So far, no apocalypse (Newt aside)

Watch the ultimate videographic comment on the end-o-the-world idiots.

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2011 5 26 Update: Sigh.

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2011 5 22 Update: The failure of the world to end yesterday or for the second coming to occur or for, apparently, anyone to be raptured calls out for explanation(s). As usual, the Wood-Charles News Service is prepared with an unordered list of possibilities:

• Harold Camping, the radio preacher responsible for this one in a long running series of Apocalypses-now, is:
  
  • An idiot
    
  • A clever marketer
    
  • On his way to Rio with the proceeds
    
• The Rapture did, in fact, take place, but there were so few truly righteous people that it wasn't noticeable.
  
• The Son of God did return to earth, having not been paying much attention to current events; he looked around, vomited discreetly on his sandals, and left again.
  
• God himself tried to end the world, but was shot twice in the head by members of SEAL team 6, after having been cornered in a Manhattan hotel room.
  

The serious question for me is, does the First Amendment cover apocalyptic speech? Is the theater in which Camping was crying "Fire" small enough and the number of people trampled in the exodus few enough (think of the folks who claimed, anyway, to have quit their jobs and spent all their savings on doomsday posters, for example) to keep Camping and Family Radio off the hook for liability? Probably. Should it? That's another matter, one which I find myself thinking more and more about: do we give potentially predatory evangelists too much rope? Where is the line beyond which they hang themselves or the law helps 'em do it? I wish I had a concrete answer.

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I'm thinking of selling bumper stickers: "Matthew 24:36 -- look it up, Jesus Boy!" If you take it all the way back, past the New Proctor and Gamble Edition, past the Naughty Scriptures, clear to the Vulgate, it still says the same thing: "de die autem illa et hora nemo scit neque angeli caelorum nisi Pater solus" Of the day and the hour, none knows, not the angels of heaven but the Father only. Which I guess means if your dad's not busy, ask him, but pay no attention to some jackass on the radio (unless, of course, it's your father.)