"Moral Retards" Sink Mental Retard--Updated!The
Timothy Shortall, the Brooklyn College professor whose appointment as Chairman of the Sociology Department caused controversy when it was revealed that he had written that religious people were "moral retards" has declined the chairmanship.
"On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying - like bad taste," he wrote. "This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude, and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot."Talk about the pot and the kettle! The problem Shortall experienced is that he said what most liberals think. I'm always reminded when hearing statements like that of the amazing scene in the movie "The Contender" where Vice Presidential nominee Joan Allen tells a Senate panel that she's not religious because she doesn't believe in fairy tales. Naturally, this completely scotches her nomination. Oh, wait a minute, it doesn't; everybody acts as if it were nothing shocking.
Update:
John Ruberry remembers (in the comments) that one of the characters in the Music Man refers to Brooklyn as the City of Churches. Apparently this was a
common appelation for Brooklyn:
The public buildings of Brooklyn are numerous, and many of them are elegant and imposing structures. It numbers over seventy houses of Christian worship, which has given it the title of "The City of Churches."Ironic, no?
