[Vision2020] I Heart Doug.

[Joan Opyr]

To suggest, as Alan Stout does, that Doug's critics all hate him is a foolish oversimplification.  Some, I'm sure, do hate him, but I don't.  I love him.  Love, love, love.  I hate his ideas, but there's nothing I like more than an outrageous, colorful, galling character.  No fiction writer less than Dickens could have made Doug up.  He's over the top.  He's unbelievable.  I don't approve of calling him "the Wolfman" or "the Cult-Master," but that's because these monikers are too pedestrian for such an enormously ambitious man.  Doug is an author; he's a pastor; he's a theologian, a historian, a teacher, a reformer, a philosopher and a classicist.  He's an expert on racism, sexism, homophobia and the Civil War.  He knows how we ought to live and whom we ought to marry.  He knows who's going to heaven; he knows who's damned to hell.  Doug is larger-than-life.  He's a huge figure, floating above the landscape like a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Surely he ought to be called something more euphonious and evocative than "Doug Wilson."  He ought to have a name like Uriah Heap or Nasty Canasta.  He ought to dress in motley and wear a powdered wig.  Like Mr. Creosote, all it would take is one wafer-thin mint for Doug to blow sky high.  He's on the intestinally explosive edge of greatness.
  
I can say with absolute sincerity that Moscow would not be Moscow without Doug.  His critics don't all come from the left; they come from everywhere.  The middle, the right, the left of center.  In his writing and in his preaching, Doug has attacked atheists, feminists, gays and lesbians, but he hasn't limited himself to these usual suspects.  He's also attacked Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals, Muslims, and Reformed Christians who disagree with him on certain abstruse points of doctrine.  He's even managed to insult Eskimos—not an easy thing to do.   

The way I see it, Doug is the Don Rickles of Christian intolerance.  Hang around long enough, and he's bound to rub you the wrong way; hang around a little longer, and you'll begin to find it funny.  Of course, that could just be the two-drink minimum talking.
  
I'm never a meanie once I've got my Martini,

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

PS: If you really want to learn more about Doug, Mr. Stout, then I suggest you read his magazine, Credenda Agenda (www.credenda.org), his blog (www.dougwils.com), and the Vision 2020 archives.  For sheer entertainment value, it's hard to beat.  Unless, of course, you have Showtime.  Love that "Six Feet Under." Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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