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December 27, 2006

Dennis Prager is a Complete Moron

On November 28th, 2006, radio show host Dennis Prager published an op-ed at Townhall.com expressing his belief that the First Amendment of the Constitution shouldn't apply to uppity negroes. Well, more specifically, he said that newly-elected congressman, Keith Ellison, should be the only American citizen who isn't entitled to choose which holy book he can hold during a photo-op. At issue is the fact that Ellison is a Muslim and planned to hold a copy of the Q'ran.

In response to outcry from many different corners, including a denunciation from the ADL (Prager, by the way, is Jewish), Dennis published a jaw-dropping follow-up response to critics. He notably cited the profanity used on the left-wing blogs and the fact that they called him a bigot. I, myself, called him a "dick" and a "fucking asshole" — "whiny fucking asshole" is more accurate.

Dennis is back today, which an incoherent and fact-free rant clarifying the importance of the Bible to everyone except bad people. What was interesting to me was that in Prager's second column — his response to critics — he claims to believe that all events in public political life should use a Christian Bible and that he disagrees with fellow Jews who would just use an Old Testament (Torah). In this latest column, he bases his moralizing on the idea that the first five books of the Old Testament — the ones that comprise the Torah — are considered "divine" (he doesn't explain what that means) by Jews, Catholics, Protestants and even them there Mormons. So, now he's backed off from the importance of the entire Christian Bible and is now hiding behind the supposed universal authority of the Torah.

Resident Theologian, Sister Weasle explained to me that although all the aforementioned religions include the Torah in their Bibles, none of them use the same text. The Jews who consider the Torah to be divine, such as the Hasidim, goes as far as considering the sequence of Hebrew characters in the text itself to be sacred. To them, a book like the King James Bible, used by Protestants or the Catholic Septuagint is a blaphemy. Also, good luck getting any of these groups to agree on the proper interpretation of the books. Prager sees no potential disagreement:

And they line up together on virtually every major social/moral issue.

Name the issue: same-sex marriage; the morality of medically unnecessary abortions; capital punishment for murder; the willingness to label certain actions, regimes, even people "evil"; skepticism regarding the United Nations and the World Court; strong support for Israel; or a willingness to criticize the moral state of Islamic societies. While there are exceptions -- there are, for example, secular conservatives who share the Bible-believers' social views -- belief in a God-based authority of the Torah is as close to a predictable dividing line as exists.

According to Sister Weasle, this claim is entirely false. Good Catholics are not supposed to take Communion unless they oppose capital punishment. Many Hasidim oppose the state of Israel. The list goes on.

Then there is Prager's inexplicable claim that the books of the Torah are "over 2,500 years" old. That is technically true, but a more accurate — and knowledgeable — statement would be that the Torah dates back over 4,500 years. It seems odd that a religious Jew who claims to have some kind of broad knowledge about world religions, and teaches the Torah at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, doesn't seem to know when his own holy books were written.

The only answer is that Dennis Prager is also... a complete moron.

Posted by Winston Smith at December 27, 2006 12:27 PM

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