Post-Atrocity Blues

Late last week, Virginny Tech held a memorial service on campus for those murdered by resident alien devil Cho Seung-Hui. President Bush was in attendance, and gave a very poignant address to the audience, in which he mentioned God and hinted that the Bible has value beyond its door-stop potential. I'm not a fan of Mr. Bush, as many of you may find yourselves aghast to hear, but he deserves credit where its due. He did well, in an uncharacteristically eloquent speech, and I commend him.

Afterwards, I gritted my teeth through the next few speakers: a Muslim imam, a Buddhist spokesperson, and a couple of Jewish ladies. Topping it off like rat droppings on a wedding cake was a Lutheran minister who sounded more like someone kicked out of Woodstock for being too positive about human nature than a Christian pastor. I'm not interested in refusing them a public forum for their views, but I found myself asking myself: "Self, since the overwhelming majority of Americans profess belief in Christianity, or find more in common with it than any other religion, why am I seeing Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and feel-good weenies take center stage? Is it an attempt at inclusiveness? Does V-Tech have a large, unrepresentative student population of adherents to these religions?" To my chagrin, my Self didn't have a definitive answer to this question.

I'm inclined to believe that it's about inclusiveness--the ill-spawned child of multiculturalism, which posits that all religions, cultures, and philosophical viewpoints are of equal worth and beauty. But the administrators' reach exceeded their grasp, in my opinion. Why do it half-hearted? I resented the absence of Confucianists, Zoroastrians, Taoists, and Hindus. I was outraged that no Satanists, Thuggees, or Wiccans had the floor. Where were the Druids? Where were those swarthy individuals who long for Quetzalcoatl's return? I wanted grove dancers and folks who bask in the radiant glow of crystals. I wanted worshippers of bulbous-headed, gray beings from Zibblezok. I wanted animism, pantheism, and Arianism. I squinted for those who prostrate themselves at the foot of Mount Olympus, and spit Crom's name to the four winds, but they were not there. Once I thought I saw Cthulhu's squamous mass, but it was Hillary mugging for the cameras. I sat close to the tv in hopes of glimpsing a Hare Krishna's chrome dome, but no. Alas, I was deprived of my precious Moonies, Goonies, and Loonies, though in fairness some of the speakers on-site approached the latter.

In the goal of inclusiveness, how dare you draw a line of demarcation!