One of the most common whines you get from a certain type of evangelical is “Whyyyyyyy do people think all Christians are right-wingers? Myyyyyy church is different!” You know what? We don’t care. But maybe one reason it’s hard to take leftie evangelicals seriously is stories like this: The Episcopal Diocese of Maine called on the Archbishop of Canterbury to “denounce and abjure” the 1496 royal charter issued by King Henry VII to the explorer John Cabot, allowing Cabot to subdue infidels and seize their properties. Let’s see just how many things we can point out about this that are crazy:

     1) There was no Church of England in 1496.
     2) Church authorities didn’t have anything to do with the charter anyway.
     3) It was pro forma language included in virtually all grants given to explorers and was necessary for them to justify the trip economically.
     And perhaps most important of all ...
     4) It doesn’t matter anymore.
Okay, start whining.

The Receding Hairline—Now That’s Real

Some British twit gave Bob Larson a reality show,
The Real Exorcist, which means he can now use all those people who are pretending to be possessed in order to pretend to cast out demons from their bodies on a show that pretends to be real and, as a final irony, uses the actual word “real” in the title. Lovely.

Tony, Should I Be Worried?

I’ve been interested in pastor Tony Alamo for at least 20 years, ever since I bought a neon lime green jacket from him—this jacket looked like it was radioactive—at his downtown Nashville country/western clothing store where the late great Porter Waggoner used to shop. I got a lot of value out of the jacket, especially during a comedy gig at Charlie Goodnight’s in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I was ogled by three drunk matrons who thought I was Porter Waggoner, but that’s another story. Anyway, some of Alamo’s minions have been fanning out through the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street and passing out those apocalyptic flyers (“BRACE YOURSELVES” warns the most recent one) that seem to be warning of the end of the world because of current events that were predicted in the Bible but which turn out, on closer inspection, to be the reverse. The essays are based on the expectation of events predicted in scripture from 2,000 years ago that have not, in fact, come true at any time during the last 2,000 years. At any rate, I never knew where Tony had his headquarters—at one time it was Fort Smith, Arkansas, then Nashville, and now he has Sunday services in Canyon Country, California, Texarkana, Texas, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Elizabeth, New Jersey! (Whoa! What doesn’t belong in this picture?) When I met Tony, he was no spring chicken, although he dressed like the Vegasized Elvis, with dark glasses and carbon-black dyed hair, so I figured he had to be getting up there in years and that I would go check out his website to see if he was still preaching. WHAMMO! The first five headlines are:

False Accusers Against Tony Alamo

More false statements from the media

Pastor Alamo railroaded to prison

Hear a former federal agent confess

The Jesuit Oath

Okay, well, that fifth one is just classic Tony Alamo stuff, probably some conspiracy about how the Jesuits are gonna infiltrate the government. But the first four, I had to delve into the website and try to figure it out. I can't. It somehow involves a conspiracy by a homosexual owner of a drug-paraphernalia tattoo shop to frame Tony Alamo for "tax abuse" charges that resulted in a four-year prison term, but then Tony was not guilty on charges of threatening to kidnap a federal judge, and then there were some child abuse charges that were dropped by the California attorney general and, well, to tell you the truth, I got totally lost in the maze of what must have been a very exciting two decades for Tony, but I was heartened to find a "Certificate of Appreciation" for Tony and his ministry from the city of Fouke, Arkansas, the town best known for being the home of the Fouke Monster, immortalized in The Legend of Boggy Creek, which is much more reliable as a guide to the monster's behavior than the inferior Return to Boggy Creek, where the filmmakers engage in rank speculation, which is always bad, and which I will not resort to here.

Islamic Free-Speech-Lovers Attack

The site showing the Geert Wilders film Fitna was hacked and put out of commission yesterday. As of last night all it had was a window for viewing the movie and, oddly, a link to a Dutch porn site at the bottom of the screen. The Wikileaks page for the film was also shut down, but it was unclear whether that was due to hackers or the server just being overrun. This is the equivalent of the guys who show up at speeches with bullhorns to drown out the main event. It’s exactly the kind of reaction that Wilders wanted in order to make his point about the backwardness of Islam.