Overheard

“What Jesus meant is the most deeply potent political, cultural, social question. To ignore it, or leave it to the bullies and the salesmen of the televangelist sects, means to walk away from a central battle over American identity. At the moment, the idea of Jesus has been hijacked by people with a series of causes that do not reflect his teachings. The Bible is a long book, and even the Gospels have plenty in them, some of it seemingly contradictory and hard to puzzle out. But love your neighbor as yourself - not do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but love your neighbor as yourself - will suffice as a gloss. There is no disputing the centrality of this message, nor is there any disputing how easy it is to ignore that message… American churches, by and large, have done a pretty good job of loving the neighbor in the next pew… But if the theology makes it harder to love the neighbor a little farther away - particularly the poor and the weak - then it’s a problem. And the dominant theologies of the moment do just that. They undercut Jesus, muffle his hard words, deaden his call, and in the end silence him.” Bill McKibben, The Christian Paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong

“I just want to thank the people who take big risks in their daily lives when there aren’t cameras rolling and there aren’t people there to applaud, and who stand up for peace and justice and against intolerance.” Crash director Paul Haggis, on winning Best Original Screenplay

“Marvel will tell you that they like X-Men more than any of their other titles, because it appeals specifically to three groups—the demographic is young blacks, young Jews, and young gays—and that they identify themselves more than most. Although, all teenagers perhaps think of themselves as mutants and that they are mistreated by the rest of society for a time, for no good reason.” Ian McKellen, X3’s Magneto

“But rest assured, with this generation, it’s all just a put-on. Because when a twentysomething uses the language of skepticism, irony, sarcasm and cynicism, he or she may be afraid — but most aren’t genuinely angry. They’re just talking tough… When you read between the lines of this generation, the stinging tone of their cynicism can be stripped away like a protective veneer, a façade, revealing something much more honest, more hopeful.” San Grewal, Toronto Star

“There will be cynical people.” Gillette’s Wade Bayne, on public reaction to their new 5-blade “Fusion” razor

“One of the great non-profit credos is if you show up and you see someone doing something different and something novel that makes you turn your head, that’s something worth supporting. A lot of the support for this starts from disbelief. People just come out to see if this is for real.” Matt Blair, charity organizer

“The one thing we learned from the hippies, and the one thing that the punks should have learned and they didn’t, is that anarchy is obsolete, especially in a robust capitalist society. By learning that, we realized that change in this culture is going to come through subversion, not rebellion. We’re not going to overthrow an evil empire, we’re going to change it from within. So what better place to be at than Disney?” Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh

“God has an interest in our sexuality. God invented it.” Pastor Ivor Grant

“A mean pit bull is a dog that has been turned mean, by selective breeding, by being cross-bred with a bigger, human-aggressive breed like German shepherds or Rottweilers, or by being conditioned in such a way that it begins to express hostility to human beings. A pit bull is dangerous to people, then, not to the extent that it expresses its essential pit bullness but to the extent that it deviates from it. A pit-bull ban is a generalization about a generalization about a trait that is not, in fact, general.” Malcolm Gladwell, on what pit bulls can teach us about profiling

“The real lesson is that you can’t hide problems with your company. You can market yourself as a fun and interesting and dynamic company, but if you’re not, people will find out.” Steve Yegge, programmer