The Deadline Poet — Calvin Trillin — brings some needed drollery to this blog with today's offering. Trillin saw a news item about rampaging "Radical Buddhists" in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Evidently rampaging Buddhists set The Deadline Poet to thinking. If Buddhists could engage in mindless violence, what about other deeply reigious folk? So, we get a new group of violent protesters — The Society of Friends (Quakers) and the Amish. This blogger shudders at the thought of radicalized Scientologists or Unitarians. The possibilities are endless (unlike this blog post). If this is a (fair & balanced) exercise in whimsical religious studies, so be it.
[x The Nation]
Religious Misunderstanding
By The Deadline Poet (Calvin Trillin)
Tag Cloud of the following piece of writing
Radical Buddhists rampage against Muslims in Myanmar.
—News reports.
Because we thought Buddhists were such peaceful guys,
The riots in Burma were quite a surprise.
A bloodthirsty Buddhist! That has us perplexed.
We find ourselves wondering what could come next:
Will violence flow from some Quaker disquiet?
Should we be expecting a Mennonite riot?
Are we going to see, bounding over the heath,
An Amish jihadist who’s armed to the teeth? Ω
[Calvin Trillin began his career as a writer for Time magazine. Since July 2, 1990, as a columnist at The Nation, Trillin has written his weekly "Deadline Poet" column: humorous poems about current events. Trillin has written considerably more pieces for The Nation than any other single person. A native of Kansas City, MO, Trillin received his BA from Yale College in 1957. He served in the army, and then joined Time.]
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