CNN interviews Kirk Cameron about possible
end-times connection with bird and fish deaths

From the Houston Chronicle blog Believe It or Not:

Although Kirk Cameron insists he's not "the religious conspiracy go-to guy," he's exactly who Anderson Cooper called up to talk about the connection between the mysterious bird and fish deaths and Christian notions of the end of days.

Cameron, a born-again Christian actor, starred in the popular Left Behind films, based on the evangelical, dispensationalist book series.

"It's really kind of silly to try to equate birds falling out of the sky with some time -- some kind of an end-times theory," he said on CNN Monday night.

More here, with video.

To Cameron's credit, he refused to link the Arkansas fish and bird deaths to the Apocalypse, despite Cooper pressuring him to do so several times. I mean, don't get me wrong. Kirk Cameron, despite my love for his white bread antics in the 1980s Cosbyesque sitcom Growing Pains, is a total fundamentalist kook. He really does believe in the "end times," and very likely thinks that we are now experiencing the first stages of this fictional event.

But it's Anderson Cooper and CNN who look like big idiots today.

Okay, I'm well aware of the fact that millions of Americans are fundamentalists and "end times" believers, but Cooper, supposedly a serious and objective journalist, treats the notion as though he were talking about Social Security or Afghanistan or the Rolling Stones. That is, the "end times," or the Apocalypse, whatever you want to call it, is a confusing mythic narrative drawn from a two thousand year old religious text, so confusing, in fact, that the fundamentalists, who are pretty much defined by their strict adherence to a literal interpretation of the Bible, fall all over themselves to interpret the book of Revelation in order to get it to make any sense at all.

In other words, the "end times" is a bullshit notion, which believers are free to, well, believe if they want, but it is not in any way part of what we would call verifiable reality, and therefore has no place in the news, except as, perhaps, a sort of cultural fluff piece. Certainly not as part of overall coverage of real world events.

I'm really kind of annoyed by this kind of pandering.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$