Oh, The HYPOCRISY . . .

On Nov. 30, a man named Marcus Lamb died of Covid-19 in a sleepy suburb of Fort Worth. He is a distant relative of mine, though I have never met him. He is, however, related to family members I truly, deeply love. My sincere sympathy for loss goes out to my affected family members. I know they grieve, thus in my heart I grieve for their sense of loss.

The story of why I write this is a long and complicated one. I do not doubt Mr. Lamb was a sincerely well-meaning person, whose love of his specific deities and attached religion he saw as a vehicle for what he thought was doing good. But his case is one of many reminders that, as the axiom goes, “Karma is a Fucking Bitch“.

Lamb joins a long line of Christian broadcasters and sundry right-wingers who preached messages of Covid-19 anti-vaxx conspiracy hypotheses and other misinformation; then, as if all the world’s laughing fingers of irony pointed directly at them, contracted and died of … you guessed it … Covid-19 or complications thereof. Inotherwords, once the vaccine became available, they became 17 times more likely to die after contracting Covid-19 or attendant complications than by not having the shot.

Was there EVER a clear question of “should you be vaccinated — and live” or “not be vaccinated — and die”? . . How is it that millions of Americans, given all the data we’ve had for about — by March it’ll be — two years, and they say “No!” And someone would say I’d rather quit my job than be vaccinated; and then these theories that actually that shot inserts a little chip into your arm and then they can follow you and make you a zombie, the list goes on and on. If there was ever a clear picture of what to do and what not to do, it is to be vaccinated.

 

What the doctors and hospitals show, most of their patients who are sick and dying did not get vaccinated. What does it take these people to get the word?

 

So my theory is give it a year or two, America’s average IQ will go up several points, because all the stupid people will be dead.

 

— Lynn Ashby on ‘Open Journal’ radio, Jan. 5, 2022

I’m going to spend a few extra minutes here on two of the worst and most pietistically hypocritical bigots among the list of preachers, priests and pastors who used their pulpits to spread harmful mis-messages about a deadly epidemic.

Bob Enyart, aged 62, died this September of Covid-19, leaving behind 2 children. Known as “an American conservative talk radio host and pastor of Denver Bible Church in Denver”¹ and self-appointed moralist, he was convicted to 60 days in jail “for striking his girlfriend’s son with a belt hard enough to raise welts and break the skin.”² He, like most of the preachers on this list, consistently ignored the teachings of Christianity, where Jesus Christ himself asked us — and especially his followers — to “love one another” (Mat. 22:40), “love your enemies” (Mat. 5:44), “love one another” (John 13:34) and “let us love one another” (1 John 4:7). In January, 1995, on his broadcast show, Enyart read the obituary of a Denver gay-rights advocate dead from AIDS, then “held up the victim’s photo he labeled ‘ex-sodomite’ and said the man belonged to a ‘homo church.’ Station management ordered him to stop the practice.”³ He loudly and proudly proclaimed himself “America’s most popular self-proclaimed right-wing, religious fanatic, homophobic, anti-choice talk show host”⁴, and filled his career with hatred; in 2016 he purchased a cup of Starbucks Coffee (while trying to get others to boycott the chain, LOL this just cracks me the fuck up), and with many cameras rolling, proceeded to pour it down a drain. Why? Starbucks affirmed their support of same-sex marriage after the previous year’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision.⁵  In a statement, he said “Jesus Christ said God made us male and female at the beginning of the creation.”  Excuse me, Mr. Enyart, as both an Atheist who knows more about The Bible and especially the New Testament than most Christians, and multi-honored graduate of a Catholic school, let me tell you (except for the fact that you are fucking dead) that Jesus NEVER FUCKING SAID THAT!  He sounds too cool to have said something so stupid.  Only you and your type would ever say that, putting words in Jesus’s mouth for your personal fears and pettiness.

As Max von Sydow’s character laments in Hannah and Her Sisters, “If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”

Enyart also stated “Starbucks, in a move that’s not wise for eternity and not good for business here and now, has decided to promote homosexual marriage.”  Obviously he and his ilk have mixed up promotion with a statement in support of equality.  Persons of quality, he should have understood, should not fear equality.

Maybe, Mr Enyart, if you truly support the concept of marriage as a stabilizing factor in our civilization — and this also goes for that other fucking hypocrite Marcus Lamb — then maybe you wouldn’t have fucked around on your wife.

Wait.  What?

Yes, Bob Enyart, who flew to a different continent “simply to be arrested for greeting the President of the United States with ‘Clinton is a Rapist’ banners,”⁶ who has entire pages on his (somehow still up) Website devoted to the evils of pornography,⁷ and who publicly chastised Bill Maher for not agreeing (in a baited line of questioning) “that it is wrong for a husband to cheat on his wife” and wrote that “God forbids sexual immorality[sic]” and “adultery is a crime,”⁸ actually admitted to fucking around on his wife.  Not even the wildest science fiction writer could make this shit up!

Enyart — who has been married three times (just like self-moralist and Reich-wing figurehead DJTrump) ADMITTED to fucking around on his first 2 wives⁹.

Yeah, he sounds like a real keeper.

Lamb, also, is an admitted adulterer.  This was revealed to the public on their network because, as irresponsible people tend to do, he opened himself up for blackmail, and he and his wife were forced to reveal the affair which had occurred years previously.  Emails between Lamb and his former employee (from multiple sources) show that Mr Lamb “wrote in one of his emails to [the woman] that he could not wait to make her the next Mrs. Marcus Lamb.”¹⁰

In a statement of humility, he at least — and in a rare move for Christian fundamentalists (who usually are quick to play the victim) — placed the blame where it belongs during one of his network shows.  Admirably, he said “I take 100% responsibility … the other person doesn’t have any blame, it’s all — I don’t even blame The Devil — it’s all on me.”¹¹

Certainly, the hypocrisy — even before we get to Covid-19 — is luminous enough to make us wear sunglasses at night. Enyart and Lamb are preachers who have self-appointed themselves as moralizers, yet are also Pentecostals who takes the Bible, Old and New, as the Word of their ghod. And somehow, both were still adulterers.

So … what, exactly, does their Holy Writ say about adulterers?

It is so imperative that one should not commit adultery that it was emblazoned on the tablets Moses brought down from Mt Sinai as one of the 10 Commandments, the Supreme Word on limits of behavior.

Thou shalt not commit adultery. (Ex. 20:12)

The Biblical prohibition against adultery goes even further. To wit:

And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 20:10)

Considered immoral and a sin, adultery is covered in the New Testament as well in several places, and even Mormon Christianity has special condemnations against it.

So what should we do? Stone, strangle or otherwise kill these adulterers? Each one is already dead, but not because of their adultery. On these points alone, the hypocrisy is disgusting. As artist Navonne Johns says, “A person’s character is shown through their actions in life, NOT where they sit on Sunday,” and author Jess C. Scott wrote, “Hypocrites get offended by the truth.”

When asked why he fired an executive for adultery, H. Ross Perot said “If his wife can’t trust him, neither can I.”  I find that attitude admirable.

Enyart and Lamb are only 2 of the many corpses created by evangelical superstition and reprehensible ignorance.

Dick Ferrel was — and I accentuate was — a political commentator and conservative radio shock jock and part-time contributor for the not-the-real-news cable channel newsmax.  His conservative bona fides include a cool “How Conservative Are You?” quiz with 25 questions and a top score of 25.  I am a 7.

Ferrel was a prolific spreader of false information on social media, publicly stating he would not get vaccinated, and The Washington Post has the following summary:

Farrel, a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, said on his Facebook page last month that inoculations were “promoted by people who lied [to you] all along about masks, where the virus came from and the death toll.”

Well, I hate to break it to you, dick, but your own thin-skinned orange menace — and leader of the Fuckublican Party — himself advocates for his followers to get vaccinated.  And you, yourself, changed your mind after becoming brutally ill with Covid-19.  Your own wife used the term “severe damage” to your health.  Once you were ill, you changed your mind and finally encouraged others to get the vaccine.  But it was too late.  Just to think, how many lives were harmed by not getting the vaccine, since you are 17 times more likely to become hospitalized with Covid-19 if you get no vaccination than if you get a single vaccination, and those who listen to you, falling into the anti-vax trap, who also suffered and also died.  But that matters not anymore, because you are, as of Aug. 4, 2021, dead from the very thing you spread lies about¹².

SMMFH.

Phil Valentine used his valuable time on the public airwaves to encourage his sheep to the abattoir.  He vehemently denied — despite the massive amount of evidence to the contrary — that masks and social distancing worked, and when the Covid-19 vaccine was available, that it worked.  Thinking he knew better than doctors and scientists, he took megadoses of vitamin D and he also took Ivermectin, which is an anti-parasitic with no known application for Covid-19.  Taking Ivermectin for killing viruses would be like crushing up Viagra and spreading it on your lawn.  Viagra may grown your pecker but it won’t grow your grass.

His unwillingness to listen to the very people who tried to save his life untimately killed him.  Covid-19 took his non-vaxxed ass to be hooked up to an ECMO machine in late July, 2021, where he died needlessly on August 21, 2021.

It’s funny you never hear anything from the anti-ECMO crowd.

I wonder where my sympathy ends and my pity begins.

Conservative commentator Marc Bernier has an interesting widget on his Website.  Under the heading of ‘What is on The Air Today’ is “There are no upcoming events at this time.”  I wonder why.  Maybe it’s because he died on August 27, 2021.  And yes, he was an anti-vaxxer.  And of course he did warn us in his final Tweet that encouraging people to get an effective shot which can save their lives likened the US to Nazi Germany¹³.

Good riddance to bad trash.

The worldwide reach of Covid misinformation is so vast that in India, Christian aid organizations are shuttering their doors from the voluminous deaths¹⁴. But maybe this is a good thing, as we should never celebrate the spreading of ignorance in any form, even if it falls under the rubric of religion/superstition.

Pastor Darrell Boone of Life Point Church in Hitchcock, Texas, died of Covid-19 on August 15 of 2021. His is more of a cautionary tale, as him and his wife simply hadn’t got around to getting the vaccine. I could find no evidence he and his (recovered) wife Lazetta were touting Q-Anon stupidities or hesitancies. In fact since they were elderly and unvaccinated, when Mr Boone did get sick, and the virus ravaged his body, from the ICU he “sent a group text message encouraging his friends to get vaccinated and saying he would, too, as soon as he tested negative again.”¹⁵ The Houston Chronicle reports “Boone never got the chance”.

Pastor Danny Reeves did not die of Covid-19. However, being young, and catching it, he became deathly ill and survived.  Then he did the proper thing, something intelligent people — those who can reassess information — do.  Pastor Reeves changed his mind and encouraged others to save their lives¹⁶.

We could enumerate the pastors, priests and preachers who died of Covid-19, usually from both the misinformation they believed and spread, but this post doesn’t need to surpass Atlas Shrugged or War and Peace in length.

John Eyers was not an preacher, priest or pastor. Unless you count religiously fit into that category, a person whose dedication to his health — worthy of praise in and of itself — gave way to shallow thinking to sneak in, allowing him — like priests, preachers, pastors and pundits — to think he was better than a deadly virus and doctors and scientists who have dedicated their lives to fighting deadly diseases. His ultra-fit body, driven by years of healthy lifestyles and healthy eating, left his mind open to unhealthy irrationality, and a virus so small — 0.1 μm in diameter — few microscopes can see it, led to his death¹⁷. Being a mountain climber, triathlon-level athlete and body builder became no guarantee his judgement was better than the CDC, the WHO and multiple-degreed experts. I urge you to read the linked article. His story is actually inspiring. Yet he became another person taken down by the dominion of social media to the point of irascibility. It allowed him, with a lovely wife, children, nieces and nephews who adored him, to deflect his attention from the very doctors and scientists whose life work is to save his life, to give that life to his culpability, and the very people who take advantage of it for no clear gain.

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Here’s Hoping For A Better, More Hopeful Future

Maybe Ashby’s comment above is true. The Law of Unintended Consequences gives us a dead stare from it’s faraway corner in the land of irony.

We should all be saddened by each of these lives lost — now over 1 million in the US — even the superstitious spreaders of religious ignorance.

And we should decide — both individually and as a society — that we can do better.

Agree? Disagree? Have a different perspective? Leave a comment below.

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