Deep thoughts with Bill Moyers (Intestine Barfer)

Seattle Times ^ | 6/29/06 | Mark Rahner

[pissant]

Call it intellectual trickle-down: Great thinkers of our time talk to Bill Moyers, then he talks to us.

In the engrossing "Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason" (debuting 9 p.m. Friday on KCTS), he mind-melds with Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis and other writers on the rise of radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity, their similarities, their influence on politics — and the need for transcendence even among skeptics.

The Emmy-winning broadcaster, 72, settled in for a spirited dialogue from the porch of his New Jersey home.

Q: Why talk to writers about faith and reason?

A: Because storytellers have a great ability to imagine what it's like on the other side. They can take us across boundaries that we cannot literally go, and their love of language enables them to reach the nuances in this tension between faith and reason that few of us can. Theologians come at it with a fixed opinion. Ideologues come at it with a closed mind. But writers are always letting the story carry them where their imagination leads.

Q: America seems fiercely anti-intellectual right now — i.e., more faith, less reason.

A: If you judge only by what we see in the media and read on the blogs, yes. There's no question that there's a great divide between the religious and the secular. But I'll tell you, most people I know — my family, my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues at work — don't live on either side of that divide. Most of us are walking a swinging bridge between them. To change the metaphor, most of us ride both ends of the seesaw of faith and doubt.

[pissant]

What pure, unfettered delusion. Both interviewer and subject. Yikes

[AmishDude]

Jack Handey has deeper thoughts.

[AmishDude]

I think a pillow should be the peace symbol, not the dove. The pillow has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have a beak to peck you with.

[AmishDude]

One thing vampire children are taught is, never run with a wooden stake.

[AmishDude]

I love to go to the schoolyard and watch the children jump and scream, but they don't know I'm using blanks.

[pissant]

So does Jim Dandy

[pissant]

He who go to bed with itchy butt, wake up with smelly finger

[AmishDude]

When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Yahoo! We're rich! But it turned out to be something different.

[AmishDude]

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."

[highlander_UW]

Perhaps they may have had a better chance at rational thought had they actually HAD a Christian amongst their group to discuss it as a topic...of course liberals simply assume they're experts on everything.

Of course the definition of an ex-spurt is a has been drip under pressure...describes Moyer to a T.

[AmishDude]

Laurie got offended that I used the word "puke." But to me, that's what her dinner tasted like.

[pissant]

The answer is trout.

[AmishDude]

It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

[pissant]

He's a bona fide marxist

[ovrtaxt]

I think a pillow should be the peace symbol, not the dove. The pillow has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have a beak to peck you with.

Yep. Just when you think you've made peace, here comes the business end of that pecker.

[pissant]

Swordfish trombones.

[AmishDude]

When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.

[RichInOC]

Deep thoughts with Bill Moyers

...which leads me to wonder: How do you give Bill Moyers an EEG? How do you attach electrodes to a man's head when it's firmly lodged in his lower GI tract?

[pissant]

Raise up your glass to good king Richard.

[pissant]

The left reveres this guy, all 47 IQ of him.

[RichInOC]

That high? I'm surprised.

[Bob]

Those are hardly what I'd call "deep thoughts". Heck, most liberals have their heads a lot farther past the sigmoid than he does.

[Brad from Tennessee]

As many will remember, Moyers left PBS under a cloud of embarrassment after he quoted in a column former Secretary of the Interior James Watt. It turns out the quote was fake and he had copied it from some blog, believing it to be authentic. It went something like: "When the last tree has been cut, Christ will return." Moyers was forced by Watt into a public apology. Moyers got his start as President Lyndon Johnson's minister of propaganda. To call him a journalist is to call Al Gore a climate scientist.

[gov_bean_ counter]

One the campaign trail, Moyers was just about as nasty as they come. There are several pages on him in "It didn't start with Watergate". One of the stories I remember was one of him spreading a rumor that one of Johnson's opponents in a (I think) Senate race. Turned the race in his favor IIRC.

[gov_bean_ counter]

The rumor was the opponent was a homosexual.

[peeps36]

At least Bill admits that he swings from both sides of the seesaw.He better be careful or else he might become a victim of one of those Christian fundamentalist types.

[EricT.]

My Red-Eared Slider turtle has deeper thoughts than this a$$hat.

[Cicero]

But I'll tell you, most people I know — my family, my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues at work — don't live on either side of that divide. Most of us are walking a swinging bridge between them. To change the metaphor, most of us ride both ends of the seesaw of faith and doubt.

Wow! Brilliant thinking! Fantastic intellect! Throw that man a fish!

[BenLurkin]

I'm not interested in being tinkled down on by smarmy elitists.

I'm certainly not interested in second hand tinkle down.

[TChad]

I think a pillow should be the peace symbol, not the dove. The pillow has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have a beak to peck you with.

Great idea. Also, if you hold it over an obnoxious person's face and push, eventually things become peaceful.

Somehow reading about Bill Moyers brings out the worst in me.

[higgmeister]

the rise of radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity

Why, just the other day some Holiness Snake-charmers in Tennessee kidnapped a man and then cut his head off.....

Then the Full Gospel Church congregation stoned a girl to death because she said that her Daddy molested her.....

I read yesterday that the Evangelical Witness Church planted a roadside IED in front of the Hooters down on the four-lane....

Or was that the radical Islamists? I always get them mixed up.

[Lx]

As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was very pleasurable - until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but A HUMAN HEAD!!

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.