Slacktivist vs. Left Behind

My wife is fond of going to thrift shops, and I often go with her. And when I do, I indulge in a very, very bad habit that I picked up somewhere along the line: I go to the books section, grab Left Behind (I can count on it being there, along with books by Rush Limbaugh and Norman Schwarzkopf), and start reading—to date, I've made it through the first several chapters (in the part I read most recently, Buck Williams made a phone call).

I don't know why I do this—that book is so fucking awful that reading it makes me want to bite my tongue off. Aww, who am I kidding? That's exactly why I always sneak in a few pages' read. Bad literature is a dime a dozen, but this shit's world-champion, once-in-a-generation awful, and you have to pay your respects to that when you find it.

And that's why the ongoing takedown of Left Behind at the blog Slacktivist is such a wonderful thing. Blogger Fred Clark, approaching from the point of view of an open-minded Evangelical Christian who writes for a living, is in a perfect position to walk up behind Left Behind authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and skewer them repeatedly on a large fork pronged with their shitty theology and unbelievably poor writing.

Clark's MO is simple—read the book, and, every few pages, make a bog post attacking the most recent chunk. Unlike the authors of the book, Clark's a funny, assured writer with a keen eye for hypocrisy and bullshit. He routinely-and expertly- decries the book for its bizarre "you'll be sorry when all of us good folk go to heaven" excuse for theology, and for its flat-out stupid mischaracterizations (the loudly-proclaimed Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time being more concerned about checking his email than about checking into the disappearance of half the people on his plane).

If I have one complaint with Clark, it's that his bloggish approach means that you have to scroll down to the bottom of the linked index page and work your way up. But that's a small price to pay to enjoy a takedown as funny, skillfully-executed, and well-deserved as this one.
--Keith Pille