Blind fools!

Adapted from the Twitter feed, Sunday evening, November 10. Posted Monday morning, November 11. Slightly revised Monday afternoon.

“Woe Unto You, Scribes and Pharisees” by James Tissot. Circa 1890. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum, via Wikipedia.

Scribes. Not lawyers. Scribes. It’s “lawyers” in the song from “Godspell”. Scribes in both Matthew and Luke. The composers of the song needed the two syllables. Jesus needed only the one. Don’t these God-botherers ever read their bibles?

A 3-year, coordinated effort has been underway to remove [Donald Trump] from office.

Jesus warned us — watch out for the lawyers

—-Trump toady, apologist, and Scriptural illiterate Republican Senator from Tennessee Marsha Blackburn on Twitter, Sunday, November 10, 2019.

The gospel Blackburn thinks she’s alluding to is probably Matthew’s. But it might be Luke’s. Likely it’s a conflation of both vaguely remembered from her Sunday School days. The key word in Matthew, and in Luke, and in “Godspell” is “hypocrites” and the important line is “they do not practise what they teach.”

Yep. It’s teach not preach, he says pharisaically and aware of the irony.

I wonder if Blackburn saw that her fellow hypocrite and even more embarrassingly toady Rand Paul tweeted this the other day (The link is to Howard Dean’s response, so there’s a cushion.):

From law professor and Chairman of the Board of the Federalist Society Steven G. Calabresi: House Democrats Violate The 6th Amendment By Denying Trump A Public Trial

Luke has Jesus chastising the “experts on the law”. This Calabresi qualifies, at least in Rand Paul’s view—-and keep in mind Rand Paul himself is an expert on nothing except eye glasses paid for by Medicare which he purports to want to see trashed—-as an expert on the law.

There I go again, citing scripture for my purpose. Jesus was disputing with the experts on religious law, you know, the people who scolded others on the proper way to be Jewish the way Right Wing Christians like Blackburn scold their fellow Americans on the proper way to be Christian—-which is their way. Those would be the “lawyers” Blackburn’s warning us Jesus warned about. Those are the “lawyers” Jesus said don’t practice what they teach, the “lawyers” who “on the outside look righteous to others, but inside...are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

Blackburn, you won’t be surprised to hear, is a classic ladder-puller. She boasts of being the first woman from Tennessee to serve in the United States Senate without acknowledging the role feminism played in getting her there and while voting to deny other women the rights and benefits that would give them the opportunities to make their own way in life. She's anti-abortion but hardly pro-child and pro-mother. She’s also anti-LBGT rights, a climate change denialist, a rejector of evolution, a staunch supporter of Trump’s anti-immigration policies—-she’s not about to invite any strangers in—-and a Second Amendment absolutist. She joined in nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his handling of North Korea. As a member of the House of Representatives she voted to repeal the ACA every chance she got. No comfort for the sick there. Children have to suffer and die so the rich can store up even more treasure on earth. A typical Right Wing Republican.

There’s another phrase that appears in Matthew, Luke, and “Godspell”.

Blind fools!

Comments

[CJColucci]

This reminds me of the best line I ever wrote in a brief. Without getting into the gory details, I had cited an authoritative opinion from the highest relevant court to support my position. My adversary cited eminent law professor Lawrence Tribe, who had taken the opposite position. The line: "The Second Circuit speaks as one with authority; Tribe is a scribe."
I don't expect I'll ever come up with a line as good again.