Steven Wells’ God-Is-Dead/Americans-Are-Stupid Beat Finally Pays Off
Oh, Steven Wells! Look who’s a big boy! Look at our special little guy! With his very own cover-wuvver story about SUCH A BIG BOY topic! ATHEISTS! And it’s not just a 2,000 rantsy-wantsy! We tease, but it’s true: Wells’ cover story in today’s Philadelphia Weekly might be part of the paper’s annual Let’s-Do-Something-Offensive-Only-To-Provincials-At-Christmas Campaign (now in, like, its eighth year), but it’s actually an interesting, substantive, well-reported read on how atheists of all social stripes (freaks, non-freaks) are just about ready to man up and take their piece of the sociological pie, no longer marginalized or regarded as pinko scum. Like so:
That America is undergoing an atheist … “revival” is misleading. And it’s not quite an “explosion” yet. “Awakening” sounds about right. Or is that too religious?
Books like Richard Dawkins‘ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens‘ God Is Not Great are bestsellers. The religion-bashing kids’ flick The Golden Compass is showing in mainstream theaters. Atheist meetings, lectures and book readings are packed. Atheist organizations are popping up like mushrooms after the rain.
And then there are the nonjoiners, like 33-year-old Mathilda, a Philadelphian who won’t give her real name. She sees no reason to leave Christmas to the Christians.
“To me Christmas means eggnog lattes and gingerbread cake at Starbucks and hanging out with my Jewish family at the movies,” she says. “I also just got an awesome winter wonderland snow globe at Target. Sure, it plays that sucky ‘Santa’s coming to town’ song, but it’s cool.”
Mathilda says she’s “a reasonable and tolerant person.”
Seems like when somebody puts his limey-wimey mind to it, he can really write a story! But fans of the old Wells shouldn’t necessarily fret that he’s “sold out” and left his old tangential ranting self behind. Just a few pages later, here he is musing about how DJs are icky and not at all like the Sex Pistols. Sigh, Steven.
PW: Look Ma, No Cockney Gibberish!
