Jesse Helms was one of the most destructive senators we’ve ever endured. One of his little side projects was trying to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, because the angry voices in his head told him that some art is obscene.

The ad above was made by a feminist group called the Guerrilla Girls. Wikipedia tells us this:

Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of feminists devoted to fighting against sexism within the visual fine art world internationally.

The ad apparently was trying to embarrass the big art museums into displaying more than just white guys’ art, so it’s not really an open letter to Jesse Helms. What does it say about fundie Republicans when they’re being used as examples of shame?

I think the reason the teabaggers and other extremists hate intellectuals and other educated people is they know we’re laughing at them, but they can’t quite figure out the joke.

I heard a great documentary on public (read: socialist) radio tonight. It’s called “The Great Textbook War”. It’s about a controversy in Kanawha County, West Virginia in 1974 about some new school textbooks. You can find the documentary’s download link in the sidebar of their website.

The whole thing sounds eerily contemporary. The one difference is that racism was one of the underlying issues of the 1974 controversy. Teabaggers aside, that is much less of an issue today.

You’ll hear the roots of our modern culture war playing out in microcosm. The textbook war of ’74 turned violent toward the end, with Christians justifying the violence with quotes from the Bible. Sadly, that was also a precursor of what we see today. Extremist fundie violence is rare in this country, but as any dead abortion doctor will tell you, it does still happen.

As for the controversy itself, listen with an open mind. The conservatives make one or two good points. I might agree that maybe the books went just the slightest bit too far. Including the writings of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver, for example, would certainly be appropriate at the college level, and maybe even 11th or 12th grade. It isn’t clear from the documentary which grades included their writings.

Likewise, raising the issue of moral relativism is OK, even desirable, at any of the high school grades, but kids may not be equipped mentally to process such an abstract thought at a younger age. Again, the documentary does not tell us at which grades that issue was raised. (That is one of my few gripes with the documentary.)

Other than these points, I am completely on the side of the “liberal, academic, socialist elites” who tried to shove progress down the throats of a backward county in 1974. And who continue to do the same to a backward country in 2010.

I’ve spent the last hour looking for a good fundie “news” article to rip apart. I’ve come up empty-handed. This is happening to me more and more often. Everything they’re writing these days is so derivative. It’s all the same old crap.

“Contraception is abortion!”

“America was founded by and populated exclusively by Christians!”

“The Anti-Christ is FDR Truman JFK LBJ Jimmy Carter Bill Clinton Obama!”

Don’t they have any originality? Must they be so predictable?

Come on, fundies! Say something especially stupid for a change! Make my job easy again! Every time I think I’m getting jaded, that I’m merely over-exposed to their idiocy, I think back to the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s when Jerry Falwell thought one of the Teletubbies was gay and Donald Wildmon thought Mighty Mouse was snorting cocaine.

The conservatives are right. America has lost its way. Its glory days are behind us. Even the fundies aren’t as good as they used to be.

Two retired world conquerors tried to team up to make a comeback tonight, but their plans to take over the world have be thwarted—by fundies!

Former evil genius (and now simple gay sidekick) Stewie Griffin had teamed up with former world conqueror, still-evil, semi-genius Microsoft to produce tonight’s Fox TV special Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show. Unfortunately, the toxic environment that fundies create for TV networks proved too much for the company that destroyed hundreds of competitors. Microsoft got scared and backed out of the alliance.

The whole sorry tale is related by some clown named Brent Bozo Bozell over at—where else?—Clownhall. In an article titled “A Stomachache for Our Sponsor”, Bozell writes:

In the earliest days of television, shows were often supported entirely by one sponsor. … The corporate patron was held responsible for the content within the program. More to the point, the corporate patron wanted the association with the show it was sponsoring.

True. But then the economics of television changed, and this model was no longer feasible. The networks switched to multiple sponsors per show. This is just the free market system at work. You know, capitalism—that thing conservatives are always worshiping (instead of in addition to their nominal God).

On today’s TV shows, it’s all changed. Today’s sponsors run in large packs and appear to make no attempt to monitor shows and have no expectation of being held accountable for the “art” they’ve enabled.

Note the wolf-pack implication there. Fundies are helpless little deer in the dark woods of American culture. Always the victim.

So it is refreshing to learn that Microsoft has backed out of a deal to be the sole sponsor of a commercial-free special on Nov. 8 called “Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show.”
…
There was only one problem: MacFarlane’s repellent sense of humor and complete lack of taste. Variety reported Microsoft may have walked away since there were “riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene, and incest.”

In other words, Microsoft apparently had never actually watched an episode of Family Guy.

Microsoft sent MacFarlane and Fox chieftains several notes expressing their concern over the show’s contents, but ultimately decided just to wave a white flag and drop out.

This is what I mentioned earlier. The fundies have created such a hostile environment for sponsors these days that companies are afraid to be associated with anything that might offend the people who aren’t even watching the show! That’s the bitterest pill. The fundies have learned to change the channel when a show they don’t like is on. But they aren’t happy just with that freedom. They also want to take away our freedom to choose to watch that show.

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. The American Family Association is upset that Marge Simpson is posing for Playboy. The AFA has gone beyond self-parody now.

They’ve decided to target 7-11 in this campaign. That’s a big easy target that can stand in for Playboy itself. The fundies can’t very well boycott Playboy and expect it to have any effect. They already aren’t buying Playboy.

Here’s what they write in their press release:

“Most American dads know the dangers that porn represents to young males.…”

That would depend on the material and the age of the boy. However, that is completely irrelevant, since Playboy isn’t porn.

“…It’s irresponsible of 7-Eleven to display porn in front of boys who pop into 7-11s for a hot dog or a Slurpee,” said Randy Sharp, AFA Special Projects Director.

What’s really damaging to young boys is that hot dog and Slurpee and all that other junk food that 7-11 is peddling to kids.

“The cover will create the kind of curiosity that can easily lead them into an addictive porn habit,” he said.

Like I said. Waaaaayyyyyyyyyy beyond self-parody.

Has anybody watched Cougar Town? It has BJ’s overly-tighty-whiteys in a knot these days. I wasn’t planning to watch it, because most sitcoms aren’t funny enough. Now that BJ is pissed off about it, I should watch at least one episode to see just how far removed from reality BJ is. Ordinarily, I’d Tivo the thing, but I don’t have that luxury right now. In order to watch the thing this week, I’d actually have to watch live TV (cue bloodcurdling scream), which is a far more obscene concept than the actual content of the show.

Here are some of the things BJ is upset about:

The show opens with Cox’s character naked in front of a mirror and ends with her shooing her son out the door so she can have sex with her new young lover.

If they actually showed nudity, I’d not only Tivo it, I’d actually watch it live! But I’m sure they used camera angles and other tricks to not actually show anything. Therefore, it doesn’t count. STFU, BJ! You almost made me watch live TV! You bastard!

Later she picks up a young man at a bar, has sex with him in her home without remembering his name, and is caught performing oral sex with him by her teenage son – all set to laugh tracks.

Let me explain something to you, BJ. The reason that scene is funny is because moral stuck-ups like you can’t impeach her for having oral sex!

Look, BJ. Maybe the show is a little suggestive. Maybe it’s even a little bit indecent. But it’s not obscene, which is the standard we use in this country to yank things off the air. You want to know what’s obscene? You want to know what is the most vile and disgusting filth currently despoiling our televisions and destroying all who watch it? You want to know what needs to be yanked off the air? THIS!!

Bill Johnson of the American Decency Ass. is continuing his relentless pursuit of porn.

His little tirade of a few days ago got picked up by the acme of journalism, OneNewsNow. And by “acme”, I mean:

Pronunciation: \ˈak-mē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek akmē point, highest point — more at edge
Date: 1620
: the highest point or stage ; also : one that represents perfection of the thing expressed
synonyms see summit
—Merriam Webster

or…

Everything they produce is a failure.
—Wile E. Coyote

The ONN article quotes BJ:

“This is their latest venture into these dirty waters,” Johnson laments. “And we’re just very concerned that, once again, if Calvin Klein…doesn’t hear in a very strong way from concerned people — Christians — …that they will continue this kind of usage of sexual perversion to toy [with] and lure vulnerable consumers.”

Others see a simple jeans billboard. BJ sees this:

In the comments to my previous article, Barbara said:

One of the things I love is how stupid fundies are about simple things.

They state “A side note: Calvin Klein has hidden their contact information quite thoroughly. We have not been able to find a fax number nor a web contact page nor an email address for them”

It took me less than a minute on CK’s website to discover they are owned by the Phillips-VanHeusen corporation, a quick google for the PVH website which gives both a fill in email form and a phone number to call for information, and I am sure if they have a published email address or fax number, you can get it when you call for information.

Don’t worry, Barbara! We know that BJ can keep it up (his pursuit of this info, I mean). The ONN article quotes him:

Johnson says his organization has put some time and effort into finding the correct contact info for Calvin Klein and has posted that information on their website.

The more time he’s wasting looking for contact info that normal people can Google in a minute, the less time he has for restricting our freedoms.

I guess one of BJ’s latest toys…

…no, not one of those toys! I mean latest web toys is a survey plug-in for his website, so he has daily surveys. In a recent email he sent me (I can’t find these results on his site, though), he gives these results:

Response to survey question:

Do you equate Calvin Klein with quality merchandise or smutty advertisements?

8.2% Quality merchandise. I pay little to no attention to how or what they advertise.
78.1% Smutty advertisements. Their manner of advertising is a real turn off for me
13.7% CK’s merchandise is quality and their advertising is smutty.

Somehow, I doubt that Calvin Klein’s latest ads are targeted at BJ’s demographic. I’m sure they’re not worried about these results.

Today, OneNewsNow has an update on this situation. Apparently Calvin Klein caved into the pressure (boo! hiss!) and removed the billboard. ONN quotes BJ:

“Well, we are encouraged that the 50-foot display of group sex was removed from the building in Manhattan,” he shares. “[But we’re] not pleased that they still are using a 50-foot display of a very scantily clad woman on that very same wall… And the greater concern is that on their website [there] still does remain a group sex display.”

Again, if somebody is able to find actual porn on the CK website, please let me know. This quote illustrates the problem. To BJ, a skimpy outfit is pornography. How can anybody be that troubled by seeing women not wearing burkas? Is this guy wearing a Viagra patch?

Here is what BJ writes on his website:

Disclaimer – proceed with caution. Some of you especially struggle with such displays. It can set you up for the wrong kind of thinking.

This is for documentation only. It is raw and ugly. CK is guilty of advertising perversion and untold numbers will be negatively effected.

Web display of group sex:

http://www.calvinkleininc.com/cktv.aspx

“Negatively effected”, as in actually enjoying life.

We haven’t looked in on Bill Johnson and the American Decency Association in a while. Let’s see what they’re getting aroused over.

We have a couple of new email alerts. A few days ago, he sent one with the breathless announcement: “Calvin Klein back at it again: 50 foot p–n ad”

Apparently if you actually type out the letters p-o-r-n, your keyboard bursts into flames.

BJ is upset about this billboard in New York City:

He thinks it’s pornographic.

Yup. That’s all it takes to give BJ a boner.

By that standard, this scene from Ken Ham’s Creation Museum is pornographic:

Let’s get BJ and Ken Ham to go at each other. That would be fun!

In another email today, BJ screams:

Calvin Klein is not only using group sex on billboards but has a pornographic clip with group sex on its website.

Sweet! I gotta check that out! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it. I looked all over. This is the closest I could find:

That isn’t porn, and it certainly isn’t group sex.

I really don’t know what we’re supposed to do about people like BJ. They see what doesn’t exist. You can’t fight crazy.

You may have noticed that the posting has been light the last couple of weeks. Sometimes I get busy with other stuff. It happens. One consequence of this is that I have completely neglected my duty to alert you to the latest appearance of the Carnival of the Godless. It came out last Sunday, so it’s starting to get ripe. It’s posted at State of Protest. It has a gob of articles, which is why I’ve been putting it off.

One of the articles in this carnival reminded me of my misspent youth. Oh, the hours, days, weeks, and months I frittered away reading books! I could have spent that time doing constructive things, like watching TV!

Actually, I watched a lot of TV, too. That’s how I discovered Japanese animation, although none of us knew what it was at the time. (But I caught on quicker than the rest.) But then, the freaking PTA came out with a list of excessively-violent cartoons, and Marine Boy was on it! As a result, my mother banned Marine Boy from then on. No! Not Marine Boy! That was my all-time favorite (that week anyway)!

Realization might be slowly dawning on you that this was one of the seminal events of my childhood (You would be wrong. It couldn’t have been, because I wasn’t producing seminal fluid at that age). Some self-righteous, self-appointed band of moralistic do-gooders that lived in some other state had decided that my entertainment choices were unacceptable to them, so they launched a campaign to take away my freedom.

I hate that.

Thinking back on that event, though, I see a striking difference from the fundies of today. One of the characters in this show was a mermaid named Neptina:

As you can see, she was gloriously topless. Unfortunately, she suffered from the same disease afflicting all topless mermaids: Long hair. More specifically, long hair that has an annoying tendency to always float forward. Funny how that works. Maybe if she didn’t have that problem, I would have had my first seminal event a few years earlier than I did.

Nowadays, you can’t have topless mermaids even if they have long hair. I mean look at this:

Animation has been damaged by these moralistic do-gooders. There’s nothing wrong with topless mermaids or topless hula dancers:

Anyway, you couldn’t get away with that today. It’s quite a shame, because our friends Boop and Neptina here accurately portrayed how hula used to be danced and what mermaids are really like (in the myths, of course!).

And believe me. A cartoon about a boy who breathes underwater with the help of “oxy-gum” and fights crime with an electric boomerang and has a dolphin and psychic mermaid as friends is already starting to push the bounds of believability. Making the mermaid glue seashells to her tits would blow the last of its credibility.

So what I find fascinating about this PTA-led campaign against Marine Boy was that they didn’t go after the immoral topless tartar sauce who was always swimming off alone with Marine Boy. They went after the violence. Today, the fundies get upset about a two-second “wardrobe malfunction”. Hell, BJ gets upset that mannequins are showing too much plastic. The PTA being upset about the violence is actually kind of quaint!

I haven’t researched the issue in a long time, but as I recall, there is some evidence that repeated exposure to violence tends to make kids more violent. There is no evidence that being exposed to boobies has any harmful effect. What are the fundies worried about? That if eight-year-old Johnny is repeatedly exposed to shell-less animated mermaids that he’s going to want to rape Charlie the Tuna?

(And why is Charlie the Tuna always trying to get wrapped in a net and then sealed into a can? That’s one serious bondage fetish!)

So as you can see, there have always been people in this world who want to take away your right to enjoy something that they don’t even understand. At least back then, they kind of had a point. How much violence is too much? Now, all they worry about are titties. Well Marine Boy wasn’t afraid of titties! He was willing to look straight at them, for as long as it took for puberty to set in!

Go, Marine Boy, go! Apprehend Neptina and her dangerous bosom! Catch her with a net and tie her up! Bring your electric boomerang, too! The safe word is “seashell”.

OK. It’s not exactly Akira. So sue me. I was nine!

(Oh, and BTW. In case you’re curious, my mother’s ban on Marine Boy only lasted a week. I got her to lift it the way all kids get things accomplished: By whining and pleading nonstop until the parents relent just to shut the little brat up.)

This was all a very long-winded way of telling you that I read a lot when I was young (when I wasn’t watching TV, that is).

My grandmother gave me a book at every Christmas, and a book at every birthday. One of those books was a gorgeous copy of Aesop’s Fables when I was seven or eight.

One of the highlights of the book was that it didn’t use the modern term “donkey”. It always used “ass”. This is really funny when you’re eight.

The reason I was thinking of asses was because of Oz Atheist. He wrote the article in the Carnival of the Godless that I wanted to mention. It’s titled “The Helicopter”. The basic premise of the article is that no matter how sucky your life is, “somewhere someone is having a worse day than you.”

This is exactly the same as the Aesop’s Fable “The Hares and the Frogs”. It’s interesting that I don’t remember the fable itself, but I’ve always remembered the moral.

Remembering that fable reminded me of my favorite Aesop’s Fable, “The Ass and His Burdens”. I’ve always liked that one, because it shows that no matter how sucky your life is, it can and will get worse!

As you can tell, I’ve always been an optimist.

But getting back to Oz Atheist and “The Helicopter”, he uses a phrase in there that has always disturbed me: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Obviously, I could never use this phrase, because I don’t believe that there is a God out there looking after people. Nevertheless, the principle behind that phrase is still quite instructive. Many years ago, I felt it would be a shame to let such a useful lesson go unlearnt just because it’s framed in mythology. I needed to rephrase it in a way that was consistent with a non-theistic view of the universe. When I see some random (or not) tragedy befalling somebody, I sometimes remind myself:

There but for the random distribution of matter and energy go I.

This morning, I found this email from Bill Johnson waiting for me:

An update and an apology regarding Wal-Mart and yesterday’s email alert.

A special thanks to my friend Dan Iset from Parent Television Council. He wrote the following:

Actually, it’s Parents Television Council (I just verified this on the PTC website). BJ can’t even get names right! But look again. PTC spells the first word in their name without an apostrophe. It’s supposed to be Parents’ Television Council. What’s with it with fundies? Are they incapable of getting anything correct?

Anyway, here is what Dan of “Parent Television Council” wrote:

Bill,

I’m not aware of any Playboy game for Wii, and haven’t found one online anywhere. I believe what this person is referring to is videos on youtube and elsewhere of playboy models being taped while playing Wii.

Just thought you should know.

So BJ has corrected his small mistake. Now he needs to shut down his ministry to correct his biggest mistake.

This morning, I received an email from Bill Johnson, the American Decency Ass. It opens with this line (I kid you not):

The battle is hot and heavy there in DC

Umm, BJ, I don’t want to know which theaters you visit in your off-hours.

Anyway, he then changes focus:

A reliable friend of this ministry writes about a particular item(s) of concern in Wal-Mart.

I wonder just how reliable, as you’ll see in a moment. The next few excerpts are from the letter from BJ’s “reliable” friend:

“They have this video player called Wii. You hold it in your hand and you can bowl, play tennis, etc.…

Really? I’ve never heard of such a thing. I think you’re bullshitting me!

“…Well my daughter told me that they were at Walmart, looking at the games, and with the childrens games they have a PLAYBOY game. You can undress her, or dress her, and apparently have her do all kinds of things.…

Hot DAMN! I immediately jumped on the internet, credit card at the ready…

… and came up empty! BJ, you asshole! You lied to me!

Does anybody out there know of a Playboy game?

Please? Google failed me!

However, I did find one interesting cultural phenomenon from six months ago! A Wired blog article tells us:

Playboy has released a series of clips showing a scantily clad woman playing Nintendo’s Wii Fit on YouTube.

The article is accompanied by said video:

Yeah. Me neither. I’ll have to take a Viagra before watching it again. Maybe then it’ll do something for me. So apparently BJ’s “reliable” correspondent has confused a YouTube video with an actual game. BJ wants us to participate in boycotts and pass laws banning smut that doesn’t even exist! He’s so fearful of “indecency” that he sees it even where it isn’t!

Anyway, let’s get back to the letter from BJ’s “reliable” correspondent:

“…CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY HAVE SUCH A GAME AS THIS?…

I wish I could. Believe me, I wish I could!

“…IT DOES NOT BELONG WITH THE OTHER GAMES WHERE CHILDREN ARE EXPOSED TO SUCH INDECENCY! IT BELONGS IN THE PERVERT SECTION, along with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, and the Maxim calendars.”

Oh. It looks like I’ve been on a snark hunt. If the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is this guy’s definition of indecency, I don’t think I want the game after all.

But I didn’t know Wal-Mart had a pervert section. Gotta go. I have some shopping to do!

Sometime in 2007, I picked up Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, by Al Franken, at a used book store. I generally like the book, although his writing style is a bit too casual for my taste. It’s a bit too conversational, and it meanders a bit. I guess I’m just used to reading things that are a bit more formally constructed. That’s my only real complaint about the book. The only other caveat is that it was published in 1996, so it’s slightly dated.

As I was reading it, I saw several passages that relate directly to the topics we cover here, so I transcribed them into a text file. I was planning to write some sort of book review, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to incorporate these excerpts.

The file has been sitting on my hard drive for well over a year. I sort of forgot about it. Now that Franken has apparently won the Minnesota Senate seat, it reminded me that I have these notes. This is as good a time as ever to dust off that file and see what I can do with it.

Most of these excerpts are actually self-contained and self-explanatory, so I’ll just do the simplest thing: Let you have them as is. Herewith are some of the highlights of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations.

CHAPTER 4
Page 45, ¶1
“My brother Owen, who also had become a wiseass, though not professionally, was now a photographer, and he suggested I ride the press bus with him in New Hampshire and follow Ronald Reagan around. Reagan was one of those guys who in 1964 opposed the Civil Rights act. Can’t legislate morality was the rationale.”

[RB note: How times have changed. That’s all the Republicans do these days (including President Reagan!).]

CHAPTER 5
Pages 54-55
He reminds us of the Newt Gingrich divorce story.

CHAPTER 9
Page 87, ¶6
“Frankly, I’m getting a little sick of cranky Republicans who can’t keep their own families together telling everybody else about family values. Quick. What do Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, and George Will have in common? Answer. They’ve all been married only one less time than Rush Limbaugh.”

CHAPTER 10
Page 88, ¶3
“I know I don’t buy the Christian Coalition argument that sex education created promiscuity. I believe promiscuity grew with the wide availability of the pill and smut like Newt Gingrich’s novel 1945.”

Page 89, ¶4
“Which brings me back to masturbation. And here’s the point I wanted to make in the first place. America is a masturbatory society. Just register at any hotel that caters to businessmen, most of whom are angry white men, and check out the movie menu. For every Forrest Gump there are twenty Romancing the Bone‘s. Why? Supply and demand. Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand,’ so to speak.”

Page 90, ¶2
So next time Bob Dole starts bitching about casual sex in movies, ask him one question. How is it possible that he’s crisscrossed this great country, stayed in two hundred hotels, and still hasn’t seen Forrest Gump?”

CHAPTER 11
Page 93, ¶2
“This is why I’d make a terrible politician.”

CHAPTER 16
Page 124, ¶2-6
“Speaking of damnation, I’m very upset with the people at Delacorte [his publisher]. I begged them not to put the Universal Product Code on the back of the book. They argued that every retail item these days has to have the UPC bar code, and I said, ‘Exactly! That’s why the UPC is the Mark of the Beast!’

“Of course, the Delacorte people pretended not to know what I was talking about. So we had to go through this little charade where I showed them the passage in Revelation: ‘No man will be able to buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast.’ And they acted like they had never seen it before. And then I pointed out the passage in Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order:

…Can any of us doubt the truth expressed in the Book of Revelation that all credit could one day be controlled by a central one-world financial authority and that no one could buy or sell without its approval?

“…Long story short, the back cover bears the Mark of the Beast. I’m sorry.”

CHAPTER 30
Page 199, ¶1
“One of those absolutes is the belief in the superiority of Christianity. When asked about that earlier this year, [Pat] Buchanan said, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and is actually God and that that is the path to salvation, so quite obviously I believe it’s superior to Buddhism and Taoism and other faiths, yes.’ I’m fine with that, I guess. But, not to be flippant, will someone explain to me how Jesus can be both the son of God and also God. Does it have something to do with the Holy Trinity? Help me here; I’m from an inferior religion.”

CHAPTER 36
Page 228, ¶3
(quoting Rush…)
“My views on the environment are rooted in my belief in Creation. … I refuse to believe that people, who are themselves the result of Creation, can destroy the most magnificent creation in the entire Universe.”

CHAPTER 38
Page 243, ¶1
“Instead of ‘With talent on loan from God,’ Rush Limbaugh should open his show by saying ‘With fat on loan from the American Beef Council.”

CHAPTER 39
Page 248, ¶2-3
He went to a Ross Perot United We Stand America convention in 1995. The Alan Keyes for President booth was playing a graphic video of an actual abortion. “This violated an agreement that the presidential candidates would show only campaign videos. The Keyes people said the abortion video was their campaign video, but the Perot staff and police came in to close down the booth.

“A Keyes campaign worker, who was wearing a T-shirt with an American flag and a cross, started chastising the cops at the top of his lungs, calling their actions ‘an abomination against the Lord.’ … A couple of minutes later it was all over, and the guy who had been preaching came up to me and told me he liked my work. Then a friend of his spent ten minutes trying to convert me to Christ.”

CHAPTER 43
Page 276, ¶1
He calls Bill Clinton the greatest president of the 20th Century:

“I know what you’re thinking, ‘Wait a minute, Al. Franklin Roosevelt was the greatest president of the century.’ And I suppose an argument could be made for FDR. Or Truman, I guess. Or Wilson, Kennedy, or Johnson. Or the other Roosevelt, if you’re a Republican. Or Reagan, if you’re a fucking idiot.”

CHAPTER 44
The entire chapter is about the Christian Coalition.

Page 281, ¶2
“I learned that Pat Robertson believes that a satanic conspiracy led by Jews has threatened the world for centuries.”

Page 283, ¶4
Quoting Robertson:
“There is no hard evidence to prove it, but it is my belief that John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Lincoln, was in the employ of the European bankers [i.e., Jews] who wanted to nip this American populist experiment in the bud.”

Page 287, ¶1
Quoting Robertson:
“The feminist agenda…is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians.”

Page 287, ¶2
“I reentered the hall to hear [Ralph] Reed introduce Newt. ‘Newt Gingrich was pro-family before pro-family was cool.’ I tried to figure out if that meant being pro-family became cool before or after Newt got those blow jobs from the wife of a fellow college professor.”

Page 291, ¶3-7
“Ollie North spoke about the importance of electing local officials. And the Coalition has had tremendous success recently in taking over local school boards. All part of its attempt to rid curricula of ‘politically correct’ liberal ideas like, say, evolution.

“In fact, Creationism routinely won enthusiastic applause at the conference. I asked a nice 40-year-old woman named Pat from Florida about her views on the subject. She told me that God created man in his own image ten thousand years ago, not four billion, as those godless ‘experts’ at universities believe. ‘Ten thousand?’ I asked.

“‘Ten thousand.’ She nodded.

“I asked her if she had seen Jurassic Park. She said that she had and that her entire family loved it. I tried to explain to her that she had to choose. Either Jurassic Park or Creationism. You can’t have both.

“Pat didn’t seem to get my point. But she was very nice, noticed I was ill, and wordlessly led me by the hand to her hotel room, where we spent an evening of unbridled passion.”

Actually, he admits that last part is a lie.