Yeah, I grew up Lutheran, and still am by habit (we have awesome music, for one thing) and this is something I have always had issues with. 
Luther had some revolutionary ideas, and he certainly changed history (although a lot of people took his ideas in directions he never meant to go), but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a total douche in other respects.
Sampiro, it must have been interesting for Loretta Young as her “adopted” daughter grew up to be the spitting image of Clark Gable except for her blond hair. She even had his ears. There was no denying who the father was. And when she was younger, she looked a little like Loretta too.
After the Keating conviction, a deputy district attorney wrote to Mother Teresa offering to help her get the money that had been given to her back to its rightful owners. I think she would have been foolish to turn over a million dollars to this man that she did not know and whose plan was not made known to her. Meanwhile, I have no reason to think that she used the money in any other way than to minister to the sick and the dying.
My source for this is the same as seems to be the main source for the original story: Christopher Hitchens. I haven’t been able to determine what his source was or to find any major news sources on this story. Maybe someone else can find a link to the NYT or the WSJ during that period (mid-Ninties.)
As for her getting top-notch hospital care, I can’t imagine the Catholic Church having Mother Teresa treated any other way. That makes her an asshole? I can’t call her one for that until I take my next medical treatment in some unairconditioned far-a-way slum hospital with open wards and few supplies.
These two charges against her don’t stick to the wall.
The non violence that he taught and demonstrated wasn’t what incited mobs. You can’t blame the victims for the crimes committed against them. That would be like blaming the black non violent demonstrators and supporters in the Civil Rights Era in the USA for having dogs and water hoses turned on them.
The Muslims may have been concerned about Gandhi’s Hinduism, but he wasn’t against them. He was pro Indian independence from England. I think they would have been a lot better off if he had lived. But my knowledge about that period and the history of India during that time is very limited.
And he did live simply. What evidence is there tht he did not? Did the movement for independence take a lot of money? That wouldn’t surprise me.
Was Gandhi perfect? I suspect not. Don’t think he claimed to be. But an asshole? Look somewhere else.
Neither have I, and I’m no expert on the Black Death or that period of European history. Everything I’ve read about it in the last few years has tended to say “we think the Black Death was bubonic plague” but I’ve always interpreted “we think” to mean “while we’re pretty sure, we aren’t 100% sure.”
The only reason I bring it up is because that disclaimer is very common, even if there are no commonly espoused alternate explanations.
What’s with all the rhetoric about hell? I doubt very seriously from your posts you’re a Christian. If you are then you know quite well you have no idea whatsoever how Luther will be ultimately judged.
I’m Jewish and I was taught all my life to believe in hell (referred to as Gehenom in Hebrew.) I do think there is a hell, and I do think that Martin Luther is in it. Faith is a personal thing. By and large, I think religion in general is a sham, and I certainly have no part in any organized form of religion at all. But I do believe in hell. And unlike Christians, who would absolve even the most evil of all people of sin if they “accepted” Jesus on their deathbed after a lifetime of massacre and rape, simply by uttering a prayer, I don’t believe in that kind of get out of jail free bullshit. If you live an evil life, you will go to hell. And encouraging the massacre of those who happen to have a different religious faith from your own is an evil life.
Douglas MacArthur (no great surprise, there, though).
Spike Milligan - not quite as bad as Peter Sellars, but pretty unattractive, once you read his agent’s memoir.
[QUOTE=Zoe;11012658
The non violence that he taught and demonstrated wasn’t what incited mobs. You can’t blame the victims for the crimes committed against them. That would be like blaming the black non violent demonstrators and supporters in the Civil Rights Era in the USA for having dogs and water hoses turned on them.
The Muslims may have been concerned about Gandhi’s Hinduism, but he wasn’t against them. He was pro Indian independence from England. I think they would have been a lot better off if he had lived. But my knowledge about that period and the history of India during that time is very limited.
And he did live simply. What evidence is there tht he did not? Did the movement for independence take a lot of money? That wouldn’t surprise me.
Was Gandhi perfect? I suspect not. Don’t think he claimed to be. But an asshole? Look somewhere else.[/QUOTE]
Gandhi’s reputation outside S Asia is a lot better then in it. Even today I have Indian friends who refer to him as “Gandhuji”; meaning roughly; Mr Asshole.
I am glad that you admit you know little about the history of India. Gandhi was a very controversial figure even throughout his political life. What freaked muslims out about Gandhi was not his Hindusim, there had been many leaders who were Hindu and respected; Tilak being one for instance, but what he was advocating was an India free of all foreign influences, and that meant muslims as well, after all muslims were undeiably foreign, they came from the Middle East and C Asia. Muslims were not the only ones, as mentioned above, the Sikhs and untouchables had issues as well, but only the muslims were contigious and organised enough.
As for inciting riots, and mobs, lets see these mobs did nothing to the British, but the hurt a lot of Indians.
Gandhis own personal life, his “termination of sexual relations” with his wife, his provoclities in sleeping with young girls, and using others as “walking sticks” qualify him to be a Gandhu; an asshole.
His achievements were gargantuan, but he was still an asshole.
“The only good thing to come out of religion was the music”–George Carlin
I would like to point out how few assholes have done stagework. You cannot get a good stage show together if people are going to be assholes. When they are, they find their asses in the street.
Pretty good, Ximenean!
That’s a bit misleading. He slept with young women; he wasn’t fucking them.
He consistently condemned the rioters; his actions may have led to mob violence, but he certainly wasn’t responsible for it.
It’s also pretty unfair to slam him for anti-Muslim attitudes when placating the Muslims was what got him killed. He might have opposed partition, but without him the Muslims in India would have suffered twice as badly. It is, after all, a secular country thanks to him; do you think a Hindu theocracy would have been better?
He was a weirdo, but not a dick.
Please you are making him sound like an idiot, which he was’nt. He was a Middle Temple educted Barrister (to quote Churchill) and he knew what would happen if he incited mobs and did it anyway.
And yeah, sleeping with young kids but not fucking them, where have we heard that before. He was’nt killed for placating muslims, he was killed for daring to say that Pakistan should get its share of British India assets. Secular country is due to Nehru and Patel, not Gandhi.
In anycase Gandhi did more than anything to end the Lucknow Pact, which had the Congress and Muslim League working together and which had helped to alleviate inter-communal tensions.
Bullshit. After the Keating conviction, MT first wrote to the Asst. DA (or was it the Judge?), unsolicited, asking for leniency for Keating because of his good charitable works. The DA then wrote back to her telling her about a few of the people who he swindled and telling her that if she was really interested in charity, she should give back the stolen money that he had “donated” to her to assist with restitution. She most certainly knew who she was writing to and she most certainly knew his “plan.” She wouldn’t have been foolish to give it back and she was a hypocrite of the highest order to keep it.
I’ve always found Klaus Kinski great at acting, and I knew he was . . . ummm . . . intense, but it wasn’t until after his death when I found out what a humongous lunatic asshole he was.
I’ve read some of Anne Morrow Lindberg’s writings, and my take is she was an intellectual woman stymied by her era and her famous husband. She wrote in her diaries and letters that she did not want to ever marry, but at that time there was little else an upper class “lady” could do. Her book “A Gift From The Sea,” written after her children were grown, is a vision of early feminism.
She didn’t want to live the life she did; she was forced into it by early 20th century mores.
Tom Paine, The author of Common Sense later published a series of screeds attacking George Washington. He was noted for his gross lack of personal hygiene.
John Admas was “obnoxious and disliked” but also a religious bigot.
Christian Bale. He did appologize for the outburst that happened last year, but there have been other instances that lead me to suspect he’s something of a dick.
Hey, AK84, what about Benizir Bhutto?
Rob
My father and step-mom both work in theater in Seattle (he does various backstage work and she does wardrobe), and my Dad was actually working on this show. He had some crazy stories about Quaid and his wife. They were completely out of control. More his wife than him.
Andrew Jackson
Another thing, Zoe, is that she still didn’t get medical attention for those at her so-called “hospital”.
I think she started out with good intentions, perhaps. Maybe she began to believe her own hype, and fell in love with the spotlight? Who knows?