Long ago, ca. 1971, when he was still in high school, your Bloviator first became familiar with the concept of “patronizing,” which the dictionary defines as “showing condescending favor; assuming the manner of airs of a superior toward another.” This undesirable trait was manifested by certain teachers who, in those turbulent times, grew their hair long, grew beards, wore love beads and tie-dyed shirts, used words like “man” and “groovy” and played Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead records for us in English class rather than recite Keats. Putative grownups, they stooped to this level to appear “with it” and concommitantly disassociate themselves from the “establishment," all in the hopes of winning us over. Even though my peers and I were only in our teens, we, like all teenagers, of course saw right through this pathetic and lame posturing and it resulted in our being even more contemptuous of those teachers than we had been already.
36 years later I find myself thinking back to those inauspicious high school days when I read of the Presiding Bishop’s visit to Pine Bluff Arkansas where she attended a service and held a Q & A session at a reception following. Most of the A’s to the Q’s were the boiler plate we’ve long grown accustomed to hearing from the PB, e.g. all is swell in the Episcopal Church, rah, rah MDG, etc. but one item in the newspaper account did catch my attention and reads thus:
"Evangelism [the Presiding Bishop said] means many things in words and music, observing that it is difficult to attract young people to Episcopal churches when 'you speak in Victorian (sic) English.' She cited a successful youth program in one metropolitan area that attracts young people with hip-hop. "
Oh, puh-leeeeeeeze, don’t these people ever learn? You read twaddle like the above and you have to wonder if the PB and her 815 compats aren’t stuck in the Wayback Machine, doomed to rehearse over and over again the tired, dated rhetoric of hippie/yippiedom, using The Greening of America” as their missal. Regarding the Hip-Hop Mass, let’s cut to the chase: What do you suppose the reaction of a bunch of hardened teenaged homies from Morrisania in the Bronx would be to ageing white people in vestments shrieking out the following?
"My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up -- keep your head up, holla back, and go forth and tell like it is."
Your answer is correct: utter contempt. In fact those impudent teeangers (bless their little hearts) might even go further, saying those ageing hippies were nothing more than a bunch of f*****g clowns.
36 years later I find myself thinking back to those inauspicious high school days when I read of the Presiding Bishop’s visit to Pine Bluff Arkansas where she attended a service and held a Q & A session at a reception following. Most of the A’s to the Q’s were the boiler plate we’ve long grown accustomed to hearing from the PB, e.g. all is swell in the Episcopal Church, rah, rah MDG, etc. but one item in the newspaper account did catch my attention and reads thus:
"Evangelism [the Presiding Bishop said] means many things in words and music, observing that it is difficult to attract young people to Episcopal churches when 'you speak in Victorian (sic) English.' She cited a successful youth program in one metropolitan area that attracts young people with hip-hop. "
Oh, puh-leeeeeeeze, don’t these people ever learn? You read twaddle like the above and you have to wonder if the PB and her 815 compats aren’t stuck in the Wayback Machine, doomed to rehearse over and over again the tired, dated rhetoric of hippie/yippiedom, using The Greening of America” as their missal. Regarding the Hip-Hop Mass, let’s cut to the chase: What do you suppose the reaction of a bunch of hardened teenaged homies from Morrisania in the Bronx would be to ageing white people in vestments shrieking out the following?
"My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up -- keep your head up, holla back, and go forth and tell like it is."
Your answer is correct: utter contempt. In fact those impudent teeangers (bless their little hearts) might even go further, saying those ageing hippies were nothing more than a bunch of f*****g clowns.
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