From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Wed Feb 21 2001 - 10:57:36 MST
(piggybacking)
Damien Broderick wrote:
> Was he deeply offended to the point of boycott because `millennium nuts'
> were
> being unfairly portrayed as Christians? Was he miffed because deranged,
> crazy Christians were being unfairly pilloried as `millennium nuts'? This
> is a nuance that only an American could unpack, I suspect. Could someone
> please make it clear to this poor boy holding up two crossed Vegemite
> sandwiches?
He was miffed because of media portrayals of millennium nuts as being
mostly nuttier varieties of Christianity. Unfortunately for him, it was
largely true, as non-Christians don't attach much importance to arbitrary
numbers in a Christian dating system. I assume he wasn't referring to
the Y2K "nuts" as that was a different issue and they weren't portrayed
as particularly Christian, because they weren't.
The speech conflates several different issues - some cases of ridiculous
behavior, like punishing the 8-year-old kisser, with some not-so-
ridiculous cases, like the media portrayals of millenium nuts. Standard
rhetorical tactic for building support for your side of certain issues -
link it to other issues where no reasonable person would disagree with
you.
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