November 28, 2006

The Fulford File, By James Fulford

Cult Of Bryanna? Not!

Paranoids Have Enemies, But We Have Paranoid Enemies Department: There’s an entire website devoted to trying to savage our Steve Sailer, called Steve Sailer Sucks. It’s run by Bill Lee, who describes himself as “an American of East Asian descent” [Send him mail.]

Lee has a blog called SailerFraud. Its latest effort is VDare into religious idolatry (November 26, 2006), featuring a photo we posted of Bryanna Bevens with her son, Adam Quincy. Incredibly, Lee claims this looks too much like the conventional images of the Madonna and Child:

“It can get really creepy how the right-wing extremists use twisted religion to manipulate their audience, con them for money, and promote hatred and fascism. VDare is doing another fundraising drive, and the front cover features VDare writer Bryanna Bevens holding her baby in a similar fashion as the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.”

Of course, the first and most obvious point is that all mothers look like that. They can't help it.

The second is that there’s a real reason for mentioning the children here. If whites are minority in the United States after 2050, I may not be here to see it. But children alive today will.(This, of course, was one of the reason Peter Brimelow, in his book Alien Nation, mentioned his son Alexander, which produced a similar hysterical reaction from many otherwise sober commentators, such as Michael Barone, the late A. M. Rosenthal,  and Ira Glasser of the American Civil Liberties Union.)

Lee goes on to say

“I don’t believe it was intentional for Peter Brimelow and the VDare editors to imitate the Virgin Mary pose, but they do know a thing or two about marketing.”

…which more or less destroys his whole point. And what do we know about marketing? We just ask you to send us money! How fiendish is that? (P.S. Send Money!)

After which,  Lee goes on to quote the commandment forbidding "idolatry"—which is often quoted, I’m afraid, not against Bryanna, but against the Virgin Mary, whose statue keeps being smashed by anti-Christian vandals, from coast to coast.

A long time ago, Hilaire Belloc, an Anglo-French Catholic, saw an item in the newspaper about an Anglican controversy in which a Bishop had made a clergyman remove a statue of the Virgin from his church—which the report referred to as “A female figure with a child.”

Belloc felt strongly about respect for the Virgin Mary, and wrote a Ballade about it. So I’ll let him have the last word.

When that the Eternal deigned to look
On us poor folk to make us free
He chose a Maiden, whom He took
From Nazareth in Galilee;
Since when the Islands of the Sea,
The Field, the City, and the Wild
Proclaim aloud triumphantly
A Female Figure with a Child.

These Mysteries profoundly shook
The Reverend Doctor Leigh, D.D.,
Who therefore stuck into a Nook
(Or Niche) of his Incumbency
An Image filled with majesty
To represent the Undefiled,
The Universal Mother— She—
A Female Figure with a Child.

His Bishop, having read a book
Which proved as plain as plain could be
That all the Mutts had been mistook
Who talked about a Trinity
Wrote off at once to Doctor Leigh
In manner very far from mild,
And said: “Remove them instantly!
A Female Figure with a Child!”

Envoi