Entry #070: Jack Chick

Among the more notable loons in our encyclopedia, this amiable fellow is a firmly entrenched acolyte of the abominable William Branham. Jack Chick is of course the guy behind Chick Publications. His tracts deal with various aspects of the Christian faith, including the principles of tolerance and love as well as the Catholics' satanist conspiracy to overthrow God's reign on earth (the Jesuits, in particular, created the Qu’ran, were responsible for the Holocaust, communism and the current conspiracy that controls American media). He doesn’t like evolution either. A representative example is here. The most popular tract is, apparently, this one. I also have a soft spot for this one.

Back in the day, Chick used to draw the tracts himself. Today, they’re mostly drawn by Fred Carter, who is considered covered for the purposes of this Encyclopedia.

Endless hours of indulgence and fascination can be spent rummaging through his backlog. Do visit it.

I am not going to go through in detail the omniprescent homoeroticism in the tracts. Check it out yourself. A longer biography of Chick can be found here. Chick's tract on global warming is discussed here.

The topics vary, but many of them are concerned with God-fearing murderers and rapists ending up in Paradise because they accept the Holy Spirit, whereas the good guys go to hell. Other common targets are rock music, witchcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, astrology, Ouija boards, Evolution, Jews, Muslims,Teenagers, Science (including gravity, which Chick apparently thinks is an atheist myth), the Easter Bunny, North Koreans, the Tooth Fairy, Santa (the message is a little muddled), the Washington Monument, Native Americans, Freemasons, the UN and Satanic books (Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) - among other things. This guy’s got a whole lot of hate and fear to share. There is a documentary available as well.

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Diagnosis: Possibly the most deranged loon in the Western hemisphere. His tracts are widely read, but probably not by the intended audience. Life would have been much duller without people like Jack Chick.

Entry #069: Liz Cheney

It might be a little unclear whether Dick Cheney, whatever else one might say about him, counts as a loon. Being vile, for instance (not explicitly saying that Dick is), isn’t enough. But he still manages to enter our encyclopedia through his daughter Liz. Liz founded, with Billy Kristol, the organization Keep America Stupid and Afraid (a.k.a. “Keep America Safe”), whose purpose is organizing vehement attacks on anyone who could conceivably be construed as questioning America’s war efforts – such as Amnesty.

Cheney is most famous for attacking the lawyers for the Gitmo detainees as being complicit in terrorism and allies of Al Qaeda. The way she did it resembles a Colbert parody in startling ways (guess Cheney is among the frighteningly large number of people who likes Colbert because they take his parodies as representing his true views). She’s been slammed pretty thoroughly for the whole affair, though - not that it has deterred her.

To their credit both Cheneys have come out supporting repealing the DADT.

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Diagnosis: Mad and malevolent wingnut; zealous. Her actions should, in any reasonable world, be sufficient to halt her political career permanently, but this might not be a reasonable world.