Conference of Idiots

So, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have taken back their positive review of 'The Golden Compass' less than a week later. Pressure from Der Führer-In-Chief over in Rome, perhaps? Or maybe they only gave it a good review to begin with because they thought it was going to be a big hit with the youngsters and wanted to jump on board (the movie, not the youngsters - hey, they know we're keeping a close eye on 'em), and now that they've seen which way the wind is blowing they've decided to abandon ship. It does kind of make you wonder if anybody over there really saw the film or not. I'm guessing that they planned on going and then at the last minute decided on bingo instead. On the bright side, while it took the Vatican more than three hundred years to rescind their condemnation of Galileo (which, granted, was more of a P.R. necessity than anything else, since it's not good for business to admit that the Bible contains zilch in the way of accurate science), this organization did an about-face in less than seven days. Apparently, their thinking was 'Lord help us when our children might go to see a movie about talking polar bears when they could be watching a two-hour S&M snuff film that's become a classic among leatherboys, featuring a mostly naked man having the flesh beaten off his body so we might better understand God's 'love' for us.' Ah, priorities, priorities. Pity that Philip Pullman isn't an anti-Semitic drunk; you wouldn't have heard a thing from these folks. And if he had been dating a nine year-old boy, trust me, they would have bused the audiences in.