Covenant Blogger Phil Codington Speaks on Sheryce Butkowski

I'm really interested in the unspoken, newly-promulgated Eleventh Commandment that seems to be relevant to both this discussion and others on the subject. The Commandment seems to be "Thou shalt not offend thy neighbor."

I seem to have missed that one somehow, as pretty much everyone who reads either this blog or mine can probably attest.

Dear Phil-In-Christ,

For the benefit of "full disclosure", I was wondering what perks came with making the recommendation for Sheryce. More scholarship money, time excused from Practical Service, back-rubs in third lobby?

Is anyone willing to swing by the Tuck Shoppe and pick up a sense of humor for P-Cod? I'll be glad to phone in the order, and I'll even pay for it, I'll just need someone who is geographically closer than I am to physically pick it up and deliver it to Phil.

In all seriousness, the Tuck Shoppe does not sell senses of humor. Additionally, I have at no time known said Shoppe to deal in intangible goods such as personality, sense of humor, or social awareness. When I implied that items such as these could be purchased through the Tuck Shoppe, I was merely being a sarcastic ass, and hope no one was offended by my implication that Phil Codington could actually benefit from a sense of humor. Which he obviously and painfully could.

And I was so hoping that Covenant had finally made its long-overdue overture to the Polish community. Phil, you have destroyed my dreams. Palaverously.

By the way, this seems germane.

while i'm sure the reality show developing on covenant's website is well intended and will help the school accomplish some of its goals, to me it feels completely bogus. i'm sure in some cases it isn't. but in some cases i know it is. main example: the freshman girl who in her student profile who enthusiastically lauds the food she gets to eat while she's at covenant. it is patently false advertising to suggest to future students that they will experience a similarly marvelous dining experience in the great hall. the food has been, is, and will continue to be a source of consequent stomach aches and unsatisfactory bowel movements for as long as the kitchen is smaller than a dorm room and covenant doesn't have millions of extra dollars to throw around on luxuries like good food.

on the brighter side, i'm encouraged to hear that wallace didn't choose that girl to blog just so that he and those who might come across her blog could make puns on her name. with this off my mind, i can relax and just look forward to seeing her and all the other covenant admissions bloggers reflect on what they learned from the sex guy who's coming to speak in chapel this week. welcome to college, covenant style.

Given Covenant's propensity to show favoritism towards individuals with comical last names, it's not surprising that Josiah would be misinterpreted here. I'm just happy it got cleared up before any real damage was done.

The next blogger, Tits McCallahan, will appeal to an Irish demographic.

First of all, Josiah, maybe you should put some kind of a warning on your blog for your potential readers. A statement like, 'Parental advisory: explicit humor,' for instance, will warn those who do not know you that you often like to speak with your tongue in your cheek. But then again, I guess that's not necessary, as you have one of the largest and most diverse fan bases for a blog, partly due to your dry sense of humor. If you don't get dry humor, then yes, I highly recommend you stay away from Josiah or his blog.

Secondly, it's good to know that Wallace was so sure that Phil was representing 95% of Covenant. Because by hiring Phil's friend, you still got the same representation. And last but not least, I'm guessing the next Covenant Blog is just as 'controlled' as the first one because of the person they hired.

Hear, hear, Ryan!!! :)

I am dumbfounded by how obsessed y’all are with who writes or picks to write or oversees a student blog that is so obviously a marketing tool. Schools all over the country employ all kinds of marketing techniques to attract students, but their alumni are too busy doing real work in the real world to nitpick every little move the school makes. No offense, and I love you, Josiah, but the vast majority of stuff you write about Covenant seems petty and unhelpful. Maybe you have a “large and diverse fan base,” but you’ll lose some of it if you continue to waste the intelligence and humor you do have on ad nauseum critique of the administrative choices of a Christian school that you and some of your blogging peeps seem to be irrationally co-dependent on. This blogging thing is one, big, ridiculous example. This poor freshman is trying to do something helpful and good for a school he cares about, and y’all – in a weird, almost Freudian kind of way – can only tear him and the school down. I don’t know if you need to move out of Chattanooga or what, but you definitely need to get some perspective. The school, via this incarnation of its administration, will hopefully live, learn, and thrive, but it may do so despite, not because of, you. That’s something to think about the next time y’all (I lump you and your readers together) make noises about how ridiculous this, that, or the other generally irrelevant decision of the administration happens to be, or how naïve, pious, or “preening,” some poor Christian kid, whose trying to figure out who he is and what he believes (and can’t we all please remember what that was like?), happens to be.

Those are the one-and-a-half cents I’ve been wanting to toss in for awhile….

To distill that rather rambling comment (complete with its anonymous link to... Friendster?) to it's essence, I think we get the following: "You guys are mean!"

Why thank you.

Friend, will you be my friend? I have none, lost them all in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871...

Does Butkowski play linebacker for the Bears?

John Totten is hilarious. I laughed out loud, lol if you will, and got many weird looks from my co-workers.

I plan on staging an interactive cross country bus campaign where I go to college campuses that are intolerant to humor. I call it Pole Force, and our job will be to go to intollerant Christian colleges and teach them of the benefits of humor through interpretive dance and dirty lymrics. We will also hand out pamphlets with various bar jokes as well as encourage random acts of humor such as farting in public, getting hit in the crotch, and streaking.

We will hold forums with the students and administration to determine the varying levels of humor: Jovial, gut busting, hilarious, and "Oh my gosh, I crapped my pants I laughed so hard."

We will also trace the history of comedy in the arts from its early days of the Three Stooges to its more evolved form of America's Funniest Videos. As well as debating the finer points of humor in cinema comparing such classics as Airplane, I'm Gonna Get you Sucka, and the always comical Sly Stalone comedic epic: Stop or My Mom will Shoot.

Though I disclaim any personal knowledge of the manner in which P-cod was recruited by Irresponsible Journalism, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find that Josiah made a pretense of having "a meaningful dialogue" with P-Cod in the hope of baiting P-cod's humorlessness into the open where it could be a source of amusement for those of us familiar with concepts such as irony, humor, etc. This would, of course, make Josiah a horrible person.

One thing troubles me, though: is there any chance P-Cod could clarify that despite not having chosen Ms. Butkowski for her last name, persons of Polish decent and/or last names that are vaguely obscene are nonetheless welcome at Covenant? I sensed an embarrassment at Sheryce Butkowski's name in P-cod's post which I think some might find hurtful.

Julian, you know better than most why that's not why I'm a horrible person, interesting theory that it is.

I would venture the following proverb in Josiah's defense: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I think in P-Cod's case we're going on at least four times here, so he deserves what he gets. You can't make someone look stupid if they aren't that way already.

yes, you can, ryan--look at our country's politicians!

Ryan,

I'm in complete agreement. I actually commented to ensure that no one recklessly concluded that Josiah had given in to milquetoast complaints about insensitivity, which would be uncharacteristic. The kind of devious intent I theorize seems far more consistent with his personality.

However, I should also note that if he did in fact invite P-cod's contribution on the basis I suggest, it was with benign and creditable intent: several years' public mockery of P-cod's frivolous solemnity might finally drive P-cod to recognize that, as that admirable Catholic Oscar Wilde observed, "Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow."

Ryan,

is that "Fool me once..." in the New American Standard because I can only find my NIV. But since we're using the parlance of our times as absolute truth- Your're not wrong, you're just an asshole.

Phil, I know about one hundred Seattle hipster girls who would find your refreshing naivite hot as hell and if you ever wanted to teach a class on how to pick up chicks I know about one hundred dudes who would love to sign up.

Something for daniel to chew on (by the way, assume an absence of formal party affiliation precedes my posting of this film clip). The clincher comes at the end (wait for it, wait for it...):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XLvu9ZWcPKg

John, you're a lover and an intellectual!

Ryan, you, too, might want to give that url a little chew. I promise, it's tasty. Here, lick my finger (I'm only joking, of course).

What's a "naivite"?

Is that a part of the body or something?

that was great. thanks for passing it on.

i actually know practically nothing about politics and was a little surprised at my post. looking at it now, i'm not exactly sure what i meant. i mean, obviously, it was a jab at politicians, but did i mean it? i'll have to look inside to figure it out.

Sometimes I feel like a stand up comedian in a room full of deaf people.

My humor is wasted on you itellectual elitists.

Chris, I thought you were funny, especially the Sly Stallone "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot" reference.

We will also...encourage random acts of humor such as farting in public, getting hit in the crotch, and streaking.

Ghetto's not doing that anymore, huh?

John: I assume the desired response is for me to start crying because someone called me a bad name. Rest assured that, in this case as in others, I can tell the difference between serious dialog and wild posturing and have no real incentive to treat the latter as the former. Were I interested, and I'm not, an intriguing challenge would be to see just how few comments can go by before John Totten starts insulting me. That's about the level of intellectual gravity we seem to be dealing with here.

In all seriousness, cut it out. No one benefits and the discussion suffers. I don't make it a practice after you as a person, and I would appreciate it if you would do the same.

I'm not asking you to like what I say. You generally won't, and that fails to bother me on any significant level. But do yourself, me, and everyone else here a favor and lay off the abuse.

Kiko: not sure exactly what you're getting at, but Hitch is hilarious as always.

Ryan: in a string of commentary that includes you (accurately) stating that your blog is offensive, that you are personally "mean," and that P.C. is "stupid," you dare to tell John to "cut it out" and that his commentary causes the discussion to "suffer?" If there was a picture next to the definition of "the pot calling the kettle black," it would be yours.

In Ryan's defense, by "mean" and "offensive" I'm quite sure he meant, "Indifferent to the emotional consequences of accuracy and honesty." And he didn't say "P.C." was "stupid," or even "P-cod is stupid." What he said was that if Josiah had made P-cod appear to be stupid, that could only have been achieved were P-cod in fact stupid, given that these successive embarrassments have required P-cod to willingly rush into every trap Josiah sets for him. This is a subtle distinction, but important: the logical consequence of the statement isn't that P-cod is stupid, but that if you believe him to have been made to appear stupid in the above post, then you must also conclude that he is in fact stupid. So you have a choice.

Totten's comment can thus reasonably be distinguished qualitatively from Ryan's statements, since Totten's use of the term "asshole" has no semantic value beyond the communication of hostility.

Sure, Julian. Your distinction between John calling Ryan an "asshole," and Ryan's rampant use of rhetorical nastiness - nastiness aimed very carefully and directly at insulting specific persons - makes perfect sense.

There is semantic value to my insult. Since the whole conversation is about someone not having any sense for subtle humor I thought it might be nice to quote the Big Lebowski. So the semantic value is hostile AND funny.

As far as me being hostile-

"I'm really interested in the unspoken, newly-promulgated Eleventh Commandment that seems to be relevant to both this discussion and others on the subject. The Commandment seems to be 'Thou shalt not offend thy neighbor.'"- Ryan Davidson

And I agree with him mostly. That's why I said he wasn't wrong (Ryan I said you were an asshole not that I didn't like what you said) he's just an asshole. I think if Ryan expects P-Cod to lighten up he should take a Chattanooga chill pill himself over a Big Lebowski reference.

That is I agree with Ryan's obvious sarcasm not in an actual commandment that says that.

Rhetorical nastiness remains one of my favorite virtues, especially when aimed very carefully and directly at insulting specific persons. I can't imagine how anyone could fail to relish it. The factual exactitude of the insults, and the humorous capacity of the person behind them, is the crucial point. Ryan passes both tests, difficult man though he may be.

On the other hand, Big Lebowski quotations are always welcome, whatever the delicacy of usage.

Meanwhile, as Paul Fussell noted, the truth remains "that no one thinks as well of you as you do yourself; and that one or two generations from now you will be forgotten entirely and that the world will go on as if you had never existed." After taking that in, why worry so much if you (or your pals) were called unkind names? Have a beer and a laugh.

Or if you attend Covenant College, just have the laugh.

I certainly see a distinction 'tween Ryan's type of offensiveness and Totten's, but my problem with Totten's comment is that that quote (along with other Big Lebowski quotes) in our extended hipster-related circle have become de facto substitutions in the stead of something actually witty (whether offensive or not).

Further, the quote is delivered when the target is someone of a prudish disposition. It's a "shock and awe" tactic, if you will, that is also offensive. In this case, it was marginally offensive and hardly shocking (given Ryan as it's target).

Finally, and it's really just a quibble, it is abhorrently irreverent to place the lingual foible's of President Bush on the same level as the genius writing of The Big Lebowski aka "The Parlance of Our Times." It's just one of those things you don't do.

Julian: you are my hero.

John: If your comment was meant in jest and good humor, then you have my apologies, though I would plead recent events as an explanation for my initial reaction.

I strongly approve of the suggestions of mesh and Josiah: rhetorical sparring is excellent fun, but get more creative, John. I don't really take insults like that personally, as you can probably tell by now. But certainly there are better and more original ways of telling me I'm a bad person than that.

Harmony (as I assume "hhd" signifies): Your points, as it were, are well-phrased and -taken, though you of all people should recognize the logical worthlessness of such an obvious tu quoque. I will admit that your use of my self-deprecation as fodder for aggressive condemnation is quite impressive. Your indignation is duly noted.

Ryan (and co.),
I will be the first to concede that my style of rhetoric and (hopefully) of life prizes some virtues much more highly than logical consistency. But if consistency is your bag, then do me a favor and explain how a Christian – with distinctly “Christian” theological and philosophical commitments – can coherently champion a style of rhetoric that emphasizes logic to the effective exclusion of love?

And Aaron,
The problem with your typically witty commentary is this: many of us don’t – and wouldn’t recommend – “taking” Fussell “in.” Again, philosophical and theological commitments that (at least some of you, some of the time) claim as your own don’t give you the luxury of acting as though the “world will go on as if you had never existed.”

The inconsistencies in this conversation are much deeper, it seems to me, than many of you are willing (or perhaps able?) to explore or admit. I understand that’s because it’s so much more delicious to be mean, but you may want to take care not to ruin – in this mad, happy, gorge-fest of hyper-macho rhetorical posturing – what little palates you have left.

that's food for thought.

I presume that I'm a member of this ad hoc posse you've created, Harmony. It's a crafty move: given our hyper-macho temperaments, Mesh, Ryan, Josiah and I are soon going to be so distracted by the battle for gang leadership that we won't have time to participate in this discussion.

But to your "argument": you seem to think that following a deductive or inductive chain to it's logical conclusion is somehow unkind. This reminds me of an observation Chesterton made in Orthodoxy in the chapter, "The Suicide of Thought":

"But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed."

Now it's true that debate is a lot more fun where opinions are stridently expressed; and I think I can say that all four of us have a genuine hostility to boredom. But more importantly, one gets more quickly to the merits of an issue when one doesn't mollycoddle and condescend. If you express opinions in a public forum you should expect them to be disputed: that's kind of the point. And the more sudden and direct any confrontation is, the more likely you are to recognize any error your argument may have had. That is the chief reason for our choice of tone, and it has a shared and valuable aim: to cooperatively discover the the correct viewpoint on a given question as quickly as possible.

And while I'd rather stay away from the "love" question - I'll leave that for the rest of this "gang" - I see no charitable value in allowing someone to remain mistaken. Wasn't there something somewhere about the truth setting you free?

What battle? I think it should be clear as to who runs this particular "gang". I'm confused though as to the exact membership?

Harm, I can appreciate you not liking what you characterize as a "hyper macho" manner of communicating that apparently Ryan, Julian, Aaron, and I share, but I wasn't aware that this was an event for the sharing (or explanation) of deep-seated inconsistencies or tensions. References as such amount to little more than "you just think that because you're ____". Which may be true, but isn't really loving, is it?

Julian,
There was something somewhere about that (though equating the “truth” that sets free with the “truth” that a particular person is stupid or naive involves a pretty questionable hermeneutic). Another such thing that seems a bit more relevant, though, is about telling “the truth in love.”

Let me be clear: I take issue here not with “truth” or with “following a deductive or inductive chain to it’s logical conclusion,” or even with “sudden and direct confrontation,” but with, well, two things actually. The first is the startling absence of anything like love in this conversation, a conversation that, as far as I can tell from reading Josiah’s initial post and the commentary that followed, has much less of a resemblance to a debate than to gossip. The second is the feigned ignorance of some of my Christian friends to what I’m talking about – their happy disposal of love in an attempt to get more quickly and forcefully to, as you put it, “the merits of an issue,” and their soulless attempts to explain why such a disposal is acceptable.

While it may be more efficient and less boring to take the rhetorical path you seem to advocate, I would argue that from a Christian perspective, it’s quite lazy. From a Christian perspective, rhetoric is never simply about discovering and correcting error, and it is never formulated in a vacuum, with no attention to the person to whom it is aimed. For a Christian, good rhetoric, good debate, is quite a bit more complicated that and arguably, it turns out to be quite a bit more satisfying and effective as a result. (Taking a look at the way Jesus talked to different people in the NT might provide a bit of an example of what I’m talking about here). I suppose I’m just a little disappointed that some of the folks commenting here have forgotten that.

That’s it for me. Mounds of reading call. I’m sure someone else will have no problem delivering the punch line.

I'm just tickled to be called "hyper-macho." This has never happened to me before.

I believe it is in fact possible to hold that people are valuable (or immortal, or even sacred) while admitting that you, yourself, don't matter all that terribly much, and your delicate feelings are not central to the universe. It's an interesting tension, but a useful one. At least I've found it so. But meanwhile, please don't presume my philosphical and theological commitments when you lecture me.

I'm confused. So she was not chosen to blog because of her name?

Maybe Josiah "Roe roe roe your boat" Roe and I (James "Canoeing" Keuning) have something in common.

The point is - I'm sure that this is not the first or last time that someone has had fun with Butt-Cow-Ski.