The 'uncultured fop' speaks again: Ban Good Omens

Good Omens

Ban The Book?

(Image from Amazon.com)

Faithful readers know that I have previously called for banning John Milton's writings for inciting violence, and I must now also call for a ban on the book Good Omens.

I realize that a mere three days ago, I was praising the book for its positive portrayal of a character with the good name of Hodges, but I have since come to see darker aspects to this book. In my opinion, it encourages suicide bombing. Consider this scene depicting the death of Agnes Nutter:

Thirty seconds later an explosion took out the village green, scythed the valley clean of every living thing, and was seen as far away as Halifax.

There was much subsequent debate as to whether this had been sent by God or by Satan, but a note later found in Agnes Nutter's cottage indicated that any divine or devilish intervention had been materially helped by the contents of Agnes's petticoats, wherein she had with some foresight concealed eighty pounds of gunpowder and forty pounds of roofing nails. (Good Omens, page 109)

As Hillary Clinton might say, "it takes a village" out entirely! The problem is that are intended to like Agnes Nutter. Why, her name even appears in the book's subtitle: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. Granted, she's called "Witch" . . . but that seems to be intended in a positive sense, else why would her 'prophecies' be called "nice"? Kind of like how my paternal grandmother was a water witch. But unlike my grandmother, not all witches are nice! Agnes Nutter's final act hardly seems nice at all! Yet, she is portrayed positively, even more so than Mary Hodges! We should therefore not be astonished to discover a statistical correlation between the publication of this book and an uptick in suicide bombings.

Unconvinced? Then, go read Scott Atran's article, "The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism" (The Washington Quarterly 29.2 (Spring 2006), 127-147). See especially page 128 for Table 1, and note that for the decade of the 1990s, the annual number of suicide bombings shot up from 4.7 for the period from 1981 to 1990 to 16 for the period 1991 to 2000.

Good Omens was published in 1990.

In calling for a ban on this book, I realize that I shall no doubt once again be called "an uncultured fop, a boob, an imbecile!!!" Such are the slings and arrows of outraged ill humor.

I can do no better than to quote myself on this:

"I'll continue tilting the windmills of my mind as I call on my partron saint, Don Quixote, that great knight beatified for ultimately recognizing the danger of unregulated books."

May other noble knights of Don Quixote's order join me.