Dear NRA and Culture of Life Member:
Well, the Pope's death extravaganza has confirmed as truth several suspicions of mine. First, Italian morticians clearly did not escape the sirenical vortex of Tom Ford era Gucci envelope pushing. I am, of course, referring to the Pope's edgy post-life appearance we were all treated to every time we turned on our television. The Lord may be forgiving, but daylight is not. Honestly, if one is going to be lying about idly in public, aubergine lipstick is a rather aggressive choice. (And, frankly, this goes for even those blessed with the more forgiving complexions enjoyed by the breathing.)
Another thing we all learned this week is that the American media's canonization procedure makes even the Catholic Church's most giddily expedited ascensions to sainthood seem rather languidly reluctant in comparison. Instead of the niggling requirement of a purported miracle (such as, say, witnessing Jennifer Lopez singing on pitch), cable news only requires one thing for instant beatification: the death of someone popular with people the network wishes to pander.
As anyone with a television now knows (after the most numbing repetition since our strenuously serene First Lady started repeating the word "teacher" like history's most monomaniac Tourette's sufferer), Pope John Paul II was quite conveniently without reportable fault. This fact is all the more remarkable since he blithely presided over an enterprise of child molestation so vast and industrious that it makes Munchausen Syndrome spokesperson Michael Jackson's notorious undertakings in this same regard seem quaintly amateurish. Nevertheless, everyone from ABC to Fox News graciously washed away all papal sins, including his particularly untenable habit of being an antiwar peacenik. As any Republican Christian will tell you, this particular teaching of Jesus' ("turn the other cheek if someone strikes you") is particularly galling to those of us more Christian than Christ.
Nor did anyone on television seem particularly inclined to spoil the national keenathon by pointing out that the King of the Mary Worshippers' last decision here on Earth only served to underscore to all of us Culture of Life® protestants just how lackadaisical and self-serving was the Pope's so-called embrace of our death-penalty-and-war-loving Culture of Life® (which, oddly, promotes none of one and little of the other). You see, it is all well and good to have a Vatican spokesperson condemn Terry Schiavo's husband's decision to honor his wife's outrageous decision not to be kept fresh in the medical equivalent of Tupperware, but you don't need to know Latin, swing a censer or light a candle to know that when a seriously ill man says, "I don't want to go back to the hospital" what he is really saying is "I want to die."
While alive, Pope John Paul II was one of Catholicism's most devout promoters of a goddess called Mary. And that, of course, is saying something! Indeed, judging from the most prevalent choices of graven images throughout Latin America, it appears that the Catholic Church has successfully promoted Mary over Jesus as the "go to" divinity when in need of a new car, coca crop or other financial blessing. In fact, the Pope was such an ardent Marian that he even suggested that the woman best known in the Bible for braying for free wine at wedding parties and failing to cook her son a lovely hot home-cooked meal for his Last Supper on Earth be designated as humanity's "Co-Redeemer." Apparently, Heaven's HR department posted that there is a new way to qualify for this position that doesn't involve the inconvenience of climbing up on a cross, news that came as a source of both shock and annoyance when I told Jesus.
Odd, how a seemingly omnipotent pope will turn to a woman for guidance and inspiration -- but only if she lives in a suitably remote formation of cumulus clouds. Even the church's belated, catty review of "The Da Vinci Code" was fueled solely by the Cardinals' rather peculiar fear of parishioners seeking advice from clergy of a gender actually born to wear red dresses. In this way, I think of the Catholic clergy as much akin to the most stereotypic homosexual Nancy boys: worshipping the idea of woman in Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, but almost imperceptivity recoiling when a real female crosses their paths.
America's obsessive bemoaning that a man -- finally -- accomplished what he had supposedly devoted his long, full life to doing (meeting the mercurial Lord) only helped to spotlight our nation's disconcertingly needy relationship with death. For a so-called Culture of Life®, we certainly have an unseemly preoccupation with death. America is a country where the discussion of "s letter-after-d x" is verboten (don't tell me you didn't realize that in GOP America "Abstinence Only" refers to voting -- and "No Child Left Behind" is simply a result of our condomless teen pregnancy problem). Hence, our only acceptable form of self-stimulation now arises from obsessive, prolonged public grieving triggered by the death of someone we never actually met. This professionally orchestrated emotional masturbation hit its stride with Princess Di, but is a pastime flexible enough to adapt to both king (Ronald Reagan) and commoner (Laci Peterson).
Pandering to such periodic bouts of collective lamentation provides 24-7 cable channels a welcome and expeditious alternative to the laborious, passé tasks of research and reporting. It is a given that only one death, trial or scandal at a time will snare our stingy attention, all significant events that actually affect us usually failing to romance us sufficiently to muster interest. That is, of course, until everyone is distracted by the next fickle obsession. Our tendency for intense, serial-obsessions is what Terry Schiavo's parents were recently stunned to discover as they watched cameras briskly snap shut and local news vans squeal out of their neighborhood in what, they mistakenly thought, was going to be their golden moment of news cycle penetration.
In closing, Jesus, still peeved about the whole "Co-Redemtrix" thing, has asked that you not hector Him with your more tiresome requests this week. The prayer queues for both Cadillac Escalades and Grammies are full as of 10:13 this morning. And while He assures you that He had every honorable intention of sorting through the recent flurry of prayers for "papal health," by the time He checked that box it all seemed rather moot and pointless.
So close to Jesus, He's letting me roll the Holy Dice on Judgment Day,
Mrs. Betty Bowers
America's Best Christian
Dear Fellow American Theocrat:
As those of you who follow my blessed ministry know, Jesus has graciously waived almost all of His more ill-advised New Testament rules for connected, conservative Christians -- providing they meet retroactive, but stringent tithing guidelines. As America's Best Christian, I have, of course, played no small role in this joyous amelioration of Jesus' stated preferences. Indeed, the most useful waiver of scripture occurred after some coquettish wrangling on my part, which stopped perilously short of giving hope that my come-hither glance was anything other than something that happened to work with my Marc Jacobs dress.
After several bottles of a rather pretentious Brunello (that teetered on the threshold of being aloof until it was shown its place by my assertive Baccarat stemware), Jesus waved away His notoriously onerous "Judge Not!" proclamation with a dismissive fluttering of His lovely, if somewhat scarred, Caucasian hands. Friends, truly, the Lord does watch us from afar! Because I immediately recognized that His pantomime had been shamelessly appropriated from me (without, mind you, attribution). Yes, as the Lord floridly freed me from a biblical prohibition I had so often come close to almost following, He employed precisely the same vexed gesticulation I pull from my encyclopedic arsenal when seated in a restaurant near some odious creature that ignites one of those dreadful cigarette things or answers a cell phone.
If this bluntly carved caveat to Jesus' otherwise almost wholly acceptable teachings comes as news to you, someone has evidently not been paying attention to today's conservative Christian politics, dear. Judging is all the rage! Nevertheless, even the most loophole-dexterous Christian never likes to give the impression that one of Jesus' teachings has been forgotten, rather than simply ignored. That is why we take pains to show our awareness of scripture we otherwise seem oblivious about by graciously taking time to verbally apply any orphaned proscription to other people.
This is precisely why Republicans are not simply discarding "Judge Not!" -- to join "Give All Your Money to the Poor" on the already enormous landfill of charming, but regrettably inconvenient Biblical teachings. Instead, "Judge Not!" is being recycled (a word you never thought Jesus would type on my keyboard!) with a glitzy new campaign. You see, since we Republicans are no longer applying the "Judge Not!" rule to ourselves, who better to apply it to than, well – judges?
Yes, those annoying people who run around acting like it is OK to judge. In appalling defiance of the now more literal "Judge Not!" prohibition, judges seemingly make a profession of judging others. And, honestly, who are they to judge?
As the Terri Schiavo case underscored, these annoying people who perversely wear black robes even though they aren't soliciting cash for Christ are currently the biggest impediment to the new, improved American Dream: theocratic mob rule. Drunk with impartiality and left unaccountable to political fashions by the mischievous people who wrote the Constitution, judges are willfully impervious to the normally effective inducements to toe our theological line, such as enormous wads of Indian casino cash or Culture of Life® death threats. No, instead, judges rather rudely ignore our angry glares, stubbornly refusing to be "activist judges" only when it promotes our clearly stated list of righteous, implacable demands.
This is why I am asking all of you to join Senator Bill Frist and me this weekend to celebrate "
Justice Sunday." Justice Sunday is a fabulously inventive "Two Branches of Government are Company – Three's a Crowd" marketing campaign. Sort of a Marbury vs. Madison Avenue approach, if you will. It is all part of our godly efforts to besmirch all judges, irrespective of any purported faith, as God-hating liberals intent on using the so-called Constitution to churlishly tamper with the Lord's greatest gifts to the GOP since communism and Bill Clinton's penis: absolute one-party rule.
I notice over in Rome that after a pragmatic klatch of ambitious cardinals realized that potential promotion to higher, more fabulous hats was possible only from John Paul II being sainted instead of sustained, they shooed the pontiff off to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. After all, a pope in a coma would leave a billion dollar commercial enterprise with no one to sign the checks. And an organization that large simply can't function when its leader is unable to think or speak. America, of course, being the exception.
In any event, I trust that all of you now understand the importance of executing the appropriate legal documents to ensure that one of life's most personal decisions is left to your loved ones. In Congress. Indeed, my freshly minted living will stipulates: "All orders to resuscitate should be ignored unless seen on C-SPAN."
This whole "fobbing off Heaven until the last possible moment" spectacle was brought closer to home with the recent news of my dear friend Jerry Falwell being hospitalized. Rather inventively, Jerry's living will proactively stipulates that his feeding tube is only to spurt viscous fountains of lukewarm gravy. The sight of dear Jerry ferociously fighting the specter of death called to mind my devout suspicion that no one is more afraid of keeping an appointment with Jesus than someone who has parlayed Jesus' anti-materialism teachings into enormous real estate holdings.
They say there are no disbelievers of God in foxholes and, sadly, I suspect that there are also no disbelievers of science on operating tables. Yes, in a gesture of shocking disloyalty, Jerry was heard to ask his doctor, "Before you cut me up or anything, you didn't go to a med school that explains the origins of the Universe with that silly talking snake nonsense did you?"
In closing, if you know someone unsaved (not that I wish to impugn your social circles), please prevail upon him to accept Jesus as his Lord, Savior and inspiration for bracelets and automotive decals. And then invite him to help you prepare props for "Judge Not!" rallies at the courthouses and front lawns of our nation's busybody judges. Perhaps it is simply my deft touch with paper mache, but I always find that an effigy of the Culture of Life's® mascot Eric Rudolf always seems to get those vocationally judgmental people's attention. Even quicker than the saucy décolletage on a Marc Jacobs dress!
So close to Jesus, we filed jointly last week,
Mrs. Betty Bowers
A woman known throughout Christendom for her joie d' vivre
