Another Chick Tract Dissection

Unlike the first tract I dissected, which was just stupid, this one is actually offensive.



Flight 144? Now, that sounds like one of those movies where there's a PARTY ON THE PLANE, BABY, YEAH!

It sounds so very fun.



A quick show of hands--who else thinks that lady's next line could plausibly be "dear me, I do believe I'm getting the vapors!"



Left Panel: Everything is under control. Right. They're both looking at the wing of the airplane that is ON FIRE, and one of the women says it's "under control".

Right Panel: I guess it's not under control, then, huh? I mean, one engine is dead and the other one's on fire.

What are the odds of that? That one engine would die at the SAME TIME that the other one catches fire?

That pilot is totally high. I think he's hallucinating the engine failure.

By the way, I'm imagining him saying, "This is Flight 144"in the same voice that Stephen Colbert uses to say, "This is the Colbert Report".



Alright, I have a hard time believing that this is any kind of a third-world country if the majority of the people who live there are wearing aloha shirts. I'm just saying.



It's hard to make fun of the left panel, because it's all so very sweet. This all, according to Chick, is supposed to be evil, but I can't help feeling a little happy that, you know, people that missionaries helped to avoid starvation are wishing the missionaries well.

But pay attention to how Mr. Davidson is referred to as "reverend".

Dig those two people in the row in front of them. That one woman looks really nervous, and the other one is evidently blind and eating an orange with the peel sicking out of her mouth like we all did when we were kids.



Hold up. That's supposed to be AFRICA?

None of the people who live there look remotely African.

It's also hard to make fun of this one, because building hospitals and schools is a GOOD thing.



Wait just a damn minute. This chalk-white guy is apparently an African, and he was in an African jail which is where he got saved. Yeah, right. A special note to Jack Chick: Most of the people in Africa are either Sunni Muslim, Catholic, or they have indigenous beliefs. There are quite a few Ethiopian Jews, however.

The odds of this guy being "Saved" here are highly remote.



Yeah, I'm sure you led that guy to the Lord. I'm sure. The guy was a criminal. Not only that, he was most likely desperately poor, and had plenty of reasons to believe that either God didn't exist or God did exist but God is an unbelievable asshole. This guy, who's been a Christian for about a week, managed to convert his cellmate to the Lord.

I would just like to point out that Mrs. Davidson's expression is trippy.



And here it is, folks, the ALLEGED BAD THING THAT COMES WITH MISSIONARY WORK. BEWARE THE BAD THING.

This kid is trying to say "Oh, yeah, helping thousands of people lead better lives and have longer life spans, sure fine whatever. It doesn't matter, it means NOTHING!"

How fucking impertinent. Didn't he learn to respect his elders?



Now, is it just me, or does that kid that's supposed to be the "good" one sound like he'd be a horrible person to hang around with?

It's like that South Park episode with Starvin Marvin and Sally Struthers. "Please give us food!" "NOT UNTIL YOU ACCEPT JESUS AS THE LORD!"

Now, to me, the Davidsons sound like REAL Christians as Jesus intended them to be, and then this kid sounds like some psycho.



The ONLY works that matter is Jesus dying on the cross? So apparently it doesn't even matter if you let people not starve? How fucking horrible is that?

What the hell is with that gospel quote at the bottom, anyway? What does it have to do with ANYTHING?



That is the biggest fucking fish I have ever seen in my entire life.

This is a really awesome panel, too. *CRASH* *BOOM* *EVERYONE DIES*.



Your beautiful MANSION in heaven? And heaven is guarded by gates?

HEAVEN IS A CUL-DE-SAC! Tee hee. Sac. Tee hee.

What if you don't want a mansion in heaven? Wouldn't it be more heavenly to some if one were simply able to sleep on a hammock on a beach somewhere, or in an apartment with a beautiful view of a city skyline? I met some people who worked for Yosemite National Park who could have probably gone on to live in a mansion but chose not to.

I guess heaven is really more like the capitalist American dream, and if you want to go against this, not only are you weird, but you're also BLASPHEMOUS.



And here we have him again, folks, Jack Chick's Asshole God (TM).

LOL GOD YOU'VE MADE A MISTAKE! I mean, not like it ever happened before. I like your work with not smiting Hitler. And Pompeii. And AIDS--can't forget that. Although according to Jack Chick, AIDS is only a mistake when a straight person gets it by accident.

Jack Chick is trying to paint good people as arrogant, bad Christians, and I don't like it.



Wait, I don't like how that passage is being interpreted. Couldn't it just as easily mean that someone just went out and helped an old lady cross the street to get some God Cred, and God said "No Sale"? Couldn't it also mean that they themselves were good people but Satan-worshippers?

And couldn't it also mean THIS TRACT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE BECAUSE MR. DAVIDSON WAS A REVEREND!



That is one tripped-out waterfall, I must say.

Yes, the good works BLOODY WELL SHOULD count for something, goddammit.



You did ALL the work necessary? While there are still people out there starving, blind, disabled, AIDS-ridden, oppressed, whatever? Helping these people out is ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY AND WILL SEND YOU TO HELL!

No, Jack. If that's what God thinks, He is not loving. And you should not be spreading this horrible message. God has a place for people who run around telling others not to care about others and only themselves. HINT: It ain't heaven.



I don't get it. They were Christians. Why are they going to hell, if those passages don't apply to them!



I want to know what that cloud is supposed to be. Seriously.



Now, wait just a damned minute. The sin problem was taken care of once and for all... so there would be no need for Jesus to come into your heart, then?

It was apparently not fixed once and for all. God needs better marketing than Jack Chick.



Dammit, Jack, that's not Jesus. That's GOD THE FATHER.

Here's how it works. The Father is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Ghost is God. BUT The Father is not Jesus, Jesus is not the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is not the father.

Think of it like water:

Liquid water is H2O. Ice is H2O. Water vapor is H2O. BUT Liquid water is not ice, ice is not water vapor, and water vapor is not liquid water.

Given how loving and understanding Jack the Tripper's God evidently is, I'm sure that mistaking one member of the trinity is some sort of sin that will earn you ETERNAL HELLFIRE. Because God is love.

Oh, and those people WERE Christian. This track makes no sense.



Yeah, but before you died on the cross, didn't you say to help those in need?

I don't like how Jack Chick focuses on how Jesus got killed instead of what He taught. Focusing on how Jesus got killed leads to genocide, usually. Besides, Jesus' DYING is not the point of Christianity. Jesus' teaching is.



Hell is made of spaghetti?

That is the crappiest excuse for a flame I have ever fucking seen. It looks like a dog ate part of the tract.

The angel on the right is panhandling. In Hell.



Blah, blah, blah.

Chick Tract Dissection

This one is about "OMG JESUS MUST BE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS!"



What the hell is that? It's taken them that long to cope with homework? Usually kids only do stuff like that if the teacher's done something particularly bitchy recently. And WTF is with them slashing the tires in front of the teacher? Is anybody that stupid?

And what the hell, a "War Zone" school has a WASPtacular name like "Westmont"? Since when are there ghetto high schools in fucking Connecticut?

My experience is that the worst schools are named after Presidents or other somewhat famous people. E. G. Galileo, Hoover, Lincoln, Washington

NOT Westmont.



They think they'd win a battle against their teacher? They think they'd be trusted over someone with a college education? They, who are known as delinquents? Even if their teacher had a record as a liar and they were top students, she's be trusted over them. Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.

"Hi, I'm scared of this school and everything in it, so I'm just going to walk up to some disdainful-looking stranger and hope she doesn't bash my head in with her Calculus book." Wow.

Also, note the smorgasboard of sinners. We have someone in an ambulance, a public display of affection, a girl being stangled, some kid smoking a joint, some kind of sale going on, and a gang rag on that one kid's head.



"There are a lot of scary kids here in Westmont, Connecticut. Why, we have a few toughs here who are working class! And some Catholics! And a few honor students who trade perscription drugs! It's a jungle"

Moose? Moose? What the hell kind of nickname is that? Yeah, I'm pissing myself because of some kid named Moose. There are kids at parochial schools with scarier nicknames than that.

Also, Moose calls his subordinates "snakes"? How does that make any sense? Shouldn't he be calling them "reindeer" or something?

And in the second panel, it looks like Chick is aiming for more sinner smorgasboards, but instead it looks like two kids having an interpretive dance competition on their cafeteria tables.



Man, I can only imagine how many times Mr. Chick must have been beaten up in his high school days, because this Moose character is absolutely ridiculous.

He takes the Gospel tracts? Just because they belong to somebody else? Bully=/=kleptomaniac. Any real self-respecting bully, upon hearing about gospel tracts, would go "HA! What a fag!" And leave them there.

I really don't like his bully. I must resist the urge to rant about him.



Note the stacks of paperwork on the Principal's desk, indicating that he's SO BURDENED WITH PROBLEMS THAT...Oh, Lordy.

What the hell are the pictures on the wall? We have some sort of gang-member alumnus and a two-headed dog.

That principal is awfully nervous. He looks like he's on crak.



And they respect a guy who's less book smart than they are? Even in drug circles they have a slight respect for the literate (see Freakonomics). Also, I mean, wouldn't the kid who could read be able to claim leadership because he can, you know, read? If any of them couldn't read, it'd probably be the inferiors. See, I love how Chick thinks that just because they're teenaged bullies, the rules of sociology don't really apply.

I love that right panel. So we have some sort of bald alien dude with a floppy nose, then to the left Mr, Crackhead Principal, and then a... what the hell ethnicity is that? Is that like a Hispanic NBA player with a Jewish nose and a hollowed-out 12-inch television for a skull?



What the hell is wrong with Indignant Father's mouth? It looks like he's some sort of fish. And there's a ninja behind Indignant Mother.

No, it is not a "literal war zone". A literal war zone would involve millitary combat. Slamming people against lockers and slashing tires doesn't count as military combat, I'm sorry to say.



Wow. Mr. Jittery Principal certainly smoked a lot of crack before this meeting.

And what the hell is with the parents acting like children? They're adults. Jesus Christ.



It looks like Moose was just stabbed in the heart. What's he doing standing upright?

*GASP* The LORD? WOOOOOOOOW.

Ha, I can just imagine how that prayer went:
"Dear Lord, There's this kid named Moose in my school who beats me up all the time! He took away my tracts! I hate him so much! I really, really hope he stops beating me up! Once, I had to stay home from school for a day because he punched me in the stomach so hard! So, to repeat: please make him stop! Please, Lord! Ohbythewaycanyousavehimtookthx Amen."



Now this is really pissing me off. "FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, I'M AFRAID!"

Chick knows nothing about bullies. NADA. He is absolutely no better than those stupid tweenage girls who write stories that involve EVIL popular people because she herself was picked on by a popular person, although to nowhere near the same extent.

I know what beiing a bully is like, and let me tell you, it's not being fearless. Being a bully means living in a constant state of fear, rage, and denial. And you most likely bully people because you're so afraid of yourself that you have to take it out on other people. Rage begets fear and vice versa. Didn't it ever occur to Jack Chick that there might be a reason that bullies beat other people up all the time? It's not because they're possessed by Satan. It's because they hate their lives and themselves, they're afraid of what they're turning into, and they don't want to show weakness. So they'd cover it up by inspiring fear in others. Because then it lets them realize that they're not the only ones who are weak. The only way to deal with fear is to turn it into rage or an abhorrance of something. In most bullies' cases, it's weakness. They don't want to be weak. And when they make other people feel weak, they'll feel stronger in comparison. And, deep down inside, they know that they're being weaker than their victims and they know that this means that they won't amount to much, but they still have to cover it up. They hate themselves but they can't stand hating themselves, so they hate other people.

If Moose was afraid of nothing, he wouldn't be a bully. Plain and simple.

If "Loving thine enemy" means "assuming that every sin they commit has no psychological backing other than blatant sadism", then Jesus was really, really bad at picking the right words.



What kind of bully admits their fear to someone who they victimized? Doesn't it occur to him that the victim would really get off on that?

Wow, instaconversion. Because, of course, a Big, Tough Bully (TM) would totally want to follow all someone else's rules.



God loved us so much that he sent a guy to die for our sins?

I love my mom. So should I send a guy who's about to die to her doorstep because I love her so much?

I'm way too lazy to go through this whole "being saved" thing, so let's just say it's the same old bullshit: some gullible sinner gets down on his knees and starts pleasing God (feeling His sweet salvation all over his face).



Wow. So they couldn't have gotten saved when they were reading the tracts to him?



Moose and the Snakes (giggle) were SINGLEHANDEDLY responsible for all the crime? Why didn't they just kick them out?

MORAL OF THE STORY: there needs to be God in public schools. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be saved, but whatever.

BLAH.

There's more, but you can imagine "DRUG USE IS DOWN! GRADES ARE UP!"

Chick=major league asshole.

Rant about homophobia

So apparently this asshole thinks he can convert just about anyone against homosexuality by citing sources from the Bible. His religious views are "proven" in his tracts by having some fundie cite passages from the Bible, which immediately gets everyone on their knees worshipping Jesus. The problem with that is that in order for the whole "citing Bible passages as means of conversion" thing to work, the people being converted would already have to believe in Biblical inerrancy. Which, therefore, would render the conversion sort of redundant. Oh, and in a few of them (mostly the evolution and "Catholic conspiracy that runs everything not Fundamentalist Christian" ones), he cites some extremely unreliable sources. Many of his tracts will feature someone saying something like this: "ALL MURDERS THAT HAVE EVER TAKEN PLACE ARE A CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY, BECAUSE THE CATHOLICS WANT POWER OVER YOU!"* *For more information, read Judas McFundie's book "Catholics are Sodomizing, De Facto Devil Worshipping, Baby Raping Heretics", an absolutely impartial collection of unbiased facts, available from Chick Publications."

This particular tract was dissected (and excellently, I might add) here, but I still want to rant about it. Or, rather, what it stands for.

Because this is the kind of shit I've seriously had it up to here with. I know a few people who don't believe in gay marriage, and, while I don't agree with them, I can generally tolerate that.

This fundie bullshit that activates intolerance and bigotry, however, simply will not do.

Just because your Holy Book says that buttfucking is a sin doesn't mean you get to go around treating people different than you like shit. I believe that Surah 109 wins this argument. (And, yes, I do realize that it's the Qu'ran and not the Bible, but it's still an awesome passage).

Seriously, Jesus' most important message was to love thy neighbor. Did Jesus necessarily agree with every single belief that the people who came to Him for help had? Probably not. That didn't stop Him from healing them, did it? And what about the story of the Good Samaritan? Weren't the Samaritans considered beneath everybody else, too? Or did I miss a story of Jesus's?

"Yea, and My Follower did stop at the sight of a man bleeding on the ground. And yea did My follower stop to helpeth him up, but then the stanger did sayeth, 'I thanketh thee, for thou art kind. Homophobes did beateth me up, for I know men as most men know women.' And My follower did calleth the man on the ground a biter of pillows and a packer of fudge, and then My follower did spend the duration of his Earthly life protesting the man's existence, preventething him from gaining employment, and shunning him in My name, as he should, for the man had been a fag."John 3:11

As far as I know, Jesus didn't teach anything of the sort. So what the hell is with all these goddamn people going around calling people "faggots", protesting their employment at Wal-Mart, sending them to anti-gay camp, and kicking them out of their house for being gay? Well, apparently if your holy book says it about three times in various ways open to interpretation, you're allowed to violate all concepts of morality in order to uphold it, right? It's absolutely okay to violate somebody else's rights if you think something they're doing that doesn't harm anybody else is wrong, because we all know that it's your will is superior to their will because you're Christian and they're amoral queers.

Fuck that. THEY'RE NOT HURTING YOU! As a matter of fact, they're not hurting anyone else, either. Yeah, you can disagree with them. Yeah, you can think it's immoral. I disagree with Republicans. Does that mean I'm going to kick my kid out of my house if he turns out to be a Republican? Does that mean I'm going to protest Republicans being hired at my local souless conglomerate? Does that mean I'm going to send my kid to be indoctrinated at "anti-Republican camp"? It sure as hell doesn't. I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a free country. But now we have Rob Reiner telling where we can and can't smoke. Now we have the FCC and RIAA and MPAA telling us what we can and can't say or show. Now we have all these goddamn "concerned mothers" trying to pull anything not G-rated from existence, telling us that we can't get a goddamn break from supressing our anger all day. Now we have fundies telling us what we can and can't stick in our vaginas/stick our cocks into and when we can and can't do it and how we can and can't do it in the privacy of our own homes.

And check out an example of this anti-gay crap:


Gee whiz, Mr. Chick, does that mean that I can say any derogatory word I want if I'm cute enough? Wow, why didn't I know about this earlier? All those years of being afraid of letting the C-word slip could have been forgone as long as I batted my eyelashes and made my voice high-pitched enough.

This kid later goes on to say "but my Dad says that it's wrong!" So apparently you get to mistreat other people as long as you do it in the name of righteousness. Screw that. If someone isn't harming anybody by what they're doing, you probably shouldn't be mistreating them. And, yes, there are a few exceptions, but they are far more likely to occur in a cliche action flick than in real life. And by calling people you don't even know a derogatory word, you are, in fact, mistreating them. And it's not righteous.

And, another thing. If your Holy Book says it, make sure it's in a valid part of your Holy Book. Leviticus is a religious text on crack. And don't give me that bullshit about Biblical Inerrancy. That's absolutely not possible. For example, it started with Adam and Eve, correct? And then they had Cain and Abel, correct?

Okay, so where the hell did the next generation come from? Cain killed Abel, and they were both male anyway. Is a woman just going to spring up from the ground whenever you need one, ripe for the fucking? The movie 40-year-old Virgin wouldn't have much of a premise, would it?

And another thing: "Converting" gay people is impossible. What you actually do is you make them repress it. It's been biologically proven. So don't think that just by "showing them the light of the Lord", you can make them

Look, you're within your rights to disagree with homosexuality. That doesn't mean you get to mistreat them. Because, think about it: what's worse, violating human rights or fucking a consenting person who happens to have the same sexual organs as you?


I'll end with this controversial quote: