys around like a bag of chips and lectured us all about how we were going to hell for touching ourselves. And don’t get me started on all the woman-as-whore rhetoric. Can’t the world emerge into its adulthood? I’m sick of the hysterical hormone-warped teens terrorizing the entire house.
It all reminds me of the democrats. “Oh, yeah, we burned witches, but now we’re woke. We superdouble promise not to do it again. Unless our owners want us to.”
Dang it! Zut alors! Pope could SELL (not see) a couple of paintings.
> Pope could SELL (not see)
Wouldn’t that be a Holy See?
“Can’t the world emerge into its adulthood?”
Apparently not.
Thinking that they might has been a holy royal waste of time.
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
Rolling Stones, “Sympathy For The Devil”
Brilliant idea, Ted – the 1‰ get to purchase a massive tax discount and heaps of free (positive) publicity by sponsoring a poor person who sets himself or herself on fire. Sure to be almost as popular as MMA. I just hope the fire department is alerted ahead of time….
Henri