Freshly Squeezed

Alright. I admit it. A couple of weeks ago when I wrote that Mark Horne has the IQ of a banana peel, I stole the line from Mike Ditka.

Back in the ’80s, when the Chicago Bears were coached by Iron Mike Ditka, they enjoyed a competitive rivalry with the Washington Redskins, who shored their defensive line with a player named Dexter Manly, a man gifted with exceptional football skills but limited education. The two men occasionally bantered in the media and one time Dexter made some rather aggressive comments about his bad intentions for Chicago’s QB. When the press asked Ditka for a response, he quipped “Dexter Manly has the IQ of a grapefruit.” And when Dexter heard about it, he replied, “Which kind — fresh or squeezed?” And he was serious. Of course, anyone with an IQ greater than Dexter’s realized that, unbeknownst to him, he made Ditka’s point better than Iron Mike himself.

So I lifted the line from Ditka with attribution. I wouldn’t say my offense rises to the level of Steven “Machen” Wilkins’ serial plagiarizing; heck, Ditka didn’t even put it in print, forcing me to recreate the paragraph above from memory. But you get the point.

This brings me back to Mark Horne. He honored April Fools’ Day by posting a comment on Green Baggins that dropped my jaw. The context of the quote was his response to Pastor Lane’s latest installment in his ongoing review of A Faith That Is Never Alone. (By the way, I think the biggest public loser in the Federal Vision controversy is P. Andrew Sandlin. First, the CREC confederates ratified the Fearless Leader’s usurpation of his church’s leadership, then a year later he edited a book that he dedicated to Norm Shepherd (page 3) where Lane caught Shepherd in a Wilson-faced lie. Even worse, no one associated with the book, which appears to be about a grand total of 9 souls plus or minus 3, corrected Lane — they let the lie stand. Sandlin is a talented writer who oftentimes has insightful contributions and I’m sorry to see him continually get shafted by the FV clowns. But I digress.)

The point of my Iron Mike anecdote was to illustrate that some people won’t ever get it, even when it stares them in the face. Mark Horne, for example, blew an incoherent three-point rant at Pastor Lane, which concluded:

Plainly, if your comments are regarded as intelligent criticism, then we have a whole subculture in the PCA who are theologically incompetent and given to making railing accusations against those who are more intelligent and faithful than they are. Pretty tragic.

And suddenly Mark Horne makes Dexter Manly look like genius — fresh or squeezed. He blows as often as the Fearless Leader but with neither the deceptive flair nor the cunning deceit (yes, Mark, I was redundant on purpose). He just blows, like a foghorn sounding for ears to pierce, unaware that his barge has already shipwrecked and his soul is in imminent peril.

Ironically, Horne got it right, however, as usual he misapplied his conclusion. In the words of one critic: “Self-awareness level: Minus zero.” Or as Horne said, “Pretty tragic.”

Thank you.