What do you think of when you hear the word “nimrod”? It’s possible, of course, that you may never have heard of the word, but if you’re the religious type, you might recall that Nimrod is a figure mentioned in the Bible, including in Genesis, where he was described as a king in the land of Shinar (Mesopotamia) and “a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
Nimrod also appears in some ancient Jewish and Islamic texts and in other religious literature, including the Book of Mormon. There is a fortress with his name on it in the Middle East, and towns named Nimrod in Oregon and Minnesota.
But a funny thing happened 70 or so years ago that transformed the way we perceive the word. It all started when Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck got involved. Oh, and Elmer Fudd, the hapless hunter who spent his cartoon days sneaking up on his foils and trying to shoot them. He always failed, despite being “vewy, vewy, quiet.”
In those Looney Tunes cartoons that screened in every movie theater in America for decades, Daffy called Elmer “my little nimrod,” and Bugs sarcastically referred to him as a “poor little nimrod.” It was all a riff on the “mighty hunter” theme — pretty sophisticated stuff for a cartoon, to be honest.
After that, according to Wikipedia, the term “nimrod” became shorthand for “idiot” or “fool.” And it stuck. People drive in from all over to pose by the city limits signs at the U.S. Nimrods. I write all this to point out that if you’re going to wrap yourself in the trappings of religion, you’d best tread vewy, vewy carefully.
Last week, for example, after Pope Leo criticized some U.S. officials’ use of Christian language to justify the Iranian conflict, the administration fired back — and missed badly.
“Jesus is the king of peace, who rejects war,” the pope said, which is sort of his job. Donald Trump responded by calling the pope “weak on crime, and bad on foreign policy,” which is something so weird that it would have been a mind-boggling scandal in the Biden years. Now, not so much. Trump ramped up the weirdness by posting an image of himself in glowing white robes, laying hands on a recumbent man (who looked like Jeffrey Epstein or Jon Stewart, depending on who you talked to), surrounded by heavenly angels overhead and adoring AI humans at his feet. Trump was roundly lambasted for insulting the pope and portraying himself as Jesus. A few hours later, he took down the image.
Then JD Vance, who joined the Catholic Church a few years back, took up the cudgel for Trump, advising Pope Leo that “if he is going to opine on matters of theology, his comments need to be anchored in the truth. He needs to be careful.” In other words, “Nice little church you got there, Leo. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.” Vance, as usual, came off as a self-righteous dork.
And since it appeared to be a holy week of sorts for this administration, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth also chimed in. Hegseth, a Christian nationalist who has the tattoos to prove it, regularly cites Jesus as an avatar for the Iranian war efforts. None of that woke “Blessed be the peacekeepers” stuff for Pistol Pete’s savior. His Jesus is a righteous and bloodthirsty warfighter.
Last week, in one of his daily prayers for the troops, Hegseth decided to use a modified version of the Bible verse, Ezekiel 25:17. It was one that film director Quentin Tarantino wrote for Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction, which just goes to show that sometimes pulp truth is stranger than Pulp Fiction.
Yes, of course, it was weird, but weird is where we are now, and it really is hard to keep up. Hard to know if it’s “Destroy civilizations/Crash the stock market day,” or “We won the war/Goose the stock market day.” Or both, like my favorite from last week, when it was, “Hooray, the Strait of Hormuz is open!” in the morning, and in the afternoon it was, “Hooray, we’re going to close the Strait of Hormuz!” Gas pump prices are spinning like slot machine digits trying to keep up. The stock market has whiplash. Jesus wept. It’s almost like we’re living in a Looney Tunes short, being governed by nimrods.