I live in the best neighborhood in the best borough in the best city in the world: Brooklyn, USA. Here, I frequent the best corner store. It is run by Iranians. After over 4 years, I’ve gotten to know them pretty well.
They are a married couple with a young adult son. Within the last year they’ve hired some help-- a nice Polish lady. She’s Catholic and she usually mans the register in the evenings.
The couple came to Brooklyn because they had a lot of trouble living in a theocracy. The wife, although she dresses quite modestly in a headscarf and long, modest dress, loves going to Atlantic City and listening to pop music. Middle Eastern pop music. The son is completely Americanized. When he has counter duty, rap music plays. His dad shrugs, “Nothing but noise,” Dad complains.
Yeah, a totally nice, really normal family.
So yesterday I go to the store and there are two men flanking the entrance. They are handing out stuff. I take it and stick it in my pocket, go inside, buy my stuff and chat a while with the nice Polish lady. It wasn’t until I got home that I looked at the crap those two guys flanking the door were handing out. It was a Chick tractAllah Had No Son. Tucked inside the tract they stuck a calling card. An organization called Construction and Disaster located in West Virginia.
West fucking Virginia. That’s a long way to travel in order to spread the hate in God’s name.
Biggril, you committed a cardinal sin for a NYer - you took a pamphlet. Having committed that error in judgment, you should have glanced at it immediately, then given those nutjobs a piece of your mind and, if you could get away with it, a piece of your knee to a place where it will cause them to sing soprano.
Yes there are, we have our own brand of homegrown nutcases. So the best neighborhood in the best city in the whole world doesn’t need to import the hate from 3 states away.
I almost always take hand-outs. I like to see what the local clubs are up to and what has the local populace up in arms this week. And you and me both wish I’d read it before I got home. But I’m confident somebody gave these guys what for. The store owners are very well liked and I do live in the Yuppiest part of a pretty left-leaning borough. We are all pretty vocal.
I must live in the wrong neighborhood. The only handouts I come across are the business cards for phone sex, fliers for wireless service, and Jehovahs. In Manhattan, it’s all menus. Nothing worth grabbing.
Hey, have you still got the card? I’d like to see if these particular nutjobs have a website, because nutjob websites are always entertaining, all those turquoise and scarlet huge-ass fonts with truckloads of “!!!”. And Googling “construction disaster jesus” and/or “allah” isn’t getting me anywhere. Any URLs on that card?
That ‘Construction and Disaster’ thing struck me as pretty strange. Shouldn’t it be ‘Disaster and Construction’? Why would you construct first and then have a disaster? Is that some sort of fundamentalist code phrase?
The biggest problem with Chick tracts is that they try to use logic (twisted as it may be) to promulgate an irrational idea (that and they’re so retarded that if they actually influence anyone, that is just one less person who would have otherwise joined the Church of Scientology). Here is what it takes to really make people believe: find someone who is ready to believe, someone who thirsts for something to believe in and then share your faith with them, tell them about God’s love and if you leave out all the crap that people have been putting into Jesus’ mouth since he died, that person (with the grace of God) will come to accept Jesus.
One of my biggest problems with Christianity has alwas been the coercive nature of its promise, but I can get over that. The biggest problem (for me at least) with Christianity has always been the unChristian behavior of some purported Christians.
Maybe this is because I’m a leftcoaster, but I’ll happily take just about any pamphlet someone hands me. They only get glances, but if I think they’re worthwhile, I’m happy for having known about them, and if I don’t, they go straight into the recycling bin, which means I’m helping drive the pestilent advertisers (or whatever) out of business, a few pennies at a time. The big glossy ones are particularly expensive, so sometimes I’ll even take a couple extras for my good friends (down at the recycling depot).
