So, how do two wild and crazy guys end up selling racist waffle mix to fundamentalist Christians while not being under the influence of at least mild opiates? 

Jack and Jill Politics has a video of the two men explaining their thought process, which pretty much comes down to them making up an implausibly stupid cover story to draw attention away from their massive drug use. 

Looking into the gentlemen a bit more, I ended up fixating on Bob DeMoss, the swea…the one with the awful…the one on the left.  Bob, you see, isn’t just a “freelance writer”.  He’s written a series of Christian teen literature with Tim LaHaye.  Yes, Left Behind Tim LaHaye.  Meaning, of course, that this wasn’t just some guy shilling his flash-in-a-pan election year product, but he’s a full-on foot soldier who has the full faith and credit of the fundamentalist movement.  Let’s look at what DeMoss would have been selling had he not stumbled on the idea of Nigger Jim’s Magic Mix. 
First up, we’ve got The Last Dance, which introduces us to our recurring protagonist, Jodi Adams:

Spring is about to give way to summer and love is in the air. It’s the weekend after Memorial Day and the students of Huntingdon Valley High School are anxiously awaiting their prom. Heather Barnes has found the guy of her dreams, John Knox, a senior at a nearby high school whom she met in a Christian chat room. Although Heather has never actually “met” John in person, she plans to go to the prom with him against the advice of her best friend, Jodi Adams. Soon, Heather will discover John’s true identity. Can Jodi, Bruce, and Kat rescue Heather before it’s too late or will the prom be her last dance?

Having no intention of ever reading this piece of shit, I’m going to make the assumption that John Knox works like every other non-Christian male in Christian literature does.  He’s charmingly smooth - too smooth - until he makes a complete 180 and starts grinding against Heather’s cap-sleeved gown with his pre-condomed penis and demanding she drink wine coolers with him at Planned Parenthood’s afterprom. 

I’m not sure if there’s some epidemic of Christian-chat-room-prom-dating-rapist-alcoholics out there - and if there is, I will gladly put up a link to the charity or charities who deal with preventing and punishing these people - but the object lesson here seems to be that trusting Christians will get you in severe trouble unless you have a backup Christian to once again save your ass.

Case in point? The Rave:

It was the first night of the Memorial Day weekend and Kat Koffman figured she’d dance the night away at a massive, East Coast rave. She’d go to the beach in the morning with friends from school. At least that was the plan. But when classmates Jodi Adams and Bruce Arnold found her, Kat lay unconscious on the second floor of a rat infested warehouse. Beside her was an empty syringe—and a dead boy. Jodi wanted answers—and justice. How did the boy die? Was Kat next? Why did the syringe look familiar to Bruce? And why did the police refuse to help? Nothing could prepare Jodi for the fact that some kids are worth more dead than alive. And, just when she thought she’d uncover the truth, she got more than she bargained for. The Russian Mafia.

That’s the back cover.  The description lets us know that, once again, Satan’s Future Semen Receptacle Heather is back:

It’s Labor Day weekend - and it is turning out to be a holiday that will not soon be forgotten. More than 15,000 ravers have gathered for a 72-hour dance party at the waterfront warehouse in Philadelphia. Kat is strung out on drugs and next to her lies the body of a dead boy who overdosed; Heather falls in love with a college freshman who threatens to leave her with nothing but feelings of rejection and serious regret. Experiencing firsthand the dangers of an unguarded heart, the girls are forced to reevaluate God’s true place in their lives.

NOT A COLLEGE FRESHMAN!!!!one!  The only thing worse than an internet predator is a college boy.

It’s either Labor Day…or Memorial Day.  The book’s inability to determine exactly which is probably a function of the authors’ in-depth research into the rave scene; after all, waving around glowsticks in the dark and trying to act like raves still have any relevance to people’s lives does often leave one highly disoriented.  Huntingdon Valley apparently treats all of its honorific holidays as chances to engage in quaint drug-fueled bacchanals, leaving the exasperated Jodi Adams to clean up after her friends’ life-altering messes.  It seems as if the smart move here isn’t to toil away doing God’s work in Mid-Atlantic Gomorrah, but instead to do like sane people do and come to the comfortably agnostic Midwest where your Labor Day is mainly spent trying to find a grocery store that still has yellow mustard. 

And who knows what the hell the Russian Mafia is doing in the middle of the HV, but I do hope they can answer Bruce’s syringe-related inquiries.  Or, at the very least, get those pesky rats out of the death warehouse.  If you’re going to pointlessly die in order to bring perpetual screwups marginally closer to Jesus, you at least deserve to do so without having vermin scamper over your corpse.

Jodi, however, doesn’t just sanctimoniously lecture her dumbass friends.  She works, too.  Black Friday is the story of her pre-senior year summer work experience in the liberal media.

Jodi Adams has landed her dream job as a summer intern at the local city paper, The Montgomery Times. This killer summer job will launch her senior year with a bang as she goes after the hard angle on an investigative piece on area hospitals. But when Jodi’s reporting reveals information her employer doesn’t want to hear-much less publish-Jodi and Stan Taylor find that the information trail is vanishing before their eyes. Lives are at stake, and it looks like theirs could be next. Watch your back on Black Friday.

I actually have nothing to mock about this.  This is the exact experience 17-year-old high school interns have at small papers.  They find out things about area

abortion clinics

hospitals that risk life and limb but could result in

baby killers

great truths

burning in hell

being revealed.  Well, at least the Christian teenagers.  The atheists have to figure out a way to finish the copy editor’s assignment, because he’s in the bathroom sneaking a drink before his court-mandated AA meeting. 

Last but not least, we have Bob branching out to write The Mind Siege Project:

In the tradition of MTV’s The Real World, eight high school juniors volunteer for a week on a houseboat in the name of experimental education. Rosie Meyer, the former Olympic silver medallist turned social studies teacher, dreams of her students learning first-hand the realities of tolerance and diversity. And learn they do. Although the students sail for a single week, the issues faced, the truths uncovered, and the lessons learned leave them changed for a lifetime. Followed by six short Bible studies, Tim LaHaye and Bob DeMoss offer a hands-on guide for students who grapple with the unbelievable social pressures and tough choices that face teens in the twenty-first century.

This could make less sense - if Dennis Miller described it. 

It’s not even clear what culture war myths this plays on.  Big gay houseboats?  The moral decadence of runner-up Olympians?  Sailing?

In light of this output, what’s surprising isn’t that DeMoss made racist waffle mix.  What’s surprising is that he isn’t also selling black licorice nooses to go along with them.  That’s funny!

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