Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Not So Much Crazy as a Fantasist

Fred Clark:
O'Donnell says:
I was dabbling in witchcraft, I've dabbled in Buddhism. I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn't want to become a vegetarian. And that is honestly the reason why -- because I'm Italian, I love meatballs!
To understand this bizarre, and untrue, statement, you have to understand the peculiar place that Hare Krishnas hold in the rhetoric of America's evangelical Christian subculture. "Hare Krishna" doesn't refer, specifically or literally, to the belief system that bears this name. It's a shorthand signifier representing something like "every other possible alternative that anyone could imagine."
As with her claim to have "dabbled into" a Warnke-esque form of Satanism, O'Donnell is here embellishing her "personal testimony" in an attempt to make it seem more compelling, more exciting and more authoritative. This kind of runaway exaggeration is encouraged in the evangelical subculture by giving such dramatic testimonies a more enthusiastic response than is generally provided to the more honest and accurate, but blander, sort of testimony that begins, "I've been attending this church my whole life ..."
There is much more at the link and well worth reading.  These last couple of his posts make clear the extent to which O'Donnell is unfit for office.  What is shocking is the extent to which Delaware agrees.

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