Music aficionados of a certain age who spent their formative years online may recall the odd, lopsided feud between the deliberately snobbish music site Pitchfork and an obscure experimental band called Joan of Arc.
According to Western Journal, Joan of Arc and frontman Tim Kinsella achieved their modest notoriety less through musical excellence than through the venom they attracted from critics willing to endure their output. As the writer notes, this was hardly unjust; the groups calling card was a kind of bizarre, tuneless, self-consciously painful art-rock that seemed almost proud of its indifference to melody, structure or basic listenability.
One outlet, not inaccurately, described the bands 2000 album The Gap as one of the most unlistenable albums in existence. The author, having suffered through it once, suggested that the description could be improved by removing one and of and making albums singular.
The memory resurfaced this week with Pitchforks infamous review of Joan of Arcs 2001 anti-masterpiece How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More. Reviewer Brent DiCrescenzo singled out what he called the groups inconceivably horrendous lyrics, including the blasphemous couplet Jesus really was so / g*****n pretentious.
Kinsella sounds jealous, DiCrescenzo quipped. The line worked as a joke about the bands own towering pretensions, which were anything but modest.
Two decades on, that same quip seems oddly apt for a very different arena: daytime television. Joy Behar of ABCs The View effectively advanced the same argument as Kinsellas lyric, and that long-buried neuron in the writers hippocampus finally found a use, dragging up one of the least-valuable memories of youth and putting it to work.
The crucial difference is that when Behar labeled Jesus narcissistic for calling Himself the Messiah, the rejoinder that she sounds jealous no longer feels entirely like a joke. It lands closer to an uncomfortable truth about a media culture that mocks Christian belief while posturing as morally superior to it.
The latest controversy began, as so many do in the Trump era, with a social media post. A Trump image on Truth Social, which some interpreted as depicting the president as Jesus, sparked a tedious national argument over alleged blasphemy, and The View panel eagerly seized the opportunity to lecture viewers on how unlike Christ the 45th president supposedly is.
During Tuesdays broadcast, Behar confidently asserted, Jesus Himself did not run around saying, Im the Messiah. Im the Messiah. Even her fellow co-hosts, hardly a bastion of orthodox theology, were forced to correct her, noting that Scripture plainly records Christ identifying Himself as the Messiah in multiple passages.
They did not cite chapter and verse, but the references are not obscure: Mark 14, John 4, John 8, Matthew 16, among others. Any Christian with a passing familiarity with the New Testament understands that Christs self-revelation as Messiah is central to the faith, not some marginal interpretive flourish.
The writers verdict on Behars claim is blunt: No, Joy, youre an idiot. Yet Behar refused to retreat, doubling down instead on her theological improvisation.
No, he did not. Jesus was more modest than that. Listen, I knew Jesus, Behar said. Jesus was not narcissistic like this guy. The casual I knew Jesus aside, delivered as if she were reminiscing about an old neighbor, underscored the unseriousness with which the show treats the central figure of Christianity.
Co-host Sarah Haines attempted a basic logical correction: But when you are the Messiah, its not narcissism to say it, she responded. Yes, it is! Behar snapped back, apparently untroubled by the absurdity of calling it narcissistic for the Son of God to state who He is.
Haines pressed the point: When you are the Messiah? Yes! Behar said. At that, even Whoopi Goldberg, no stranger to religiously provocative commentary, felt compelled to intervene.
Goldberg announced she was going to move this along, because its too much for me. When a panel that regularly indulges in progressive moral grandstanding finds your Christology excessive, you have wandered far from anything resembling mainstream belief.
So, yeah, Joy sounds jealous, the writer observes, returning to DiCrescenzos old line. The core of Christianity is that Jesus is not only the Messiah but that He declared Himself to be so, not incessantly in every conversation, but clearly and repeatedly enough that His followers, and His enemies, understood the claim.
To call that narcissistic is akin to accusing a duly elected president of narcissism merely for identifying himself as president. There I go, giving Joy ideas, the author adds, noting that such a charge would likely appeal to Behars reflexive hostility toward Trump.
This is hardly the first time The View has treated Christian belief as a convenient punching bag. From Ana Navarros February tirade about cross-wearing Christians being bad people to the shows fawning treatment of a woke bishop who scolded Trump with theology that bore little resemblance to Scripture at a so-called unity service, contempt for traditional Christianity has become a recurring motif.
Labeling Christ Himself narcissistic, however, and insisting you can say so because you supposedly knew Him, marks a fresh descent. Congratulations, I guess, the writer remarks, noting that even by the shows low standards, this is a new benchmark in irreverence.
Curiously, this kind of casual derision is never directed at Islam or other protected faiths. Its funny, though: You never hear them talk this way about Islam. Wonder why! the author notes, highlighting the selective courage of media figures who mock Christians while tiptoeing around any criticism that might offend progressive sensibilities.
As for Joan of Arc, the band finally disbanded in 2020, ending a career defined more by critical scorn than popular acclaim. The writer wryly suggests that their true moment in the cultural sun arrived only this week, when a daytime talk show offered the perfect stage for their brand of pretentious, Christ-mocking performance art without the guitars.
Login