Paste Magazine has a review of the role-playing game, The Binding of Isaac, which is based (of course) on the biblical story of the binding of Isaac.
In the biblical story from Genesis, Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Maraiah.
While it may be a strange concept for a video game, it is apparently (oddly) compelling. And probably the first game about child abuse.
Paste had Drew Dixon review the game. Drew is a pastor. He has an MDIV in Christian Ministry from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's a parent and a soccer coach. He also happens to love video games. He's also the editor at Christ and Pop Culture, a Christian Web site, and a contributor to Relevant magazine.
The game doesn’t give you much time to reflect on what is transpiring as you are thrown into a realm of bizarre and harrowing monsters and even stranger items. On the surface it’s a rogue-like game that pays homage to the original Zelda. However, when I actually considered what I was doing in the game, I could not help but be troubled. Isaac doesn’t fight enemies with sword and shield but with the tears of a neglected child. And the items he collects make his quest more bizarre and difficult as often as they aid him. And the items that actually do help him are telling. When Isaac finds dog food, it gives him health. Was he forced to eat this? The spoon and the belt will make Isaac run faster, reminiscent of running from an abusive parent. Upon finding “Sister Maggy” or “Brother Bobby” Isaac is joined by a ghost-like drone that helps him fight his minions. Were these real siblings? If so how did they die? In between levels the player is greeted with short animations of Isaac’s dreams in which he is mocked by other boys and neglected by his mother.
One could imagine that Dixon will get a lot of grief for taking on this assignment. But one has to hand it to him for sticking his neck out there and showing that sometimes a game is just a game, a myth is just a myth, and that all Christians are not the knee-jerk reactionary zealots who find every pop culture appropriation of Judeo-Christian narrative to be blasphemous.
But again, it's a game about child abuse. The game doesn't shy from the fact that this is more than just a biblical story in a video game setting. It takes liberties with the narrative and tosses in a few doses of A Child Called It.
Isaac is the kind of game that I should hate. I am not a fan of overly challenging games. Additionally I am a Christian pastor and Isaac certainly takes a lot of liberties in its “retelling” of the classic Bible story from which it takes its name. The game is deeply dark, and often unsettling. There is nothing simple, understandable, or light about child abuse. Thus Isaac is thoroughly discomforting, challenging, and darkly funny. The game won’t make you able to understand child abuse but it will make you feel for Isaac—sometimes deeply. Other times it will completely bewilder you, much like Isaac’s world has done to him.
The Westboro Baptist Church revealed their plans to picket Steve Jobs' funeral. They announced this via a tweet sent from an iPhone. (Buzzfeed)
New Hampshire state representative (and Rick Perry BFF) Al Baldasaro has been asked to step down after statements he made about the openly gay soldier who appeared in the GOP debate. What did he say, exactly? Oh just that he thought the booing was “great,” because he “was so disgusted over that gay marine coming out...He doesn't realize it, but when the shit hits the fan, you want your brothers covering your back, not looking at your back.” (The Advocate)
Fox and Friends' Brian Kilmeade says that, unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Parties "popped up out of nowhere." And by "out of nowhere," he means "promoted relentlessly by Fox News." (Media Matters)
Michael Bresciani of Renew America wrote that the booing of the openly gay soldier at the GOP debate (and the silence from the candidates) was justified because the crowd, and the candidates, rightly adhere “to the scriptural belief that homosexuality is a sin of perversion and the promulgation or promoting of it can make them guilty, culpable or complicit by association.” (Right Wing Watch)
Sue Sturgis and Chris Kromm of the Institute for Southern Studies have created a video introducing their research into Art Pope's overarching influence on North Carolina politics.
It's important that North Carolinians educate themselves on the dishonest and underhanded tactics employed by Art Pope and his network of heavily-funded organizations set on fundamentally transforming the state, especially as we gear up for the May 8 vote on the anti-LGBT amdendment, and the pivotal 2012 general election.
Bankrolling the Right: The John William Pope Foundation, which Art Pope chairs, supplies 90% of the income of the leading conservative advocacy groups in North Carolina. Pope has claimed that most of his foundation's money goes to charity, but tax records show that at least two-thirds of their grants support conservative groups and causes.
Buying Political Influence: In 2010, three groups backed by Pope -- Americans for Prosperity, Civitas Action and Real Jobs NC -- supplied 75% of the outside money that flooded into North Carolina's state legislative elections, helping fuel historic Republican victories. Pope family members also bundled more than $300,000 in personal contributions to GOP candidates and committees.
Funding Climate Denial: Pope's foundation has given $24.1 million to a network of "climate denial" groups -- many tied to energy interests -- who ignore the scientific consensus about climate change and fight clean energy standards.
Sue Sturgis and Chris Kromm introduce ArtPopeExposed:
Many people don't understand what life would be like without religion. Those who do not subscribe to religion are often perceived as 'missing out,' or living an 'empty life.'
Most people cannot imagine what life without religion would be like simply because they have always had religion, or have always had religion around them. Their parents had religion, their grandparents had religion, and so on.
Daniel Everett was a Christian missionary and evangelist whose expertise in language led him on a mission trip where he lived among the Pirahã, a tribe of Amazon natives.
Everett's experience with the Pirahã eventually led to his rejection of Christianity, and religion in general.
Here is a wonderful clip of Everett speaking about the Pirahã, who, due to their isolation, never developed religious beliefs. This story of the Pirahã dovetails nicely with a recent University of Texas study which concluded that our brains are not predisposed to supernatural concepts. Theses concepts are gained through exposure.
Among those speakers will be seven of the top GOP hopefuls: Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul.
He's so controversial that even the organizers of the Values Voter Summit kept him off the list of speakers. However, if you dig a little deeper into the event's schedule, one will find that Fischer is indeed speaking.
And no, he's not buried in some breakaway session. He's speaking right after GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.
Rachel Maddow commented earlier this week on Fischer's awkward placement on the schedule. See, Bryan Fischer has said some pretty nasty stuff about Mormons, including his belief that the First Amendment doesn't apply to them.
Perhaps this is a subtle way for the VVS folks to undermine Mitt Romney's recent positioning as front-runner for the GOP nomination. Herman Cain has recently tied Romney in polls, and Fischer would like nothing more than to see Cain get the nomination. (Cain is, according to Fischer, "authentically black," unlike our current president.) Or maybe this is just poor scheduling. Wait, no, that's not likely at all.
Jane Mayer has written a scathing profile of Art Pope in the latest New Yorker. If you're unfamiliar with Art Pope, and you care about democracy, you should spend some time with Mayer's piece, State For Sale.
Who exactly is Art Pope?
Remember when North Carolina, an Obama-voting blue state with a Democratic governor, turned back into a red state in 2010? Art Pope played a large role in that happening.
Mayer writes:
Pope’s triumph in 2010 was sweeping. According to an analysis by the Institute for Southern Studies, of the twenty-two legislative races targeted by him, his family, and their organizations, the Republicans won eighteen, placing both chambers of the General Assembly firmly under Republican majorities for the first time since 1870. North Carolina’s Democrats in Congress hung on to power, but those in the state legislature, where Pope had focussed his spending, were routed.
The institute also found that three-quarters of the spending by independent groups in North Carolina’s 2010 state races came from accounts linked to Pope.
The Pope family foundation—of which Art Pope is the chairman and president, and one of four directors—reportedly has assets of nearly a hundred and fifty million dollars.
This wealth has enabled Pope to participate in the public arena on a scale that few individuals can match.
Art Pope is more or less North Carolina's equivalent of the Koch Brothers.
Graphic from indyweek.com
Pope has at times joined forces with [the Koch brothers], attending some of their semi-annual secret planning summits and, through the family foundation, contributing millions to many of the same causes. Pope, in addition to being on the board of Americans for Prosperity—which David Koch founded, in 2004—served on the board of its predecessor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, which Koch co-founded, in 1984. Charles Koch recently praised the Popes, along with other donors, for providing financial support for the 2012 election effort, and tax records show that Pope has given money to at least twenty-seven groups supported by the Kochs, including organizations opposing environmental regulations, tax increases, unions, and campaign-spending limits. Pope, in fact, helped fund the legal center run by James Bopp, the lawyer who made the initial filing in the Citizens United case.
Not only is he powerful and influential, Art Pope is sleazy. Mayer writes about the 2010 campaign against Chris Heagarty, a Democratic lawyer, ran for a legislative seat in Wake County:
One ad accused him of having voted “to raise taxes over a billion dollars,” even though he had not yet served in the legislature. Another ad depicted Heagarty, who has dark hair and a dark complexion, as Hispanic. (He is Caucasian.) The ad was sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party, to which Pope had contributed in 2008. Heagarty said, “They slapped a sombrero on a photo of me, and wrote, ‘Mucho Taxo! Adios, Señor!’ ” He said, “If you put all of the Pope groups together, they and the North Carolina G.O.P. spent more to defeat me than the guy who actually won.” He fell silent, then added, “For an individual to have so much power is frightening. The government of North Carolina is for sale.”
Nina Szlosberg-Landis, a Democratic activist in Raleigh, says, “It’s part of a very deliberate national strategy of the ultra-conservative movement to change the face of democracy. And I have to hand it to them. They’re pretty successful.”
Marc Farinella, the Democratic campaign consultant, said. “Pope has used the federal tax code to create a massive campaign apparatus that is only thinly disguised as a collection of benign, civic-minded nonprofit groups.”
What does this mean for 2012?
Experts predict that, next fall, the Republicans will likely take over at least four seats currently held by Democrats in the House of Representatives, helping the Party expand its majority in Congress. Meanwhile, the Republican leadership in the North Carolina General Assembly is raising issues that are sure to galvanize the conservative vote in the 2012 Presidential race, such as a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
"In many ways he is the one man who is single-handedly bankrolling a kind of a conservative takeover of the state. At least that's how the Democrats see it down there. It's a state that as you said is just completely key to Barack Obama's reelection, and it's a state that is traditionally neither completely red nor blue, it's kind of a purple state, but it went blue in 2008, and basically the Republican party took one look at it and thought they've got to make sure that it doesn't go that way again in 2012. So there's been a lot of very careful and smart thinking going into the state and a ton of money."
She went on to explain that Pope "has a vision of America that requires kind of turning back the tide of history to before the New Deal basically. And he will say it has nothing to do with his business interests, but it does include things like opposition to the minimum wage law," as well as "opposition to most taxes, and to all kinds of government services." Mayer continued, "his political vision dovetails with his self-interest, but it goes beyond that I think really with him. He's something of a kind of an ideological purist and a zealot to some extent."
According to investigations by Facing South, Pope's family foundation supplies more than 90% of the income of right-wing groups in North Carolina; in 2010, groups connected to Pope accounted for 75% of the outside election spending that helped Republicans capture the state legislature.
If you care about democracy, and especially if you care about North Carolina, read Mayer's New Yorker piece, and watch the Maddow clip below.
This man is working to take NC back to its darker days. If you are glad to have the days of Jesse Helms behind you, it's worth noting that, as Mayer states, "Even some North Carolinians associated with Jesse Helms think that Pope has gone too far."
