Ted Haggard, who can currently be seen on movie screens across the country acting like a total dick in the documentary “Jesus Camp,” was recently outed and ousted as president of the National Association of Evangelicals after a male prostitute revealed to the news media that Haggard was a fan of total dick. And crystal meth. Haggard initially responded by denying all allegations, but after the prostitute said he had voicemail messages, Pastor Ted changed his story to a simple case of massage and meth purchasing between friends, but no buggery. Haggard later stepped down, and in a statement to his church confessed to “sexual immorality,” among other things.

The blogosphere had a field day digging up all the hypocritical statements and footage they could find on Haggard, and one in particular they focused on was a scene from Richard Dawkins’ documentary Root of All Evil that features a heated discussion between Haggard and the Oxford professor.

I was blown away by the conviction with which Dawkins spoke to Ted Haggard. Dude came blazing right out of the gate by comparing Haggard’s sermon to a Nazi gathering. “I was almost reminded of a Nuremberg rally,” Dawkins calmly says to Haggard about the service he just witnessed, “I think Dr. Goebels would have been proud.” Haggard, in turn, appears to have no idea who Dr. Goebels is, and smiles his patented shit-eating grin as he attempts to change course, but Dawkins won’t let him off the hook.

And this is how I came across Richard Dawkins, who in the last few weeks I’ve become increasingly interested in. Dawkins believes that religion is ruining the world, and has written books expressing this view (his most recent, The God Delusion, is currently on The New York Times Bestseller list), as well as a two-part documentary for the BBC. The documentary is a must-see. Dawkins travels the world over, confronting religious nuts of all kinds, arguing science and progressive thought over old texts and faith, and lays out why we would be better off without religion.

Here’s part 1 and part 2. Or just watch them below:

I know it’s wrong to laugh at children, but when it’s the red-eyed, doll-clutching, bird-flipping brood of one of the dirtiest dudes in the Senate, I don’t feel too badly about it. These photos are going to be plastered all over the place and I’m going to join in on the pileup.

Never has my faith in having no faith been so reaffirmed as when I was watching Jesus Camp. Jesus Camp is a documentary about evangelical pastor Becky Fischer and her attempt to assemble, via her Christian summer camp, an army of adolescent God warriors, who she hopes will one day take control of the United States, vanquish the non-believers and secularists from the government, return prayer to schools, outlaw abortion, and advance the aims of evangelism.

Here she is talking about how she wants to fight radical Muslim fanaticism with radical Christian fanaticism:

Even scarier than that is when Fischer takes a page from the US military and begins her brainwashing by breaking down the kids and reducing them to tears in a scene that seriously raises the question of whether these children are being mentally abused. Fischer then cleanses the red-eyed, repentant children with a store-bought Nestle® brand bottle of water.

To me, the tragedy in all this is that the parents are depriving their kids of a happy childhood by filling their heads with religious gobbledygook. For example, take Tory, a 10-year-old girl who likes rocking to Christian heavy metal and can bust some mean break dancing. She admits that sometimes she “dances for the flesh,” and “really needs to get over that.” Somehow I don’t think she came to those conclusions on her own.

I saw the film in Hillcrest, the homosexual hamlet of San Diego. The crowd seemed to be a liberal bunch and laughed in terror throughout the screening. At one point though, a line was crossed and a woman in the audience felt the need to speak directly to the screen. This is the scene that pushed her over the edge. Right when the name of this fictional character was brought up, she yelled out, “Don’t you dare!”

Youtube has many clips from the film, but sadly it’s missing one of my favorite moments. Becky Fischer is shown furiously spraying hairspray into her do, which I have to point out here is a hairstyle most favored by women who drive pick-up trucks and could fix a jetski, if you catch my drift. In the next scene she starts her sermon to the kids by asking coquettishly, “Do you like my hair?” She gets an applause break and fishes for further approval, “How ’bout my eyebrows?” I was at a loss when she said this. There was nothing significant about her eyebrows, save for the fact that she had two. Nevertheless, she still received applause. She then waved a hand over her obese body and said, “and all this..” Amazingly, she then segued into a conversation about sin.

Despite the fact that every edit, musical cue and visual metaphor belies the filmmakers’ impartiality, I have to recommend this film. Because the footage they shot is so mind-blowingly scary/funny/scary again, there’s really no way they could have fucked it up.

Let’s give Becky Fischer the last word on this post since she accurately sums up many people’s opinion of her, yet completely fails to understand the reasons why they’d feel that way.