NEWS: All the Lord's Animatronics, Part Deux (Billy Graham Edition)

CULTURE: All the Lord's Animatronics, Part Deux (Billy Graham Edition)

What is the deal with Christian Fundamentalists and their passion for robotics and giant dioramas all of a sudden? It's like they're trying to turn the whole South into one big overly-imaginative elementary school book report. Over in Kentucky, we've got your science fair report, and now in North Carolina, as the Billy Graham Library prepares to open its doors this coming Thursday, we've got your biography.

Are you all familiar with Billy Graham? He was not, in fact, a president (as are most people who commission libraries); rather, he is one of the United States' foremost evangelical missionaries, which actually probably counts for a lot more than presidency in a lot of places. Billy Graham is the kind of evangelical that almost looks like an exaggerated stereotype from far away, holding massive football stadium tent revivals and TV specials on the Jesus Channel, hating gays and scientists, and making millions upon millions of dollars in doing so. Who wouldn't want to build a monument?

Surprisingly enough, not even Bill Graham, all that much.

I guess he didn't not-want it that badly, but then again, why not? Especially when they're being built so cheap these days – oh, wait, this one also topped out at $27 million. It's almost like there's a flat fee right now for insane museum-building. I had no idea our country had such a surplus of cash to be spending on these things, as I was under the impression that we were kind of a little bit in debt these days, but I digress. At least, once again, the financing comes not from state funding but entirely from private donations from Graham's longtime contributors and some of the more tourist-hungry members of the Charlotte business community, likely at a comfortable rate of pennies a day!

So apparently the Billy Graham Library has been drawing a lot of ire from a lot of people, including embarrassed theologians and even about half of Graham's family, causing a lot of infighting. One reason for this is that, in favor of being heavy on the preaching, it glosses over mention of a lot of the political clout that Graham has had over the years. When he wasn't holding tent revivals, he was chatting up Nixon and the rest of the best of them. He supported wars while condemning nuclear warfare, and encouraged racial integration within his churches while opposing the passing of laws. He is a deeply strange man. But even he seems to know this, and complained of earlier development phases that there was "too much Billy Graham" in the Billy Graham Library, so away all that went. Only the idealized remains.

And speaking of idealized: another reason for the infighting is that some of Graham's children have referred to the Library as "tacky like a Cracker Barrel restaurant." Now, I know this is supposed to be an insult, but I actually think Cracker Barrel makes an absolutely delicious breakfast, so this piqued my curiosity more than anything. So, what exactly lies inside the B.G. Library that's causing such grumpiness? A lot of videos of Graham preaching scripture, which is pretty boring and expected, but then there's this:

Oh. My. God.

Oh, yessssss! I mean, it's not exactly dinosaurs, but still. I want to speculate on some sort of metaphorical significance of bizarre animatronics within Fundamentalism, but I can't even begin to fathom what that might be. Perhaps it draws from a desire to preach to the young, whose attention span requires such flashy stabs at entertainment these days. Or maybe Fundies are just bigger comedians than we'd all previously thought. Either way, at the startling admission price of absolutely-free, as long as it doesn't turn out to be a totally boring bomb after all (singing cow aside), I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a pretty big attraction in the li'l ol' town of Charlotte.

That is, at least, until the NASCAR Hall of Fame opens up in 2010. That ought to give it a run for its money.


_DictionaryGirl_ is embarrassed for giving the Fundamentalists so much publicity this week, but it simply cannot compete with the fact that she thinks animatronics are hilarious.

Wow. That is pretty hysterical.

Well, that all depends - who's building it, the government or Billy Graham's ministry? The article didn't really seem to say. Because I will tell you, these televangelist types have insane amounts of money that has little or nothing to do with our country's sinking further and further into debt. (Well, they probably don't pay much in the way of taxes.)

I am going to have to hurt someone if they're doing it with government money, though.

No, that's actually a good point. It's all private investors. I should have added that. Editor skills, activate!

This week makes me want to rethink the whole undead thing... If I could manage to convert my rants and raves into something remotely televangelical, and I could build up a following... I too could have $27 million to build a museum.
I must now go figure out how to hatch this diabolical plan... MUHAHAHAHA.

Supa freakay.

I wonder how many needy people 27 million dollars might have helped. This is ridiculous.

To be fair, I bet the kids totally dig that cow. I know I do--err.. would have.

Well, I wasn't at all interested, but now you say there's animatronic animals? It sounds better than Disneyland!

I have this place Holy land experance like a 1/2 mile from my house. I see it every day and never see people going in or out of it, I guess they are trying to catch the run off traffic from Sea World, Disney World and Universal.

The other day I looked in as I was driving by and saw 3 crosses on a hill and thought cool they do a crussifiction daily or what?

I think it's pretty easy to figure out...
animatronics are kind of like fundamentalists themselves- always the same plastic exterior, they repetitively spew backwater dialogue like broken records without ever stopping to think about what their saying, and they scare the crap outta half of us (the half who think beyond the level of a child).

They're just maximizing their outreach by cloning!!

This *is* helping the needy people. Specifically, the people who need Christ to take over their life like some sort of invading alien life form.