New Warhorn Media post by Nathan Alberson:
Since you asked:
When I was a kid I hated the Magician’s Nephew. I remember being super impatient with how slow it felt in the beginning. I did like a lot of the individual scenes though. The Wood Between the Worlds was cool. And I liked the lore at the end about where the wardrobe came from. But mostly I thought it was really boring. I was also sad about not seeing any of the characters I already knew (I read the books in publication order). It was for sure my least favorite.
I remember The Horse and His Boy being my favorite. Dawn Treader was cool, but it ranked somewhere in the middle.
I haven’t read any of these since I was a kid, though. So I imagine my rankings would change if I read them today.
1 Like
Our boys love it, for what it’s worth.
1 Like
I loved it as a kid. Dawn Treader was my favorite, then MN.
1 Like
I hated The Magician’s Nephew so much as a kid that I refused to let my mom read Chronicles of Narnia to us. I also remember being deeply offended at how boring of a book name The Silver Chair was. I didn’t finish reading the Narnia series until I was an adult.
1 Like
As a child, I think I liked TMN – felt it was disjointed as an adult, didn’t flow as well as a story.
Much prefer TSC and THAHB.
Quick question for @nathanalberson and @jacob.mentzel – when you spend a few minutes trashing the Babylon Bee – are you punching up or punching down?
Also, for @bschasteen: if you are going to say the Onion is clever or creative satire, I have to ask when you last read it. You won’t find much there that isn’t perverse and wicked, as far as I can tell.
4 Likes
One other thing about the Bee: The whole thing with Snopes recently has made it worth it, IMHO.
2 Likes
Yep – if the net effect of TBB is to expose Snopes as a liberal sock-puppet and to lower the bar on creativity for satire, then it’s a net win.
2 Likes
Yes. That has been my experience as well.
1 Like
Whatever direction we’ve managed to punch, I’m sorry to think we accidentally caused you any pain, Eric. 
Per The Babylon Bee’s website, they have 4 million monthly users, 9 million monthly page views, 598,724 Facebook followers, 263,634 Twitter followers, and 106,911 Instagram followers. While their influence seems to have waned in my immediate circle, they are still big enough to be worthy of scrutiny and criticism IMHO.
And when I scrutinize them, I find that they have committed two unforgivable sins. And these sins are entirely outside of how funny or unfunny they are, and who they choose to satirize, and how they choose to satirize them. I’m willing to grant (for the sake of argument at least) that those things are subjective, and I’m a bitter-hearted comedy snob.
But the sins remain. They are:
-
Blasphemy. Any organization willing to use any of the names of God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit in their silly little satirical articles should be canceled immediately, by everyone, no questions asked, no ifs, ands, or buts. No matter how witty, no matter how wise.
-
Theft. It is wicked to steal The Onion’s formula, with zero attempt to change, improve, delineate, or distinguish it in any way.
People may agree with those points, but at least believe that I’m not just being a snot when I go after The Babylon Bee. I find them deeply offensive for real reasons.
And if you can’t mock an organization founded for the express purpose of mockery, who can you mock? I dunno, I kinda think The Babylon Bee can take it. Once someone’s entered the ring and started punching, I don’t feel that bad taking a swing at them.
For the record, I don’t think The Onion is very clever, or creative these days. And I’m sure plenty of their stuff is perverse and wicked. But on a whim I just went on their site and it would be a decent-sized exaggeration to say that it’s all basically perverse and wicked. FWIW.
Punch #1 lands for sure. TBB is blasphemous, and it is profitable to remind your listeners of that. Lead with that one, you don’t sound petty when you talk about it.
I’ll differ on #2 – I feel like The Onion is just a grown up version of the April Fool’s day spoof issue of my high school’s student newspaper (from the late 80’s) – but I’ll grant that it is your honest position.
I’ll agree that TBB is big enough to be mocked, but somehow when you guys talk about the length of the headlines it feels cheap, like TBB mocking Joel Osteen. That’s why I asked the question.
I might not be judging your words fairly, because I started skipping forward when it started sounding snobbish to me.
Thanks for your work.
2 Likes