Mark Coppenger Read Blue Like Jazz and Now He’s Mad!
Mark Coppenger, former president of a seminary somewhere, recently delivered a lecture to a group of students criticizing Don’s book, Blue Like Jazz. Coppenger’s talk was entitled “Nothing Blue Under the Sun” and addressed ten concerns he found with the book. Each concern had a catchy name, like Blue like Blue States or Blue like Blue Oyster Cult. Intermingled with the criticism of the book were criticisms of Donald as a person, including the slanderous accusations that Don is a liberal, that he has a soul patch (that’s a few little hairs beneath the lower lip) and the most harsh of the criticisms, that Don wrote the book in a style that was “easy”.
Press play to stream the lecture: (8mb from SBTS.EDU/MP3/faculty/)
Or download MP3 here.
Here at the Burnside Writer’s Collective we wanted to give Don a space to respond to the criticism. We feel that he was unfairly portrayed as a simple-minded liberal. We think better of Don.
To prove Don is smarter than Mark Coppenger, we’ve decided to summarize some of Coppenger’s arguments and allow Don a space to respond. Being objective journalists, we will then keep score and the winner will get a free beer. Coppenger’s beer, should he win, will be non-alcoholic as he feels drinking is a sin. (Yeah, we’re confused too.)
We should also confess that we didn’t actually listen to Coppenger’s entire lecture because Lost was about to come on, but we did pull out a few nuggets from sources on the internet, and from the first eight minutes of Coppenger’s talk. Let the debate begin!
ISSUE ONE
Coppenger’s point entitled Blue Like Blue States: After proudly defining his spirituality as void of politics Miller writes very politically. He not only ridicules and derides every form of Republican he can think of, but his own personal website is nothing but a democratic party endorsement (containing links to MoveOn.org and the ACLU among other groups).
Don’s Response: “Like, okay, I can’t remember if we are the ones with the elephant or with the donkey, you know? Like both presidents wear red ties, you know, when they talk or whatever.”
Score: Coppenger 1, Miller 0. (Okay, so maybe we shouldn’t have allowed Don to respond, and just written his responses for him, like we do his books. We are not sure what Don meant when he said “both presidents.” Perhaps he was talking about the Presidential primaries. That said, we are not sure what kinds of Republicans Don knocks in his book. We were not aware there were that many different kinds of Republicans. We thought there were just the Christian kind and then the rich kind. For the record, Don does not knock the poor kind or the ethnic-minority kind. Still, absolutely incredibly powerful point by Mr. Coppenger. The first point goes to the professor.)
ISSUE TWO
Coppenger’s point entitled Blue like Pabst Blue Ribbon: “I know far too many people who have been destroyed by alcohol to think it’s funny,” said Coppenger. Miller’s familiarity with beer was an offense.
Don’s Response: “I agree with that guy that drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon is a sin. I like Hair of the Dog Fred, at Horse Brass. Newcastle is good, but Pabst is a sin. This guy makes a lot of sense. Does he work at Horse Brass? “
Score: Coppenger 1, Miller 1. (While it is true The Portland Mercury chose Pabst as the number one cheap beer of Portland, we think there are better options. We also think people have to make things up to support a Biblical idea that drinking is wrong. If drinking is wrong, Jesus would have been a pagan, and we don’t think Jesus was a pagan. Point to Miller. It looks like Don is making a comeback, even though he misunderstood Mark’s point and doesn’t seem to be connected to reality.)
ISSUE THREE
Coppenger’s point entitled Blue Like…something about lesbians: Not sure what he called this one, but he mentioned Don thought Ani Difranco was hot and that mentioning this is an endorsement of the lesbian lifestyle.
Don’s Response: “Ani Difranco is hot. How could he say that Ani Difranco isn’t hot? But I have a question for Mr. Chaulpaper: seriously, can cats be lesbians? ‘Cause my friend Todd has a cat and I think it likes other girl cats. Ask him about that.”
Score: Coppenger 1, Miller 2. (Ani Difranco really is hot. And lesbians are human beings. Mr. Coppenger should actually sit down and have coffee with a few of them so he won’t talk about them with such unkindness. Point to Miller on the Difranco hot factor.)
ISSUE FOUR
Coppenger’s point (without a title) that he could write a book like Blue Like Jazz: He says the text is simple and it’s the easiest kind of book to write, anybody could do it, and that he could do it if he wanted to, but instead chooses to write hard books like C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” in which Lewis presents an unbiblical and flaming liberal allegory about hell.
Don’s Response: “He’s writing a memoir? What is he going to write about? Nobody wants to read a book about a guy who sits at home and yells at the news, or how he haggles down the check at Luby’s. If he puts cartoons in it, he’s copying me. I did that first. And what did he say about cat’s being lesbians?”
Score: Coppenger 2, Miller 2. (We’re back at a tie. Coppenger is right: the text is simple and immature, and Don stole the cartoon idea from Douglas Coupland. Okay, the last and final debate point. Drum roll please…)
ISSUE FIVE
Posted on March 15, 2006 12:00 AM
