By Daryl Cagle
The
Vatican just announced a brand new, modern set of seven deadly sins
to supplant the old seven sins which have grown pretty tired through
the years. The old seven deadly sins: lust, wrath, gluttony, sloth,
greed, pride, and envy were proclaimed by a sixth century pope and
were made famous by Dante in his "Divine Comedy" and by
Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman in the movie "Seven," which
was a pretty darn scary movie.
The new sins are:
1.
Genetic engineering
2. Drug abuse
3. The disparity
between the very rich and the very poor
4. Pollution
5.
Abortion
6. Pedophilia
7. Causing social injustice
The
church describes the new sins as social in nature and "a
corollary of the unstoppable process of globalization."
Societies have experience regulating social issues, like pollution,
and that experience gives us a great leg up on regulating the other
sins.
California's Governor Schwarzenegger likes to fly his
jet home, from Sacramento to Los Angeles, each night after work, so
he can spend time with his family. Schwarzenegger creates a lot of
pollution in his daily commute, but the governor buys carbon-offset
credits from businesses that are more environmentally friendly than
they need to be, selling their eco-surplus back to the governor. Al
Gore does the same thing, reducing his big carbon footprint from his
private flights and his big houses by buying carbon-offset credits.
It's cool. Offsets work. It's the free-market solution and the system
works for other sins too.
"The disparity between the very
rich and the very poor" is another great sin for offset credits.
Very poor people could sell their "poor-people-offset credits"
to very rich people who need to relieve their guilt about being rich
and reduce the size of their very rich footprint. "Poor-people-offset
credits" would create a free market of guilt-reduction exchanged
for income redistribution that would work every bit as well as the
carbon-offset credits work to reduce the guilt of polluters.
In
fact, the system applies to all of the deadly sins. This afternoon I
watched New York Governor Eliot Spitzer squirm, under the glare of
his dowdy wife, at a one-minute press conference about his being
caught as the customer of a high-priced hooker. I've never used the
services of a prostitute myself, and I think I deserve some credit
for that – credits that I should be able to sell to Governor
Spitzer at a time when he really needs the "hooker-offsets."
In
fact, I personally fare much better with this new set of seven deadly
sins than I did with the first set. As an editorial cartoonist, I
create very little pollution – I even use those curly light bulbs.
Given the number of pencils I use, I probably haven't killed any more
than one tree in my whole career. Two at the most. Not counting the
paper.
I don't cause social injustice (not much anyway); I'm
not a pedophile; I don't have abortions; I don't abuse drugs or do
any genetic engineering. I score so well on the new sins test that I
should be awarded plenty of offsets that I could sell back to the
Vatican to offset their pedophile priest problem.
I'll be
rich! (But not "very rich," because that would be a
sin.)
Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for
MSNBC.com. Daryl is a past president of the National Cartoonists
Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers,
including the paper you are reading. He runs the most popular cartoon
site on the Web at www.cagle.msnbc.com. His books "The BIG Book
of Bush Cartoons" and "The Best Political Cartoons of the
Year, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 Editions," are available in
bookstores now.
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