South Africa

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Concerning Elon Musk, the Babylon Bee and the wise teachings of Jesus

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Concerning Elon Musk, the Babylon Bee and the wise teachings of Jesus

At the end of each podcast, Babylon Bee leaders ask guests the same 10 questions, including this stumper: "Calvinist or Arminian?"

That caught Elon Musk by surprise, and he needed clarification on the difference between Arminian believers and persons from Armenia. After some background on Protestant history, he said: "My mind would say 'determinism' and my heart says, 'free will.' "

Why was the mastermind behind Tesla and SpaceX -- a man worth $278 billion at the end of 2021-- talking to a Christian satire website? The answer: Musk has 69.7 million Twitter followers, and he frequently responds, even if it's a U.S. senator questioning his taxes.

"You know, he engages with our content from time to time," Bee CEO Seth Dillon told Fox News. After email exchanges about a meeting, Musk said: "Fly to me and we'll do it."

The result was 100-plus minutes of conversation in Austin, Texas, ranging from satire to science, from politics to pop culture. Topics included why entrepreneurs are fleeing California, sustainable energy, superheroes (Musk would choose to be "Irony Man"), the physics of reusable rockets, cyborgs, how "wokeness" threatens humor, CNN morality and the future of a planet near an expanding sun.

Musk discussed his journey from South Africa to America, including his days as a manual laborer while struggling to pay student loans. Then he dove into computer coding and online commerce, making millions of dollars that led to Tesla. The rest is history.

On celebrity websites, Musk is often described as an atheist or agnostic. Asked if he prays, Musk once replied: "I didn't even pray when I almost died of malaria." But after the success of the first manned Falcon rocket mission, Musk said, in his public remarks: "You know, I'm not very religious but I prayed for this one."


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Tim Tebow marries Miss Universe: It's tabloid heaven, but there's a deeper story there

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Let’s face it. A New York City tabloid is going to do what a New York City tabloid is going to do.

So, if you had to make a prediction, what do you think would be in the lede of a New York Daily News report about Tim Tebow marring a woman who had been named Miss Universe?

Think it through. What aspect of Tebow’s life have more than a few journalists (and activists with lower motives) probed ever since That Press Conference during his playing days at the University of Florida?

So here we go:

Tim Tebow has scored.

The former NFL quarterback and current Mets minor leaguer, who has said he planned to remain a virgin until he gets hitched, is now a married man.

Tebow wed 2017 Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters in Cape Town, South Africa, about a year after getting engaged, People reported.

Believe it or not, the Page Six team at The New York Post stayed quite tame, with: “Tim Tebow marries former Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters.” I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t the Post headline I thought that we would see.

So what was the story here?

On one level, of course, this was a celebrity wedding. Thus, the stories had all the details about the bride’s gown, the groom’s tux, the menu for the reception (Tebow has a special diet when he is in training for baseball), etc., etc. Readers also need to know why Tebow has been so controversial, in the first place. Thus, the Daily News tossed in this passage late in the story:

Tebow’s personal life has been a hot topic over the years, including him stating in 2009 that he planned to practice abstinence until marriage due to his Christian faith. He proposed to Nel-Peters in January 2019 at his family’s farm near Jacksonville, Fla.

In addition to his baseball career, Tebow works as a college football analyst for ESPN’s SEC Network.

USA Today offered a kind of wink-wink passage high in its report, centering on Tebow’s expectations about this event:


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Gay Muslims: This RNS feature offers one-sided coverage of a retreat in South Africa

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Gay Muslims are media-sexy these days, especially since Omar Mateen opened fire on a gay nightclub in Orlando in June. With its feature on the annual Inner Circle retreat in South Africa, the Religion News Service avidly joins the journalism pack.

Typical of many social-issues articles these days -- as with The Associated Press on Russia's expulsion of a pro-gay missionary -- the piece is written entirely from the viewpoint of the subjects. Not only about what they think, but how they feel, how they perceive non-gay society, how they interpret their holy texts.

In other words, the story covers one side of a debate and one side only. Example:

Cape Town-based Imam Muhsin Hendricks founded The Inner Circle 20 years ago in his garage as a safe space for queer Muslims. He now sees the annual gathering as a refuge for those who feel ostracized by LGBT communities because of their Muslim faith and shunned by Muslim communities because of their sexual orientations or gender identities.
"Tomorrow will be very emotional," Hendricks said before the closing ceremony at the end of a busy week. "People are already suffering withdrawal symptoms and separation anxiety because now they have to go back to these horrible contexts, and here was such a beautiful space of acceptance and love. They’re going to miss that."
The "beautiful space" Hendricks cultivates each year has much to do with the scenery and camaraderie, but also with the legal and social environment in which the retreat is held.

The Inner Circle gathered 125 LGBT Muslims and their allies from around Africa. They talk out anxieties, analyze issues and share ideas for coping. They sprinkle their quotes with terms like Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, patriarchy and "hate agenda." They prefer the term "queer," although the article never really says why.


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Powder-puff press: Tutu's daughter marries a woman, and media hand her the mic

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"Tell us how the bad men hurt you": As she often does, M.Z. Hemingway adroitly blends humor and precision in finding the nugget of a story.  Her suggestion for a GR post on the daughter of Desmond Tutu was devastatingly accurate, not only for the BBC but for the Guardian.

The Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth recently married a woman -- an atheist, at that -- and now she's complaining that the church yanked her preaching license. And the BBC and the Guardian help her complain. Not just by reporting her quotes, but enshrining every word as gospel.

Here we go with the BBC:

Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth followed her father into a life in the Anglican church, but when she decided to marry the woman she loved, she had to leave.
She married her long-term Dutch girlfriend, Marceline van Furth, in a small private ceremony in the Netherlands at the end of last year, but they went public last month when they had a wedding celebration in Cape Town.
"My marriage sounds like a coming out party," explains Ms Tutu van Furth.
"Falling in love with Marceline was as much as a surprise to me as to everyone else," she tells me.

At least the BBC quotes church law: "Holy matrimony is the lifelong and exclusive union between one man and one woman." So why is Tutu van Furth making an issue of it? To advance what she calls a "very important conversation'" about same-sex marriage:


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What can we make of the prayers of Oscar Pistorius?

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When it comes to famous Bible passages, even those favored by athletes, 1 Corinthians 9: 26-27 will not appear near the top of many lists: I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:

But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

Nevertheless, anyone who pays close attention to the left shoulder of runner Oscar Pistorius will be able to see most of that verse in a tattoo that juts out from underneath his sleeveless running jersey.


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Mandela the sinner? Mandela the prophet? Yes, cover both

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One of the greatest mysteries in life is the moral complexity that is often found in the hearts of great men and women who live truly great lives and, even, in their best moments perform great deeds that can be called blessed, or even holy.


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The Methodist roots of Nelson Mandela

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A giant banner outside the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg — which I visited during a 2009 reporting trip to South Africa — uses those terms to describe Nelson Mandela, although many more certainly could be applied.


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