JEREMIAD(S): The pastors were speaking to the whole world!

THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2026

So was the disordered Herr Gutfeld: Today, we turn to jeremiad as our communication mode of choice. 

"Look over here," such declamations say. As we noted yesterday, the current jeremiads in question were those delivered right here:

HAYMES (3/17/26): First and foremost, we pray that a man like this will be cut to the heart. My wife and I were talking about this in the car the other day...

Public enemies—these are the orcs at the gate. You are not called to love the barbarian horde that is planning to break into your city and, you know, pillage, plunder, rape and mutilate you and your people. You don't love that horde. That is your enemy, and this is where you have imprecatory psalms. This is where you pray, strongly. 

The Psalmist is not shy. "God, destroy them. Make them as dung on the ground," right?  Madison and I were talking about that...

I pray that God kills him. Ultimately, that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ. That's the first thing.

POTTEIGER: Right. We want him crucified with Christ. 

HAYMES: That's exactly right. 

That was just part of the declamation. As we noted yesterday, Haymes had been talking it over in the car with his wife.

Who did these fellows want to be "made as dung on the ground?" As we noted yesterday, the target "orc at the gate" was James Talarico, the 36-year-old Texas Democrat who is his party's nominee for John Cornyn's Texas Senate seat. 

Can Talarico possibly win that seat? We have no idea! But he traces his own Christianity to some things he says he learned from his maternal grandfather, a Baptist preacher in South Texas. He says his grandfather taught him this:

Love God, and love your neighbor.

Along the way, Talarico has said some things that have Messrs. Haymes and Pottinger hoping to see him made as dung. To cite one example, he has said that God is nonbinary—neither male nor female! 

Last week the children on the Fox News Channel were reeling about that claim. On the other hand, a letter to the Washington Post offered this milder reaction to what Talarico had said:  

A narrow-minded attack on James Talarico’s religion 

James Talarico sets out a vision of Christianity that can be embraced by people who were raised in fundamentalist denominations but no longer feel at home there because our experiences and science-based learning have taken us beyond the doctrines of our native churches. For us, the alternative would be to leave Christianity altogether. Talarico gives us hope that there is a future for us inside Christianity. 

When Talarico says “God is nonbinary,” he is not making some new liberal pronouncement; he is restating traditional Christian teaching as reflected in the Catholic Catechism: “God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God.” 

[...] 

[J. C. F.], Austin 

Can that highlighted claim possibly be accurate? Also, does it actually matter in the current context? 

Concerning only the first of those questions, Brent Barry offers this for the Baptist News Global site:

Fact checking three things James Talarico said

James Talarico was a child when I was on the pastoral staff of his church for a year. We attended the same seminary, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

I want to look at three of the things he has said that I see going most viral.

“God is nonbinary”

When Moses asks God’s name, God doesn’t say “father” or “king.” God says I AM: existence itself, beyond human definition. The Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century, hardly progressive revolutionaries, were careful to insist that God transcends human categories, including gender. 

This isn’t liberalism. It’s classical Christian theology.

[...]

Paul reminds us we see through a glass darkly. Any confident claim to fully contain or define God should give us pause. Acknowledging the limits of human language about God isn’t radical. It’s orthodox humility. 

On the other hand, who you gonna believe? Classical Christian theology, or the Fox News Channel's master blowhard, Tyrus?

Within the current political context, each person gets to decide if such topics actually matter. Plainly, they matter to Haymes and to Potteiger—but should the jeremiads they delivered on Haymes' podcast actually matter to us? 

To its credit, the New York Times has tackled this sudden news event. The paper did so yesterday, in this news report. 

Yesterday, we ourselves skillfully asked what Haymes and Potteiger were praying for. Were they praying for Talarico's death or for Talarico's conversion? 

What were the gentlemen praying for? We offer excerpts from the Times' news report:

A Pastor Called for a Democrat to Be ‘Crucified With Christ.’ Was It a Threat?

James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, responded on Wednesday to a pastor who had suggested he should be “crucified with Christ” as part of a conversion, saying in a statement, “I love you more than you could ever hate me.” 

[...]

Responding to the remark, Mr. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, emphasized compassion, a core theme of his campaign, and suggested that Mr. Potteiger was praying he would die. Mr. Potteiger and a representative for Mr. Hegseth said the pastor’s words were being twisted. Mr. Potteiger said he had not called for Mr. Talarico’s death, but rather called for him to have a religious conversion....

“I did not call for his death,” Mr. Potteiger said in an interview with The New York Times. “I called for his conversion.” 

[...]

Mr. Haymes said in an interview that he and Mr. Potteiger had not been calling for violence and that they had been speaking to a Christian audience.

He called Mr. Talarico a “liar,” accusing him of seeking to “weaponize the ignorance of the masses” to target him and Mr. Potteiger.

“I want him to repent and to follow Christ,” Mr. Haymes said.

Haymes had only the best intentions! The problem arises with the claim that he and Pastor Potteiger had been "speaking to a Christian audience."

Sorry, Charlie! Given the "democratization of media"—given the nature of the new technologies—it's very, very, very silly to imagine some such thing.

Haymes was no longer in a storefront church, speaking to forty followers, something which has always been part of the American experience. Instead, he had placed his remarks on the world-wide web through the magic of modern podcasting. 

His jeremiad was (and is) available to everyone on the planet! As we all understand, some of those people are deeply, tragically disturbed—and we know that it only takes one. 

Last Thursday, on an imitation of a "cable news" show, Greg Gutfeld also played this potentially dangerous game. He too was utilizing a new technology. He was appearing on (an imitation of) a "cable news" show.

Greg Gutfeld is just a person—a person like everyone else. It's been our view that he could use (and that he deserves) some help, and that his corporate employer should be the one to provide it.

(Hank Williams: "I was just a lad—nearly 22. Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you.") 

In our view, Gutfeld is saddled with limited judgment. He has legitimate complaints to make, but he tends to make them in the ugliest—and dumbest—possible fashion. Presumably, that's what his corporate employer actually wants him to do. 

Last Tuesday, before comparing Talarico to Ted Bundy, a human being just like you offered this unsupported,  rambling rant. We'd score what follows as tragically hapless:

GUTFELD (3/17/26): The problem with Talarico—and I'm surprised, Jessica [Tarlov], that you don't see this. And maybe you do, but you don't want to, because he's on your side. I can't read your mind.

But his biggest division isn't in gender or politics, it's belief.  You know, if you don't believe as he does, you are evil. 

You know, Christians and Jews, they divide by behavior. You can be a bad Christian. You can be a bad Jew.

But that doesn't happen with someone like Talarico. It doesn't matter if you're a good, decent person. If you believe in two sexes, you are evil.

Gutfeld continued from there, explaining that Talarico is ready to declare grandfathers and parents "evil," along with "the nice people who would help you fix a tire." 

"It didn't matter what their behavior was like. It was that their belief was evil. This is what happens with progressives," the messenger boy now said.

As you can see by clicking this, his jeremiad continued:

GUTFELD: This guy speaks a good game, but if he doesn't—if he doesn't like your beliefs, it doesn't matter how good you are. He's as extreme as a radical Islamist, because that's how they think as well, because his values are not based on behavior. 

And that is something you have to understand when you listen to them. You can get lost in all that rhetoric—"My values are the same." 

That guy's bad news. And you're gonna find out.

So the screed went. Moments later, Gutfeld said he's "getting Ted Bundy vibes" from James Talarico. 

In case you've forgotten, Bundy "was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls between 1974 and 1978."

To double-check that, just click here. But yes! That's what Gutfeld now said!

"At long last," a person might ask, "has the Fox News Channel no sense of decency left?" But then, a person might ask the same thing about the legion of Blue American journalists and "news orgs" who refuse to report or discuss this astounding public misconduct.

Does James Talarico believe that you and your grandparents are "evil" if you don't share his theological beliefs? Gutfeld said it again and again, while presenting exactly zero evidence in support of that ugly claim.

He compared Talarico to "radical Islamists," then compared him to Ted Bundy. Moments later, up jumped Emily Compagno, with dreams of David Koresh banging around in her head.

The New York Times? The Atlantic? MS NOW? Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell? Mika and/or Joe?

Have you ever seen those cowardly kittens say even a single word about the ugly, braindead mayhem routinely broadcast by Fox? 

When Fox News broadcasts its jeremiads, they too are no longer confined to a little storefront church. They're speaking to everyone everywhere all at once, and they're actively bringing our failing culture down. 

As they do, our Blue American cowardly kittens refuse to say the first word. They won't even say their names!

"Wouldn't be prudent," we'll guess.

Tomorrow or Saturday: Her "second cousin, once removed" did in fact notably serve