"It's ALL OVER, people!"

Faced with an end-of-Springfield scenario, the Rev. Lovejoy on The Simpsons runs through the streets, ripping off his cleric's collar, shouting "It's all over!," giving up any hope of salvation, the future, the afterlife -- the whole Christian caboodle. According to Nicholas Blincoe in the New Statesman, John Gray does much the same (without running through the streets) in his new book, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. Apparently -- if I have this right -- utopianism and thus totalitarianism and thus the Decline of the West and President Bush's failure in Iraq, all of this began with, well, Jesus.

And this just in: Damian Thompson in the Telegraph has carefully considered the whole idea and has determined it to be "a load of bollocks." It seems Mr. Grey just hates President Bush.

A British philosopher hating President Bush? Join the stampede. OK, cross that one off the reading list.