Top Ten Excuses

When Top Ten Excuses read Gawker’s exposé on pervasive homosexuality, corruption, and abuse of power among the professedly celibate Roman Catholic clergy and hierarchy of South Florida, we contacted the church for some official excuses. They claimed they were too busy cleaning house to talk to us, so of course we hit the gay bars of Miami till we found a “retired” spokesperson for the Archdiocese source who was willing to speak to us anonymously. Boy, did he have excuses!

10. The “You have a point” excuse.

You know, the church has taken a lot of heat for being a bunch of celibates dictating sexual morality to the rest of the world. And we had to admit there was some validity to that.

9. The “All boys experiment” excuse.

So we tried a little experiment: “open celibacy.” At the time, it really seemed like a win-win for everyone.

8. The “Baby steps” excuse.

Oh, yes, we admit the whole pederastic cult thing was a mistake. We thought this more-or-less adult more-or-less consensual thing might be a decent compromise.

7. The “Damned if you do…” excuse.

Really, is there no pleasing you people? You can’t have it all three ways! Heh heh heh…I said three-way.

6. The “Foxes have dens” excuse.

The love nests? Well, Jeez, you didn’t want us carrying on our affairs in the rectories! That would have been scandalous! Oh wait, yeah, we did that too.

5. The “Streets of heaven are paved with gold” excuse.

Luxury condos? Hey, it’s an affluent archdiocese. Nothing but the best for God’s poor!

4. The “Not by E alone” excuse.

The aphrodisiac for the club kids was really just a sideline, and brought in a little extra income. We didn’t want to depend entirely on ripping off our parishes and schools. Especially after we got caught embezzling the trust fund of that quadriplegic!

3. The “For as often as ye drink this cup” excuse.

Now you can’t pin the alcoholism stuff on us. I’ve known plenty of straight priests who were drunks. It’s really just a part of Catholic tradition.

2. The “All for the greater glory…” excuse.

This whole thing is nothing but a tempest in a tearoom…teapot! Tempest in a teaPOT! I get to correct that quote, don’t I?

1. The “Scriptural justification” excuse.

Hey, I’ve even got a biblical quote for you. Let me read you the opening of Psalm 133:
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is

For brothers to dwell together in unity!

It is like the precious oil upon the head,

Coming down upon the beard,

Even Aaron’s beard,

Coming down upon the edge of his robes.

Tell you what, let’s just stop at unity. I don’t think we want to dwell on the oil and the head and the coming upon the beard and the robes.

• http://gawker.com/5825636/a-priest-a-reporter-and-his-boyfriend-walk-into-a-gay-bar
• http://gawker.com/5825254/the-catholic-churchs-secret-gay-cabal
• Miami’s Catholic Leaders Accused of Underground Gay Sex Mafia (queerlandia.com)
• News Feed: Miam Gay Clergy Outed (queeringthechurch.com)
• “EXTRAORDINARY and UNPRECEDENTED” – Release of Cardinal Bevilacqua’s testimony reveals the mind of an impostor (romancatholicworld.wordpress.com)

10. The “Small minds need big houses” excuse.

Well, you see, that house was just too small. You know, who wants to buy property in a neighborhood that’s got a small house in it? Well, that’s right, not like too small by our actual rules or anything, just oh, let’s say sort of somewhere around the wrong side of too smallish. You see? Just talking about it gets my tongue all tied up in knots, I’m so worried about our property values going down.

9. The “There but for my fortune” excuse.

And the style of that house was just all wrong. We all worked hard to deserve to live in our McMansions, and ain’t nobody gonna show up our ostentatious pretensions through such a pretentious lack of ostentation!

8. The “Clear as mud” excuse.

We were very clear about what we objected to in the design. Well, I mean after we got caught lying about the size. And of course all that was after we had second thoughts about approving the design originally. I’m tellin’ you, democratic negotiations can be veeerrry difficult.

7. The “Unfortunate metaphor under the circumstances” excuse.

We’re real sorry he got blowed up and all, but this ol’ boy just didn’t do his paperwork. Like my momma used to tell us when we was little pissants sittin’ on the pot, “Ain’t no job finished till the paper work is done.”

6. The “I’ll see your plans and raise you a court order” excuse.

And don’t our cease-and-desist order just go to illustrate my point about the importance of paperwork! We got there fuhstest with the mostest!

5. The “Baby steps” excuse.

All we ever wanted was good-faith negotiations. That’s why we filed the cease-and-desist order. See, we file, the court approves, you cease and you desist. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere!

4. The “Cry big bad wolf” excuse.

Well, you know, it wasn’t really us, it was the gummint. The county required an erosion control plan. Well, we thought they did. I mean one of our board members said he was pretty sure they might. And he useta be in gummint years ago, so he oughta know. And if the county says that’s not true, well, who can believe them, they’re the dang gummint!

3. The “Open arms” excuse.

Now, the way the librul media has been carryin’ on, you’d think we were all fixin’ to burn a cross on their lawn and all. Shoot, we just had a big ol’ Christian barbecue planned for those nice folks. (You know, they really love their barbecue!)

2. The “Who’s the victim here?” excuse.

And now the press is all ganging up on us like we’d done something wrong when we were just trying to do what was right! Vicious bastards! Who would ever put someone else in a situation like that?

1. The “Tom Paine couldn’t have said it better” excuse.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property values. It’s the American way. Happy Fourth, everybody!

Source coverage:

• Google News
• The Daily Mail
• Bennington Banner

Top Ten Excuses couldn’t help noticing it has been one rough week for public-spirited advocacy groups. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) took heat for appearing to give away the store in the debate over Medicare—then for rather tortuously claiming it had done no such thing. Meanwhile, the president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation resigned after a controversy over GLAAD’s officially endorsing AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile (along with the National Education Association, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, and Latin-American and Japanese-American citizens’ groups). The air was thick with excuses:

10. From the Sierra Club, the “City mouse, country mouse” excuse.

The merger will bring broadband to the countryside, and that’s a good thing because it will reduce travel and everyone’s carbon footprint. Well, not everyone’s. And not all travel. We’ll still be packing out from the cities to the National Parks because that’s eco-travel and you can’t send the glorious experience of nature by broadband. But those dull and reactionary people that actually live in the countryside – for whatever unimaginable reason – can just stay there and watch our videos.

9. From the NEA, the “Wire the schools” excuse.

Yes, wire the schools! Because look how wonderfully throwing money at technology has improved our schools over the last twenty years!

8. From GLAAD, the “Inclusiveness” excuse.

Hey, if there’s one thing the gay movement is known for, it’s our inclusiveness and our diversity and our embrace of those poor saps who still live in the country and haven’t figured out that frenetic and expensive male-dominated urban gay ghettos are where it’s happening, baby! Um, maybe we need to run that by marketing before we send it out.

7. From the NAACP, the “Place at the table” excuse.

We have a dream! That one day the sons of former Congressmen and the daughters of – well, anyone – will be able to exchange sexts together on the platform of monopoly! Let freedom ringtone from the halls and the gyms of the Capitol to the phone of every student at every land grant college throughout this land – especially those ones with the curvaceous slopes!

Meanwhile, the AARP seemed to require a series of excuses:

6. The “Adapting to the times” excuse.

Well, we had such a great success with the Medicare drug benefit – you know the one with the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t coverage that requires an accountant to keep track of that nobody signed up for because it really stinks and that absolutely prohibits the government from negotiating prices with Big Pharma so it’s staggeringly expensive and there’s no money to pay for it? Yeah, that one. We have to count that as one of our great successes because it sure kept our mail-order drug business afloat.  So we figured it was time for us to weigh in on Medicare. Because advocacy is what we’re all about. And we’re really excited about our great new web-based, drug-ad-sponsored, comprehensive health care delivery system.

5. The “After all, we’re a bunch of geezers we get confused” excuse.

Our position has never changed, which is why we’ve been so busy cranking out press releases about the non-changes in our unwavering position that Medicare…um…hold on, what’s our position again?

Certain excuse themes seemed to emanate from all the advocacy groups:

4. The “Musical” excuse.

All together now! ♫“We belong to a mu-tu-AL ad-mir-a-tion so-CI-e-ty, my lobby and me…”♫

3. The “All for one and all for one” excuse.

Hey, we’re all lobbyists, when you come down to it. We all live in the Beltway Bubble. It’s all good!

2. The “Everett Dirksen” excuse (as recalculated for nonprofits).

A million here, a million there, sooner or later you’re talking real and valuable interest to our core constituencies.

1. The “However did language from the Amazing AT&T’s FCC filing get into our press release?” excuse.

We love it. It is much better than Comcast Eats NBC. We are going to endorse it again and again.