Who's to Say What's Obscene?

by Paul Krassner

  But if these leaders are not delusional, then they’re deceptive. And in order to deceive others, one must first deceive oneself until self-deception morphs into virtual reality. In any case, we have our religious fanatics, and they have theirs. In September 2007, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden warned the American people that they should reject their capitalist way of life and embrace Islam to end the Iraq war, or else his followers would “escalate the killing and fighting against you.”

  When Ann Coulter—former Justice Department attorney and Senate aide, now a professional reactionary and Stepford pundit—was a guest on CNBC’s The Big Idea, host Donny Deutsch asked her what an ideal country would be like, and she replied that it would be one in which everybody was a Christian. “We just want Jews to be perfected,” she explained. As for Muslims, two days after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, she wrote in National Review Online, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

  And so it came to pass that, after four American mercenaries—oops, I mean contractors—were slaughtered in Fallujah, and consequently U.S. Marines bombed mosques where weapons of individual destruction had been stored, they also shot bullets into copies of the Koran. Which only increased the perception of a religious war that Muslims must avenge.

  Indeed, General William Boykin, Deputy Under­secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said that “George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.” Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin explained, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” He also said, “Our spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” And, “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.”

  In May 2009, Jeremy Scahill blogged: “In a video obtained by Al Jazeera, Lt.-Col. Gary Hensley, chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility ‘to be witnesses for him. The special forces guys—they hunt men basically. We do the same thing as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down.’ U.S. soldiers ‘had [bibles translated into the two dominant languages of the overwhelmingly Muslim population] specially printed and shipped to Afghanistan...What these soldiers have been doing may well be in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution, their professional codes and the regulations in place for all forces in Afghanistan.’ The U.S. military officially forbids ‘proselytising of any religion, faith or practice.’ But, as Al Jajeera reports, ‘The chaplains appear to have found a way around the regulation known as General Order Number One. Capt. Emmit Furner, a military chaplain, says to the gathering, Do we know what it means to proselytize? An unidentified soldier replies, It is General Order Number One. But . . . you can’t proselytize but you can give gifts.’ Trying to convert Muslims to any other faith is a crime in Afghanistan.”

  With provocation like that, who needs friendly fire?

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  George Bush once proclaimed, “God is not neutral,” which is the antithesis of my own spiritual path, my own peculiar relationship with the universe—based on the notion that God is totally neutral—though I’ve learned that whatever people believe in, works for them.

  My own belief in a deity disappeared when I was 13. I was working early mornings in a candy store in our apartment building. My job was to insert different sections of the newspaper into the main section. On the day after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, I would read that headline over and over and over again while I was working. That afternoon, I told God I couldn’t believe in him anymore, because—even though he was supposed to be a loving and all-powerful being—he had allowed such devastation to happen. And then I heard the voice of God:

  “ALLOWED? WHY DO YOU THINK I GAVE HUMANS FREE WILL?”

  “Okay, well, I’m exercising my free will to believe that you don’t exist.”

  “ALL RIGHT, PAL, IT’S YOUR LOSS!”

  At least we would remain on speaking terms. But I knew it was a game. I enjoyed the paradox of developing a dialogue with a being whose reality now ranked with that of Santa Claus. Our previous relationship had instilled in me a touchstone of objectivity that could still serve to help keep me honest. I realized, though, that whenever I prayed, I was only talking to myself.

  The only thing I can remember from my entire college education is a definition of philosophy as “the rationalization of life.” For my term paper, I decided to write a dialogue between Plato and an atheist. On a whim, I looked up Atheism in the Manhattan phone book, and there it was: “Atheism, American Association for the Advancement of.” I went to their office for background material.

  The AAAA sponsored the Ism Forum, where anybody could speak about any “ism” of their choice. I invited a few acquaintances to meet me there. The event was held in a dingy hotel ballroom. There was a small platform with a podium at one end of the room and heavy wooden folding chairs lined around the perimeter. My favorite speaker declared the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not take thyself too goddamned seriously.” Taking that as my unspoken theme, I got up and parodied the previous speakers. The folks there were mostly middle-aged and elderly. They seemed to relish the notion of fresh young blood in their movement.

  However, my companions weren’t interested in staying. If I had left with them that evening in 1953, the rest of my life could have taken a totally different path. Instead, I went along with a group to a nearby cafeteria, where I learned about the New York Rationalist Society. A whole new world of disbelief was opening up to me. That Saturday night I went to their meeting. The emcee was a former circus performer who entertained his fellow rationalists by putting four golf balls into his mouth. He also recommended an anti-censorship paper, The Independent.

  The next week, I went to their office to subscribe and get back issues. I ended up with a part-time job, stuffing envelopes for a dollar an hour. My apprenticeship had begun. The editor, Lyle Stuart, was the most dynamic individual I’d ever met. His integrity was such that if he possessed information that he had a vested interest in keeping quiet—say, corruption involving a corporation in which he owned stock—it would become top priority for him to publish. Lyle became my media mentor, my unrelenting guru and my closest friend. He was responsible for the launch of The Realist. The masthead announced, “Freethought Criticism and Satire.”

  In 1962, when abortion was still illegal, I published an anonymous interview with the late Dr. Robert Spencer, a humane abortionist who was known as “The Saint.” Patients came to his office in Ashland, Pennsylvania, from around the country. He had been performing abortions for forty years, started out charging $5, and never charged more than $100. Ashland was a small town, and Dr. Spencer’s work was not merely tolerated, the community depended on it. The hotel, the restaurant, the dress shop—all thrived on the extra business that came from his out-of-town patients. He built facilities at his clinic for patients of color who weren’t allowed to obtain overnight lodgings elsewhere in Ashland.

  After the interview was published, I began to get phone calls from scared female voices. They were all in desperate search of a safe abortionist. Even a nurse couldn’t find one. It was preposterous that they should have to seek out the editor of a satirical magazine, but their quest so far had been futile, and they simply didn’t know where to turn. With Dr. Spencer’s permission, I referred them to him. I had never intended to become an underground abortion referral service, but it wasn’t going to stop just because in the next issue of The Realist there would be an interview with someone else.

  A few years later, state police raided Dr. Spencer’s clinic and arrested him. He remained out of jail only by the grace of political pressure from those he’d helped. He was finally forced to retire from his practice, but I continued mine, referring
callers to other physicians he had recommended. Eventually, I was subpoenaed by district attorneys in two cities to appear before grand juries investigating criminal charges against abortionists. On both occasions, I refused to testify, and each time the D.A. tried to frighten me into cooperating with the threat of arrest.

  Bronx D.A. (now Judge) Burton Roberts told me that his staff had found an abortionist’s financial records, which showed all the money that I had received, but he would grant me immunity from prosecution if I cooperated with the grand jury. He extended his hand as a gesture of trust. “That’s not true,” I said, refusing to shake hands. If I had ever accepted any money, I’d have no way of knowing that he was bluffing.

  At this point, attorney Gerald Lefcourt filed a suit on my behalf, challenging the constitutionality of the abortion law. He pointed out that the D.A. had no power to investigate the violation of an unconstitutional law, and therefore he could not force me to testify. In 1970, I became the only plaintiff in the first lawsuit to declare the abortion laws unconstitutional in New York State. Later, various women’s groups joined the suit, and ultimately the New York legislature repealed the criminal sanctions against abortion, prior to the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

  Now we had a Republican candidate for president, Mitt Romney, who wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Yet, in 1994, when he was running for the Senate, he came out in favor of choice for women. Freelance journalist Suzan Mazur reveals that he admitted to Mormon feminist Judith Dushku that “the Brethren” in Salt Lake City told him he could take a pro-choice position, and that in fact he probably had to in order to win in a liberal state like Massachusetts. Pandering trumps religious belief.

  Three presidential wannabes raised their hands during a Republican “debate” to signify that they didn’t believe in evolution, although one of them, Mike Huckabee, admitted, “I don’t know if the world was created in six days, I wasn’t there.” He has also said that, “If there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, ‘This is an unjust punishment and I deserve clemency.’ ”

  Huckabee’s fellow creationist candidate, Tom Tancredo, asserted that bombing holy Muslim sites would serve as a good “deterrent” to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from attacking the United States. This notion of a pre-emptive assault made it into a Latino-oriented comic strip, La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz: On TV, a narrator was saying, “You’re watching The U.S.’s Greatest Surprise Attacks on the Distorted History Channel. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo issued a top-secret warning: ‘The U.S. should nuke Islam’s holy places!’ ” The TV viewer responds, “It is wrong to threaten nations with terror—unless Tom Tancredo does it.” In a previous strip, from a car radio: “President Bush has taken to calling himself the inelegant ‘Commander Guy.’ May we suggest the more graceful ‘Dictator Dude?’”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Here are some quotes from various state constitutions. Arkansas: “No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office.” Mississippi: “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.” North Carolina: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” South Carolina: “No person shall be eligible to the office of Governor who denies the existence of the Supreme Being.” Tennessee: “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.” Texas: “Nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”

  Rick Warren, pastor of America’s fourth-largest church, told his congregation, “I could not vote for an atheist, because an atheist says, ‘I don’t need God.’ ”

  In 2006, the Secular Coalition of America offered a $1,000 prize to anyone who identified the highest-ranking nontheist public official in the country. Almost sixty members of Congress were nominated, out of which twenty-two confided that didn’t believe in a Supreme Being, but they wanted their disbelief kept secret. Only Pete Stark admitted that he was a nonbeliever, and in 2007, he became the first member of Congress ever to identify himself publicly as a nonbeliever.

  In the week following that announcement, he received more than 5,000 e-mails from around the globe, almost all congratulating him for his courage. “Like our nation’s founders,” he stated, “I strongly support the separation of church and state. I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social services.” In 2008, he was elected to his nineteenth term with 76.5 percent of the votes.

  In the race that year for the Senate in North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole approved a TV commercial criticizing her rival, former Sunday School teacher Kay Hagan, for ostensibly saying “There is no God,” when it was really someone else’s voice. Fortunately, Dole was defeated—most likely as a reaction to her bearing such false witness—but the implication was that Hagan (who sued for defamation) would have lost if she actually had been an atheist.

  Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, believes that the “God supports Bush” theme held great currency among Bush’s base because Bush wanted it to. “It is a belief the president encouraged, and that Karl Rove has encouraged,” says Lynn. “It is, I think, extremely dangerous for people to believe that God is a Republican or a Democrat or a Naderite or even a Libertarian.”

  And Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith, states that, “At a time when Muslim doctors and engineers stand accused of attempting atrocities in the expectation of supernatural reward, when the Catholic Church still preaches the sinfulness of condom use in villages devastated by AIDS, when the president of the United States repeatedly vetoes the most promising medical research for religious reasons, much depends on the scientific community presenting a united front against the forces of unreason.”

  A recent survey concluded that 59 percent of Americans think that any president of the United States should be “deeply religious.” A Gallup poll indicated that 53 percent of respondents said they wouldn’t vote for an otherwise well-qualified atheist. Another survey found that 61 percent would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who did not believe in God, and 45 percent said the same for a Muslim contender. And another survey indicated that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals and other groups as “sharing their vision of American society.” Moreover, in the words of the late Jerry Falwell—who once said that God is pro-war—“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.” We salute, then, a few successful human beings:

  • The individual who placed the winning bid of $1,800 on eBay for a slab of concrete with a smudge of driveway sealant resembling the face of Jesus.

  • The man who tried to crucify himself after seeing “pictures of God on the computer.” He took two pieces of wood, nailed them together in the form of a cross and placed it on his living-room floor. He proceeded to hammer one of his hands to the crucifix, using a 14-penny nail. According to a county sheriff spokesperson, “When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911.” It was unclear whether he was seeking assistance for his injury or help in nailing his other hand down.

  • The Sunday School teacher who advised one of his students to write on his penis, “What would Jesus do?” Presumably, “Jerk off” was not considered to be the correct answer.

  It was a pleasant surprise when Barack Obama acknowledged “nonbelievers” in his inauguration speech. However, I don’t exempt my fellow atheists from criticism. I view as foolish those believers and skeptics alike who are waging a battle against the teaching of meditation in publicly funded schools, as though slow, deep breathing is necessarily and automatically a religious practice. What’s next, forbi
dding the teaching of empathy because that’s what Christians and Jews are supposed to practice?

  Similarly, I ridicule China’s atheist leaders for banning Tibet’s living Buddhas from reincarnation without permission. According to the order, issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, “The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid.” The regulation is aimed at limiting the influence of the Dalai Lama, even though China officially denies the possibiity of reincarnation. (I used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a previous lifetime.)

  China is a Big-Brother, slave-labor-driven, human-rights-violating, Maoist dictatorship, from which the United States government borrows trillions, then proceeds to purchase “Made in China” American flags, poisoned food and leadened toys. America remains a living paradox, where we are force-fed deceit and misinformation so that the government can continue to fund inhumane and illegal activities—yet we live in a country where at least we still have the freedom to openly condemn the government and the corporations that continue enabling each other to new levels of corruption and inhumanity. I’m truly grateful for that.

  “Thank you, God.”

  “SHUT UP, YOU SUPERSTITIOUS FOOL!”

  GREAT MOMENTS IN MEMORY LOSS

  On Meet the Press in August 2007, Time magazine’s Matt Cooper stated: “Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn’t know about it or that this was all a leak by someone else, or he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway, is nonsense.”

  Which explains why Scooter Libby, the man with a steel-trap mind, underwent one of those under-oath memory losses concerning Rove’s role in outing Plame, just as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales couldn’t recall his own role in the politically motivated firing of several local U.S. attorneys. During the Bush years, there was so much covering of asses that Washington started to look like a Christo art project.