Why Nutballs?

ABC News: 5 Killed, 3 Hurt in Wis. Hunting Dispute

I am asked this question over and over by people who read my blog. What is it about nutballs that fascinates you? I think it is best to start with a definition of nutball. A nutball is a person, or group of people, who act in a way that a rational person would intuitively understand to be well… NUTS! Take the case of Chai Vang, a deer hunter who killed five other hunters on November 21. His actions are clearly outside of the bounds of normal behavior. At most, Vang should have yelled at the other hunters, then realized he was wrong and walked to a new place to hunt. Instead he opens fire on his fellow hunters, killing 5. Vang is a nutball. I do not mean he is insane. I am not a doctor and do nut even pretend to understand physiology. I mean, what he did was so wrong that any rational person would instantly know it to be wrong.

Another example is the Diana Duyser, who is trying to sell her “Virgin Mary” toast on eBay. It only takes a few minutes for any rational person to realize that anybody who keeps a piece of toast in a sealed Lucite container for 10 years in hopes that it is a holy relic, is well… a nutball. (Which reminds me, my son used to collect french fries…)

So, why do I pick on religious nutballs so much? The answer is easy, they give me so much to choose from, especially the Christian fundamentalists, and those misguided souls in a cult, or one of those “made up” religions, like Wicca. I was just reading the other day about a group wanting to convene their coven in a local school. Stories like this stick out as potential nutballs, and often they are so much more. Take the holy toast lady, Diana Duyser, she spawned a group of copy cats that are selling everything from “I ate the holy toast t-shirts”, to holy cheese burgers, holy onion rings, and holy replica Virgin Mary toasts.

Of all the groups that I watch, Fundamentalist Christians give me the most material. Their “the end is near” machinations and endless harping on tedious public issues, brings them to my reading list almost daily. In every case, the positions they take are so outside the mainstream that they tend to be comedy acts rather than something that is taken seriously. Take the Texas school science book warning about “Evolution being a controversial theory”. A rational person sees through the crap and says nutball. Fundamentalist pushed to put it in place to give credence to their asinine view that the world was created ten thousand years ago and that God’s hand was to guide our evolution as an “intelligent design”. Any rational person knows that the Theory of Evolution is a scientific fact and does not attempt to explain the origin of life on earth, but only how species evolved over time.

I can go on and on, don’t get me started.