… Harrison Butker has initiated a petition of his own. It calls for striking the song “I Can’t Say No” from the score of Oklahoma.

CNN

Mr. Butker casually mentions that “Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail,” a not-so-thinly veiled reference to a recent bill passed in the House to combat antisemitism.

The Jesuit Review concludes:

 Mr. Butker quoted the lyrics of his “teammate’s girlfriend” (Taylor Swift), “familiarity breeds contempt.” But he demonstrated what contempt for the outside world breeds.

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UPDATE: THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE KICKER

UD thinks the contempt point really gets at it. Here’s another writer:

 A sort of loneliness radiates from Butker’s speech; there is the sense, in his words as in Aaron Rodgers’s increasingly dire podcast riff sessions, that all of this displeasure has been bubbling away in there for quite some time without an outlet. Mostly, though, there is just disdain, not just for all the sinful things of the world but seemingly everyone and everything else in it. 

…  There is no room for anyone else in this worldview, no space for anyone to live or breathe. It’s striking how Butker is unable or uninterested to connect his own faith with those of the coreligionists listening to him; this whole belief system vibrates at the frequency of cable news, and so there’s nothing for him to share but a list of demands. If Butker’s speech works as a commencement address, it is only as an opportunity for new graduates to learn how they will be treated by the sour and vengeful mediocrities who are also the most powerful people in the world they are joining: as a series of shadows whose only purpose is to be harangued, so that they might learn to be less displeasing. The advice Butker offered at Benedictine College is not really trying to be a part of any kind of conversation. It’s just a kicker moving further and further out, to see what he can get away with.

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Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of, any more than running away from a mob you yourself have excited; but if Butker and Hawley are going to present themselves as national avatars of generative masculinity, these are not their best looks.

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More deeply: If you want to find the world contemptible, babe, the world will always oblige. Piece o’ cake. Look around. But it’s kind of a mistake – one that is obvious to all of us when you make it – to confuse your misanthropy with unworldly piety.

[Gov. Maura] Healey was invited to give the keynote address on the opening day of [a recent Vatican] conference, a perhaps surprising choice by the Holy See given that she is secular, openly gay and staunchly pro-choice despite identifying as Catholic.

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UD thanks Joanna.

Although we did get bit
By the speech of Katie Britt,
I ask you people: What cur
Compares at all to Butker?
Rampaging, pureblood, Pit.

Including Dave Zirin.

Yes, the NFL wants female fans, and yes, they want fans of color, and yes, going soft on Butker risks that. But above all else, NFL executives exist to appease the whims of billionaires in the owners’ boxes most of whom—judging by their bankrolling of Donald Trump—agree with Butker. The destruction of Black bodies for white consumption and profit is an ugly business. Normally the NFL wants to keep the underlying ideology of its owners under wraps. The biggest problem with Butker is that he vomited it up for everyone to see.

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SOS grudgingly concedes that Butker’s speech displayed, Zirin notes, impressive concision.

Butker managed, in just a few minutes, to be homophobic, anti-abortion … and racist… He cried out against, “Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media, all stem[ming] from the pervasiveness of disorder.”

Given the size of Butker’s … vomit, you’d expect a great deal of difficulty coughing up a few tidy paragraphs, but he did the deed. He got it done. And now all of America is talking about it.

So Turks and Caicos has laws. Its very own laws! And one of their laws punishes rather severely the possession of ammunition and guns.

Now yall know we caint go nowheres lessen we got firearms and all BUT ALMOST ALL OF THE AMERICANS ARRESTED BY TURKS AND CAICOS AUTHORITIES FOR BRINGING IN AMMO SWEAR UP AND DOWN IT WAS ALL DONE TOTALLY ACCIDENTLY. AN INNOCENT MISTAKE. WE’VE ALL AT SOME POINT IN OUR LIVES BEEN SHOCKED TO DISCOVER GUNS AND AMMO IN OUR LUGGAGE.

Yeah, a whole bunch of Americans have been arrested/detained on the islands and a bunch of governors and lawyers and NRAers over here are pissing their pants about it. It’s a big ol story cuz where the fuck do dipshit territories get off telling us we can’t take our guns everywhere?

Hungary’s new National Core Curriculum

pointedly excludes the work of Imre Kertész, Hungary’s only Nobel Prize winner for literature, surrendering a national point of pride in order to erase the contributions of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. And it adds to the core curriculum Ferenc Herczeg, a minor right-wing nationalist playwright who was celebrated and praised by Miklós Horthy, the World War II Hungarian leader who brought about an alliance between Hungary and Nazi Germany. Previous revisions of the core curriculum in prior Orbán administrations had already elevated similar minor writers into the pantheon on an obvious political basis, such as József Nyírő, a member of Parliament for the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, who harbored a passionate hatred of Jews. The new curriculum presents far-right Hungarian nationalist leaders of the past as heroes.

Sun floods the room at six 
Two steps to the balcony to watch
Tai chi social media bagpipe cigar
Distant gaze usual metaphysical confusion

Boardwalk stroll for latte and scone
Superhearty good mornings from fellow oldies
Translation:  GRATEFUL LIKE HELL I'M HERE
Here meaning the world rather than

Whatever's behind the metaphysical curtain
Latte machine broken so cafe person 
Climbs almost to the top of it while cafe people
On the ground make inadequate latte after latte

All apologize I'm fine take your time
Boardwalk stroll back to the balcony
More greetings from gratefuls
And now: Grateful metaphysical breakfast

A sign in Rehoboth Beach. Scathing Online Schoolmarm remains fascinated by the idiotic things people do with quotation marks.

From an address at Benedictine College (acceptance rate 100%):

“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolic lies told to you. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.

“I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on this stage today, able to be the man that I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.

“I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all. Homemaker.”

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lololololol

Half dozen shot and two dead last Saturday! Keeping that kill count up, Elleven45!

Atlanta couldn’t be more proud: “Shut it down? Shut it down?” said the mayor. “Keep ’em coming! We want them to open two more locations. A lot of people in this state depend on our local gun industry. Buy more guns, Georgia, and keep these enterprises firing away!”

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The Finns. SOOOO pathetic. GO USA

Paul Berman weighs in.

The students want to chant these things, of course, because these slogans are transgressive. But no one wants to say what the transgression is because it’s too horrible. So we’re having a mass euphemism event: Horrible things are being advocated by people who deny that they’re advocating it.

… It’s very difficult for people with liberal ideas to recognize the extreme and frightening views that are actually upheld by totalitarian movements. In Hamas we have radical Islamists who’ve shown us in real life what they’re actually for by acting on their principles. And there’s an inability or reluctance to see that. So we have a mass movement in defense of Hamas that calls itself a mass movement in defense of human rights. It’s a blindness, but within the blindness is a seduction and a fascination. That’s evident in the transgressive thrill students feel in chanting those chants.