PopeJokeGate

Just last night, I read a column by Matt Taibbi from last week's New York Press about the Pope. Specifically, about the Pope dying. More specifically, making fun of the Pope dying. Being a secular humanist damned to h-e-double-hockey-sticks for all eternity, I found Taibbi's extended joke chuckle-worthy, if not exactly brilliant.

Here's just a sample of Taibbi's column, in which he listed the 52 funniest things about the Pope dying:

"51. After death, saggy, furry tits of dead Pope begin inexorable process of melting away into nothingness, like coldest of Sno-cones under faintest of suns."

"47. Upon death, Pope's face frozen in sickening smile, eyes wide open and teeth exposed, like a baboon."

"1. Throw a marble at the dead Pope's head. Bonk!"

You get the idea. This week, Taibbi explained his point, which was fairly obvious:

"'The 52 Funniest Things About the Death of the Pope'" was way over the top, but it was commensurate -— to the 197 consecutive fucking hours of Pope funeral coverage on cable we all know is coming very soon, with every politician on earth with a nose for Catholic votes lining up for a chance to blow into his hanky at the podium.

[...]

"This, incidentally, is what the alternative media is supposed to be for. While all across the major media landscape every public figure -— every politician and every NBA star and every superficially grief-stricken plastic anchorman—will be 'deeply saddened' and hanging his head during the obligatory moment of silence, there has to be someplace where the individual psychopath-loser, i.e. me, can say 'I don't care.' And not necessarily because it's right or wrong to think that way, but because a mandatory opinion held by everybody is no opinion at all. If we can't joke about the pope, then the pope, quite frankly, is not very serious."

This makes perfect sense to me. It made perfect sense to me when I read the article, which fit neatly into a long, long tradition of skewering sacred cows, from Jonathan Swift to National Lampoon. Sacred cows must be allowed to be skewered, or we are doomed as a society.

But, of course, our politicians would have none of that. The wailing and gnashing of teeth was loud and extended. New York Rep. Anthony Weiner called for New Yorkers to take copies of the New York Press, which is distributed for free, and dump them in the trash. That's illegal, of course. Other, more sensible politicians were more subdued. The execrable Chuck Schumer called it "the most disgusting thing I've seen in 30 years of public life" -- seriously? I mean, seriously? -- and Bloomberg, Hillary and a host of other suck-ups took their whacks to score some super-cheap political points. I mean, there's really no downside to bashing a Pope-basher, is there? After all, who doesn't love the Pope????!!!

Actually, I don't love the Pope. I don't give a rat's ass whether the Pope lives or dies. Whenever the Catholic Church is finally buried by its own irrelevance, it won't be soon enough to suit me.

What's more, I resent the interminable media jerk-off we'll be subjected to when he kicks the bucket. I'm sure it won't be as long-lasting or as distasteful as the necrophiliapalooza that followed Reagan's death last year, but it will still be one more thing to distract the mindless media from possibly stumbling across a real story.

But the most sickening aspect of this whole stupid "controversy" is what is says about our society. Right-wingers have for decades cried loud and long about "political correctness," whining that the coloreds and the queers and the womenfolk and the furriners should just suck it up and take a joke every now and then. But Christ on a Cross forbid you should ever so much as look crosseyed at one of their precious, precious religious figures. So it's now OK to make fun of minorities and helpless people, perpetuating damaging stereotypes -- witness the entire, sickening oeuvre of Ann Coulter, who is still allowed to pollute the airwaves of mainstream media -- even as we're well on the road to the day when our self-important religious leaders are issuing fatwahs over every minor slight. Happy day.