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Betteridge’s Law of Headlines

Has Pope Francis just cast the first vote in the US presidential race?

See headline.

8 thoughts on “Betteridge’s Law of Headlines”

  1. Anybody noticed how, after years of trying to smear his predecessor as a nazi and a paedophile enabler, the media has its collective tongue up Francis’ cassock?

  2. Steve,

    Absolutely. But what’s not for the media to love? He may be a Jesuit, but he took his papal name from St Francis, the medieval Fotherington-Thomas who kumbayah’d his way across the Siennese hillside, saying “Hello, birds. Hello, trees.”

    And his politics aren’t much better.

  3. Philip – I remember some (earnestly lefty Christian) teachers making us watch tedious hippiethon Brother Sun, Sister Moon at school.

    It had the opposite effect to what they must have intended. We all thought Zeffirelli’s St. Francis was a mentally ill fanjita.

    He was portrayed as being like Tom Bombadil’s swishy brother, the one who hey nonny nonnied a little too lustily and never brought a girlfriend home. I was half-expecting him to burst into song like a Disney princess and get all the woodland critters to make him a new dress.

    Then they showed us Jesus Christ: Superstar, and I found myself imagining – like Alex in A Clockwork Orange – being a Roman soldier and gleefully wielding the scourge.

    It wasn’t always like this. Christianity used to be cool. In the olden days, it was about audacious architecture and sublime art and burning heretics and glorious battle.

    The Prince Bishops of Durham used to ride to war against the Krankie-worshipping Porridge Wogs. The Black Douglas took Robert the Bruce’s embalmed heart on crusade with him, and flung it into the faces of the Moors as he charged to his death. Popes used to string up brigands by the hundred and decorate the Ponte Sant Angelo with their skulls.

    How did Christianity go from being a religion of men – brave, proud, arrogant, mighty conquerors and builders and all-round magnificent bastards – to being a namby-pamby, hand-wringing, religion of feeble kumbayahers and passive-aggressive solar panel fanciers?

  4. bilbaoboy – thank you. I’m thinking of taking Arnald’s advice and starting a blog, called The Hobo’s Grope in honour of Morrissey’s scintillating prose.

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