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No sympathy for the man at all when he lived, I won’t take the opportunity now that he’s dead to pile any more opprobrium on him than was due during his long public life, which due I will however continue to measure to my own satisfaction.

His death deflects words meant to sting, denies them proper target. He had that marvelous sunny ability when living to elude them then, as well.

Long I labored with care and craft one time to pen him a stern missive freighted with my harshest words for it. On the sad subject of El Salvador it was, if memory serves.

Great heavy hammerstrokes of rhetoric ringing down on the anvil of public discourse, that note. No lengthier than the subject required, though it took a final ruthless edit to bring its weight in under the cap on first class postage.

Jayz, did those paragraphs have at him!

In return, some weeks later, by post, the following, undated, by autopen.

By Heraclitus (Jeff)

Okay, I know we tend to slant more or less left here, but we also strive for fair and balanced reporting of the political and cultural trends that matter to you. I’m therefore very happy to present this “Open Letter to the GOP“, contributed by guest blogger Rod T. Straight (warning: the following may contain biting satire):

My fellow Americans,
Recently, I was at the grocery store, buying children’s cereal. Having perused the cereal boxes and given them sufficient consideration, I can only say that I am shocked, outraged, and disgusted. Only now do I realize what a sick and perverted world we live in. It is a world where innocent children are used as mere pawns in the twisted social and political agendas of the homosexual movement. That’s right. ALL OF THE CEREAL BOX CARTOON CHARACTERS ARE GAY!!! Gay as paint. Queer as a three-dollar bill. Okay, Tony the Tiger is probably an exception, and maybe Dig ‘em the Frog, but the rest are switch-hitters at best. Sonny, the bird from Coco Puffs? He’s flamboyantly gay (the brightly colored, striped sweater, the overly emotional behavior), also known as “flaming.” The Sugar Bear seems innocent enough. Kind of pudgy, always wearing a sweater; he kind of seems like the dad from Eight is Enough. Then you remember — HE’S ALWAYS SINGING!!! Toucan Sam, like Sonny the bird, TALKS WITH A DAMN LISP!!! And they don’t get any lighter in the loafers than that damn leprechaun from lucky charms. Snap, Crackle and Pop may be just weenie enough to be straight and still walk around in those absurd, gay-assed costumes, but Count Chocula and the rest are not only gay, but campy. Oh, foul, foul, world, where homosexual activists have infiltrated the graphics departments of cereal companies!!!

Now it all makes sense. Now we can see why the country is slouching towards Gomorrah. Now we can see why American is in danger of doing something as unspeakable evil and demented as electing a Democratic Congress. This is not right. We don’t need a bunch of homos selling us our cereals. We need good, strong cereal cartoon characters, as Dubya used to say before he lost the ability to string even three words together coherently. Here are my new, decidedly un-gay, suggestions:
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By Frank L. Cocozzelli

“Give me their names!” Demanded Bill Donohue, honcho of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, when the artist Cosimo Cavallaro stated during a TV interview that two priests wanted to display his statue, Chocolate Jesus.

The confrontation took place during a recent edition of Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. While Cavallaro remained dignified, Donohue was bombastic: “You’re lucky I’m not as mean [as the Taliban], because you might lose more than your head” he declared, displaying his usual Un-Christian scowl..

Donohue, if nothing else, is consistent, having once said, that bringing back the Inquisition “… is awfully tempting.”

But Cavallaro was wise to Donohue. He stood his ground — and refused to name names. He defended his right to express his beliefs according to his own conscience, free of coercion and called the Catholic League president the bully that he truly is.

It seems that Donohue and his Catholic League cannot handle the supposition that a Catholic artist would express his ideal of Jesus in a manner very different from his own. Why? Because Cavallaro had the nerve to cast Jesus in chocolate, crucified in the nude (as the Romans actually carried out such executions). Another Bill Donohue dust-up that is designed more to create anger and hatred for the freedom of expression rather than to further an ethic of self-discipline, charity and tolerance that signifies Catholicism at its finest, just as its Founder meant it to be. The self-styled Grand Inquisitor, once again, failing to see the forest for the trees.

“Give me their names. ”

These are chilling words that have echoed throughout history. It is the demand of agents of authoritarianism. Embedded within its use is the pernicious offer of “perhaps I’ll go easier on you if you give me someone more important for me to destroy.”

In our own recent American experience Senator Joe McCarthy demanded the same of witnesses who appeared before his Senate Committee on Government Operations that he chaired; as did members of the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). We know what happened to some of those whose names were given; blacklisting, bankruptcy, family break-up and even suicide. Names were demanded for the purpose of instilling fear and stifling dissent.

We can easily imagine what Bill Donohue would do with the names of those two priests. Being the bully that is, he would most likely give their names over to Church hierarchy-perhaps Cardinal Egan or even to my own faith’s version of HUAC, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome. In case you didn’t know, the CDF’s former name was The Office of the Inquisition and was headed by the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

If Cavallaro had given the names of two priests, Donohue would have made their lives hell. After all, that is what bullies drunk on power do to others less powerful. Sadly, Donohue has more and more friends in the Vatican who think like him; men who will stifle anything that threatens their narrow interpretation of faith.

The truth is that their Catholicism lacks confidence. They fear new ideas and different forms of expression. And because of its own self-constricting nature, their Catholicism demands the need to control the freedom of thought that exists within the surrounding secular society. What the Catholic League and its ultra-orthodox Pharisees offer is not spiritual hope, but a faith of anxiety. It is an aspiration of the church and state as one acting as the gatekeeper to salvation but attained at the cost of both government and Catholicism defiled.

In order to carry out his increasingly theocratic agenda, Donohue cynically uses his faith as a prop to undermine liberalism. He abandons coolly reasoned discussion in favor a hysterically exaggerated accusations of anti-Catholicism; a technique designed to push the emotional buttons of faction-all while often ignoring real expressions of anti-Catholic bigotry of his fellow Religious Right provocateurs.

But as history has shown, the inflexible often become the victims of their own set ways. Such religion crumbles from its own inability to foster agreement and cooperation. Corruption is often hidden in the name of the image of sanctity. As we have witnessed, reasoned dissent naturally arises. Perhaps we will even soon see the Catholic will be the Joseph N. Welch to Donohue’s Joe McCarthy. Welsh, a hero of American democracy stood up to McCarthy–who was also demanding names– saying in the infamous Senate Army-McCarthy hearings:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

We now have the example of an artist standing-up to the bully on national television. I hope it will give others the nerve to do the same.

Oh, and if Donohue fails to get Cosimo Cavallaro to give up the names of the priests who wanted to display his Chocolate Jesus, don’t feel sorry for him–he can always wage his culture war on those candy companies that sell chocolate crosses around this time of the year.

Frank L. Cocozzelli is a director with the Institute for Progressive Christianity and writes a weekly column at Talk to Action concerning both Liberalism and the Catholic Right. This article originally appeared Talk to Action.

Thanks to Liz for this graphic.

For more than a decade, I have been a proponent, member, supporter, contributor, advocate, and activist for various groups including MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and CCLE (Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics). At the core of my participation and activities has been my deeply held conviction that human beings share one absolute and essential core liberty: the freedom to think for themselves. Enlightenment philosophers, the “Founding Fathers” of the US, hell even Maslow—all recognized and acknowledged that the one constant in the expression of all human rights and liberties is cognitive freedom.

Among the various historical attacks upon cognitive liberty has been the repression of, and coercive violence against, freethinking by religious authorities. If the Spanish Inquisition doesn’t pop into your head, or the Taliban, then I suppose you are blissfully unaware of exemplars of these sorts of perpetrations and crimes against humanity. Religious leaders in the United States in the latter half of the 1800’s were able to successfully lobby Congress to pass laws prohibiting American Indians from celebrating and participating in their own religious activities. And so it goes on, and on.

Though I am not intentionally channeling Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (both for whom I have deep respect), I propose that we do a grave injustice to the minds of our forthcoming seven generations when we allow, indeed insist, that religious leaders in the US demand that they be free to inculcate their theocratic beliefs in the minds of the children.

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society
Building to the new world order
We’re expected to carry the stone

Emperors and the feeding Class
Human beings being used up fast
The miners keep on mining
Intelligence is the mother-load
Imagination as an energy source
In this predators way of dining

Defining how and what we think
As we’re led to the way to believe
Conditioned reaction
We call thought
Our reality rides
In how we perceive

In the ways of being lost and alone
Who runs from their doubt and fear
In the mask of everything’s normal
Who’s not feeling or seeing too clear

Could be we’re being programmed
Anyway our spirit bleeds
All over our lives.
Our lives become fuel
For predator needs

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society

This John Trudell poem is my daily reminder that we cannot, must not, continue to allow our children’s minds to be mined for power and energy, especially by religions. It is the propagation and perpetuation of sectarian religious ideologies and creeds that are being mined from the minds of our nation’s children. They are fodder in the future battles of theocratically-driven agents whose sole duty and purpose is to expand their congregational flocks to control the destiny and future of the planet. Convert the children and they will become the soldiers of the future wars, guided not by service to their inalienable rights, but rather by their sworn allegiance to religious authority.

Do I really need to mention the Academy Award nominee documentary: JESUS CAMP? Good lordy, the promo enough should freak you out:

At a summer camp for Evangelical Christians, children have their faith reinforced and their ideology honed by the camp’s founder, Becky Fischer, whose stated objective is to “take back America for Christ.” Under Fischer’s tutelage, the children speak in tongues and pray for the appointment of pro-life Supreme Court justices.

This is just one particularly vulgar and obscene perversity in the assault on the minds of the children. It is not, unfortunately, an isolated case. Legal teams encourage religiously misguided youth to stage actions to establish claims against local and regional governmental agencies, particularly schools, hoping to erect protocols and precedents reinforcing the theocratic intentionality. Pastors and corporate ministers shout from their pulpits (bully ones on broadcast and cable networks) inflaming the faithful to push their children towards belief in some rapturous salvation, thereby increasing the willingness of the children to commit acts of violence and hideously-vile intolerance.

The children are being mined. We are allowing these sub-humans to drill into their minds and extract political, social, and economic power from them. And as with any other mining process, we create the waste and tailings. Children intentionally left behind, labeled with various syndromes and disorders simply because they refuse to be drilled to their spiritual and psychological cores by zealots bent on accumulation of power and wealth. I am pretty sure I read once that that guy Jesus said something about protecting and keeping from harm the children. Well his acolytes are doing a really terrible job at that.

Anybody who has looked for a job - and I recently spent several months doing just that - has probably asked herself: “that’s all there is? I’m so tired of it. I really want to do something different!”

Now, maybe you’ll think “easy - I’ll just become a professional humorist - how hard can that be?” Well, as the writers for FOX News Channel’s fake fake news show The 1/2 Hour News Hour can tell you - it’s really hard.
So, what else is out there? Hoping for the big lottery win? Busing tables? Swindling companies out of their ill-gotten gains by offering management seminars? Working as minor functionary in the WAAGNFNP?
Meet the insults writer. Now, the only one who’s ever held that job is, as far as I can ascertain, Orson Scott Card - the science fiction author turned wingnut. But our esteemed readers won’t be surprised to hear that I believe this to be a growth sector - maybe one of the few left that can’t be outsourced. After all, to insult a person effectively, you need to understand that person. That’s why insults aimed at someone you don’t understand are really slurs, not insults. Case in point: Bill “Papa Bear” O’Reilly. He constantly aims to insult liberals - and fails miserably. Who isn’t tired of hearing about the “fascist ACLU” or the “secular-progressive war on Christmas”? It’s pathetic, really. And it is the direct result of Bill’s lack of understanding of the liberal mind.

So it’s lucky for Bill that I’m here to help out. I used to be a liberal. And I have decided to apply for the job of insults writer at the Factor.

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