According to his Townhall bio, “Douglas MacKinnon is former White House and Pentagon official who spent three years working in a Joint Command,” although he’s perhaps better known as Bob Dole’s former press secretary.
I’m kidding, nobody knows who the hell he is — except perhaps for certain fundamentalist Christians, who got their snakes in a twist over Doug’s 2008 novel, The Apocalypse Directive, about a U.S. President who believes Jesus is telling him to start Armageddon.
The story was loosely based on Christian Embassy, an evangelical group which confused the U.S. Armed Services with the Knights Templar and went about the corridors of the Pentagon trying to recruit their own khaki-clad, mayonnaise-flavored mujahideen. Spoiler Alert: At the end of the book we learn that Jesus did tell the President to launch a nuclear first strike, but it was just a prank for what turned out to be a failed reality show pilot (the Lord figured He could defray the cost of the Second Coming by selling it as a series to TLC).
But as Jimmy Stewart said in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, false equivalencies are the only equivalencies worth fighting for, so this week Mr. MacKinnon is going to blaspheme the “bible for the left” (The New York Times) and its new Revelations section, which offers theater and restaurant reviews, and combined listings for Movies, TV, Trump-Sounding, and Seal-Breaking (This Friday, November 19, Beast of the Sea will be at the Jones Beach Theater, with Special Guests The Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato! Doors open at 6. Mouth of Hell opens at 8).
The New York Times, The Far-Left, and Their “Messiah” Obama
With the results of the mid-term election still fresh in our minds, the question needs to be asked again. That being, is Barack Obama the Messiah?
Well, if the Messiah has returned, that would make George W. Bush the Antichrist, wouldn’t it? But since the he didn’t actually end the world, just wrapped it around a telephone pole, it would seem he screwed up the Apocalypse, too.
Or, more to the point, do a number of delusional liberals and far-left radicals still truly believe him to be a deity or their deity?
Since “a number” could mean “one,” I’m going to say yes. I don’t personally know any people who consider Obama a god, but this is America — we’re always looking for a savior’s palm to grease, from Joseph Smith to L. Ron Hubbard to Sun Myung Moon — and if you can’t get at least one person to believe you’re a prophet, then you don’t deserve your megachurch, or cable network, or money-losing DC newspaper.
(Oh, and Rev. Moon? If you ever get glum about the way people mock your godhead, try to remember that they were a lot more demonstrative about it in the 1st Century AD; besides, nowadays you have apostles like R. Emmett Tyrrell, who feast on the wisdom of your faith-based broadsheet every day, along with their morning roughage.)
Uber-liberal New York Times columnist Gail Collins just seemed to confirm that dangerous possibility.
I’m a little shaky on the whole liberal taxonomy, although I know it spans the gamut from Far Left Communist to Far Left Fascist, but are there any circumstances in which we can legitimately classify Gail Collins as a “uber-leftist” without the Oxford English Dictionary just hauling off and punching us in the sack? Or to put it another way, Doug just heaved a rock and broke the Overton Window, then stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered off, whistling; which to my mind illustrates the shocking way our culture has declined since the early 20th Century, because in a silent film the cops would have chased him all over town for that.
In her latest offering in the bible for the left entitled “Believing in Barack,” Ms. Collins seemed to be reciting her version of a prayer in support of her deific leader as she tried to excuse those horrible mid-term results. Said Ms. Collins, “I have faith in Barack Obama…even though he is testing us sorely…I believe the president will pick the right course…”
For some reason Doug doesn’t link to Ms. Collins’ piece, probably because he worked hard on those ellipses, and he doesn’t want us to ruin the effect by reading all the unnecessary words in between (it’s like getting close enough to Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte to see the dots. Respect the artist, people!). Just for the record, here’s her opening paragraph: ”I have faith in Barack Obama. Of course, I also have faith in the New York Mets.”
Interesting and telling choice of words.
Once you reassemble them in the right order.
As many liberals and atheists don’t go to church or religious service, they are going to have to take my word for it that when someone generally says they have “faith” in someone and that “He is testing us sorely,” that person is almost always referring to God.
Unless that person is a liberal or an atheist who doesn’t go to church, in which case he almost never is. 
I find your faith in Obama disturbing…
Now, through recorded history, various Pharaohs, Emperors, Kings, dictators, and garden variety thugs have declared themselves God or a God. To my knowledge, President Obama has not granted himself this mother of all affirmative actions.
“Oops — I wish I’d hadn’t gotten halfway through this column before I realized my premise was bullshit. I could have written a snappy thing on political correctness instead, or maybe just done recipes this week. Oh well, I can crap out another 300 words of this standing on my head.”
Unfortunately, his followers have assigned him that title on their own. Not good.
Ellipses don’t lie.
Belief in God — much like the belief in the “brilliance” of Mr. Obama — requires no proof. None.
And since you declare later in the column that by any rational standard, Obama isn’t brilliant — in fact, he’s kind of a dunce — then, uh…Hm. I guess Richard Dawkins thanks you for the unsolicited testimonial to atheism.
Those who believe in God will tell you it’s an act of faith. While they believe — and I agree — that they can logically explain the existence of God, they also feel it’s a waste of time to argue with the liberal and closed minds of atheists and “scientists” with an agenda.
Or a “degree.”
Yikes.
This is just my personal prejudice, but I don’t think an eminence grise should say “Yikes” (although if he’s spent three years in a Joint Command, he should be allowed to say “Whoa”).
On and on it goes. First we had the unhinged Louis Farrakhan say that when Obama was talking, “…the Messiah is absolutely speaking,” to now Gail Collins at least figuratively getting down on one knee to genuflect before the presence of Mr. Obama and reaffirm her faith in his power and glory.
Or, more specifically, the Virgin Gail reaffirmed her faith that Obama will give due consideration to the tax and entitlement policy recommendations by the “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” which was the original title of the novel, but the American publisher thought it was too provocative, and might needlessly antagonize the Legion of Decency.