Friday, November 09, 2007

Your Marginalization Challenge

Tim Blair is one of Australia’s best bloggers. Yesterday he issued a marginalization challenge which I’m passing on to you.

Blair posted:

Oxford Research Group researchnik Chris Abbott’s new book repeats the usual nonsense:

Abbott says terrorism is clearly not the greatest threat to world security. A far bigger danger will come from climate change, with the large-scale displacement of people, and food and water shortages; the competition for increasingly scarce resources like oil; the marginalisation of most of the world’s population, a key factor in the growth of terrorism ...
If most of the world’s population is marginalised, wouldn’t they be ... majoritised?

Yet Abbott has some heavyweight support:

The book is backed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, centre-left former British Labour MP Clare Short and musician Brian Eno.

Your challenge: identify three figures in the fields of religio-activism, leftoid politics and 70s crap rock who are even more marginal than Tutu, Short, and Eno.

Bonus points for naming the hypothetical book backed by your loser trio.

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Folks are rising to Blair's challenge. There are already over 160 comments on the thread. Take a look here.

If you comment at Blair’s blog, please copy here.

My response to Blair’s challenge?

Religio-activism - any Anglican cleric in England who during the last 40 years has abandoned traditional church beliefs and practices in order to make “religion more relevant to our times” and watched church attendance plummet

Leftoid politics – Cindy Sheehan

70s crap rock – I guess all of it.

Book title - Wonderful Us

Your turn

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, John. I'm Paco, and I post over at Tim's pretty frequently. Here's my entry:

My Merry Oldsmobile: Staying Afloat Politically Through Inquests, Scandals and George Bush’s Fascist Night, by Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Father Daniel Berrigan: “Spiritually profound.”

Ramsey Clark: “The high-water mark of progressive political sensibility”.

Keith Richards: “Fook! This is flour! Hey, Mick, this is fookin’ flour, man! We been screwed!”


BTW, great work on that Duke lacrosse business.

Anonymous said...

I'll pass on the challenge but I liked Tim's post.

I agree with anon @ 11:57 - you do great work on Duke lacrosse.

As a matter of fact, your blog is now one of my favorites.