Forgive me if I have a hard time forming coherent sentences, but holy fuck.

Ho. Lee. Fuck.

And if you want a little more context for that link, here it is: Barack Obama plans to make a speech to America’s schoolchildren, urging them to stay in school. But, as I linked above, conservatives are freaking the fuck out. They are seriously saying this is some kind of effort to indoctrinate children, possibly to prepare them for some kind of Hitler Youth scenario. I am not making that up. Even I have some standards, and I would not joke about that, partly because it’s offensive, but mostly because it’s so fucking stupid that there is just no way anyone would believe me.

Okay, couple of points here. First, this is the least controversial thing a human being could possibly do. If you went on TV and announced that kittens were cute, that would be more controversial than telling kids to stay in school, because you’d be excluding all the people who prefer puppies. But talking about kids? That’s safe. Most people love kids, and even the ones who don’t (e.g. me) still want them to go to school, so they can grow up to not be fucking dumbasses. Smart kids = smart adults = less bullshit for me to deal with.

Second, the whole thing is actually pretty insignificant, and we can’t stop it. You know why we can’t stop it? Because the technology to do it exists, and someone’s goddamn well going to use it. Remember on election night, how CNN had those fancy Star Wars-looking holograms? Guess what? They did not have fucking holograms. They had a green screen and some extra cameras pointed at a reporter. Wolf Blitzer could not see the hologram. Wolf Blitzer was talking to the reporter on the phone while staring at an empty spot on the floor. He was pretending. It’s like when Elmo is a presenter at the Emmys, and everyone just pretends like they don’t see the dude squatting behind the podium with his hand jammed into Elmo’s legless torso. The point is, they could do it, so they did. Compared to fake holograms and tuxedo-wearing Muppets, broadcasting a speech to thousands of schools is a fairly simple affair, so why let the technology go to waste?

And you know how I know it’s simple? Because George Bush did that shit in 1991! That’s old George Bush. Daddy George Bush. Shit, when I was in elementary school, I saw Old George Bush all the fucking time. Every other week, the janitor would wheel in one of the school’s sad little television sets, and the teacher would pop in a tape, and there would be Old George Bush, telling us to say no to drugs because otherwise Slimer and Mr. T would be very disappointed with us. You wanna talk about indoctrination? He had fucking Slimer. Our tiny child-brains didn’t stand a chance against that. Most of us already had Ecto-Cooler in our lunches. Bush could’ve told us to steal all the money out of mommy’s purse and mail it to 123 Suspicious Ave., Cayman Islands, and we would have done it as long as Slimer showed up after the speech and did something wacky.

Also, indoctrination? Isn’t that a bit dramatic? I mean, maybe if he was saying something really controversial, like “Racism is bad” or “I’m not evil,” because at least there’s a hint of ideology there. But “Stay in school”? Fucking seriously? The only thing kids will learn from this speech is that the President was on TV for a few minutes, and it was boring. Is that what we’re trying to hide from them? Are Republicans trying to somehow prevent their children from finding out that Obama is President, as though simply seeing him or hearing his name will be enough to ensnare them? Do they think he’s fucking Voldemort or something?

For fuck’s sake, can we wait until the guy does one evil thing before we start talking about all the other evil shit he’s planning? It wouldn’t even have to be big. If he gets on TV and tells the kids to rat out their Republican relatives to the Secret Socialist Robot Police, fine. Then you can have your little revolution and homeschool your kids in the art of teabagging or whatever the fuck you people are always going on about. Until that happens, please calm the fuck down and assume that nobody is trying to recruit your slow-witted and presumably ugly children.

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

- President Barack Obama

“So, um, everything turned out alright, then? No backsies?”

- Horatio, via Twitter

Did you know that the President-Elect becomes President at 12:00 PM Eastern time on January 20th, whether or not he or she has taken the oath of office yet? I suppose I must have heard that somewhere — we had to learn about the Constitution in school, after all — but I’d never given it much thought.

CNN gave it some thought. Wolf Blitzer mentioned that little factoid more times than I could count. In the hour leading up to noon, and then for about five minutes afterward, it was all we heard. For Wolf Blitzer, Barack Obama could not become President soon enough. I’d never heard this fact mentioned during previous presidential inaugurations, but we’ve never had a President who so desperately needed to get the fuck out of Washington.

Obama’s speech will be replayed on TV and the internet for the next week, at least, and there won’t be all that much to analyze. It wasn’t the cheeriest speech I’ve ever heard, but it was direct, and honest, and even harsh at times. America is backed into one hell of a corner, and Obama’s speech acknowledged how much work it will take to get us out. I linked the full text above, and I don’t feel the need to dissect it right now.

When George W. Bush took the oath of office in 2001, I was a friendless virgin living in a college dormitory. Those personal problems were remedied within a year of Bush’s swearing-in, but that’s really the only positive thing that I remember happening during his first term. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was awakened by a ringing phone. My sister was on the other end of the line, screaming about something — something about terrorists and bombs and the Pentagon and a plane crash outside my adopted hometown of Pittsburgh. I calmed her down, barely, and turned on the TV just in time to see the first tower fall.

My then-girlfriend and I sat on the couch, occasionally attempting to cling to each other, but mostly numb and terrified. Eventually we decided to put on our coats and venture out into the city, just to make sure the world still existed. It did. The people I spoke to were all in varying states of shock. Everyone was putting up American flags, and I was genuinely moved by the gesture. Over the next few weeks, I began to feel a cautious optimism; as terrible as these attacks were, perhaps America would finally begin acting as one part of the world, rather than its would-be ruler.

George Bush had other ideas. His belief in American exceptionalism and his strange understanding of Executive power influenced virtually all of his policies, and sort of resulted in the exact opposite of what I had hoped for. Illogical wars were declared, science was thrown out when it became politically inconvenient, and medieval nastiness made a comeback. Reagan’s economic dreams were realized and promptly refuted, and the Bush administration stuck with them anyway. For a brief, shameful period, the Congressional cafeteria served “Freedom Fries.”

Now it’s over. We have a new President, who ran more against his predecessor’s policies than those of his opponent, and was elected on a platform change. Chances are, at least some of the promised changes will come about, because the people in Congress want them just as badly as their constituents. But I still can’t quite believe it. I still fear that Dick Cheney will jump out from behind my sofa and tell me that Obama has been kicked out of office on some weird technicality, and that I can go fuck myself.

That hasn’t happened. Dick Cheney doesn’t even have a key to my apartment. When the promised changes start happening, I may even start to believe it. Until then, I am spraying poison behind the sofa, and propping a chair against my door.

Holy fuck. It’s happening. In two hours, Barack Obama will officially be the President of the United States. They’re expecting around 2 million people to show up on the Washington Mall to witness the inauguration.

A proper liveblog would be unfeasible; liveblogs rely on snark to succeed, and I just can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d want to make fun of this occasion, Rick Warren notwithstanding. However, I will be making posts throughout the day. Horatio is stranded without a computer or TV at the moment, but he can jump in once that has been remedied.

Hopefully, the speech will be good, and CNN won’t go fucking it up with their little “hologram” machine.

Yesterday, I presented the first half of the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition’s list of the Top Ten Instances of Christian-Bashing in America, 2008, and promised to continue kicking them around today. So let’s skip the introductions and go straight to the violence.

INSTANCE #5: Chaplains Fired for Praying in Jesus’ Name
Chaplains for the State of Virginia are being denied their right to pray in Jesus’ name. Six chaplains were fired for continuing to pray in Jesus’ name. Earlier this year in Virginia, Rev. Hashmel Turner, a city councilman in Fredericksburg, was told by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that his prayers during city council meetings that ended in Jesus’ name will continue to be banned.

I especially like how they just toss in the bit about the city council meetings in the last sentence. Up until then, you think there are just some innocent men of the cloth being hounded by police and told that they can’t pray. But no, some asshole is praying to Jesus during the course of government proceedings.

Like most instances of religion in American public life, this falls under the heading of, “Technically unconstitutional, but it would be a pain in the ass to change it, so we’ll let it slide.” And that ass-pain comes primarily from groups like the CADC, who mount angry protests whenever their privileged status takes the most inconsequential of hits.

INSTANCE #4: Colorado Law Criminalizes the Bible
SB200, a Colorado state bill recently signed into law, criminalizes the Bible. Section 8 of the bill entitled “Publishing of discriminative matter forbidden” makes publishing the Bible illegal because it contains anti-homosexual passages. This is part of a larger effort to criminalize the expression of certain opinions and beliefs.

Oh, come the fuck on. There is just no way.

Turns out, there is indeed just no fucking way. Following the links provided by the CADC, I came to this article at the always-dreadful WorldNetDaily. Despite the panicky, right-wing tone, they make it clear what’s really going on: transgendered individuals must have access to the public restroom of their choosing.

How they got from Point A (”I can finally pee standing up, and intend to.”) to Point B (”The Bible is illegal in Colorado!”) is not entirely clear, but they can’t really believe what they’re saying. Colorado is, after all, home to James Dobson’s Focus on the Family empire, which is one of the most humorless Christian groups active today. If they weren’t allowed to have Bibles, we’d have heard about it.

I mean, does the CADC want someone to ban the Bible? It would be pretty blatantly unconstitutional, but I could get some people working on that, considering that they seem fully prepared for it to happen.

INSTANCE #3: Barack Obama Defames Christianity
According to research into President Elect Obama’s own statements about faith, and an examination of Obama’s position on moral issues, CADC has determined that by any biblical and historic Christian standard, Barack Obama is not a Christian, although he claims he is a “devout Christian.”

Seriously? This is how you want to play? All right.

Barack Obama managed to become President after being tarred as a radical Marxist, a terrorist sleeper agent, and an illegal immigrant. Nearly all this defamation (yeah, you heard me) came at the hands of conservatives, many claiming they were motivated by their Christian faith. Despite this, Barack Obama decided to stay on your team, to continue professing his own Christian faith, and to invite Pastor Rick Motherfucking Warren to speak at his inauguration. And yet you still feel like there’s something a little “off” about him?

Guess what: Obama isn’t the problem here.

INSTANCE #2: Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin Is Attacked
Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, came under sharp attack by some in the mainstream media because she self-identifies as a Christian. The Washington Post published a cartoon by Pat Oliphant mocking Palin because she has a background as a Pentecostal/Charistmatic Christian. A suspicious arson fire at Sarah Palin’s home church recently caused over $1,000,000 in damage.

Let’s take another look at this. Their evidence is an editorial cartoon, and a fire which was started by somebody in Alaska. The CADC doesn’t provide links to any of this, though; they link to a Huffington Post article about Palin’s church. Not about the fire, mind you, just the church itself.

The article itself is pretty mild by liberal blogosphere standards, mainly running through a few points Palin made in a speech at the church. The author’s only obvious crime was in describing Palin’s worldview as “controversial,” which is about as charitable a word as one can use. This leads me to a conclusion:

The CADC has no fucking idea how the internet works. If the meanest thing they could find was an article calling Palin “controversial,” they really weren’t looking, and may not have known how to look at all. There are still people like that, who believe that the internet is a small and controllable place, and that nobody would do anything so uncouth as swear or lie or, god forbid, commit wanton acts of satire. Likewise, there are still people who believe than every petty disagreement is tantamount to all-out war. So that’s two stupid things they’re doing.

And anyway, nobody had a problem with Sarah Palin being a Christian. They had a problem with her belief that God was a fan of offshore drilling.

And finally, the #1 Christian Bashing Instance in America for 2008…
INSTANCE #1: Radical Homosexuals Assault Prop 8 Marriage Supporters in California
During and after the November campaign stories flooded in of pro-Prop 8 signs being taken, people verbally and physically assaulted, church property and private automobiles vandalized, and person’s jobs and pastor’s lives threatened simply for exercising their right to campaign and vote in support of traditional marriage.

Specifically, their website talks about a group of especially evil homosexuals who surrounded, assaulted, and attempted to rape a prayer group. Seriously. Like Sodom. They provide a link to the story (and “shocking video”!), but guess what? Their website fucking sucks, and the link goes nowhere.

There was a tiny excerpt of the story visible, and it provided a breathlessly pearl-clutching account of a piece of campy street theater, but little more. Maybe things really did get as ugly as the CADC claims, but it’s far more likely that a group of easily-offended people got their minds blown by the sight of something bordering on cool.

And somehow, that’s the worst thing that happened to Christians all year. Not that church that got burned in Instance #2, or any of the other churches that got burned down, or that evil fuck in Tennessee who went into a church and started shooting people? Or did that one not make the list because they were Unitarians? Actually, no, don’t tell me.

Also, don’t get me started on how they made the list a countdown from ten to one. You know, like we were watching Letterman and they had to build up to the big finish? Real classy, guys.

Right now, the only Christians I feel like “bashing” are the ones who compiled the whiny, disingenuous crap on this list. Lucky for them, the Global Homosexual Conspiracy has left me weak and sensitive, and unlikely to resort to violence.

Note: This post was written in advance, and turned out to be much longer than intended. Instead of forcing you to slog through the whole thing, we’ll just be publishing it in two parts.

For the last few days, all the blogs — all the blogs run by my fellow wicked, Jesus-hating liberals, anyway — have been having a little fun/outrage at this list of the Top Ten Instances of Christian Bashing in America, 2008. The list, put out by the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition (which I had never heard of until right now), is fairly amazing in its inanity, and it’s earned more than its share of beatdowns, but I’ve yet to see someone address the whole thing point-by-point.

Never one to turn down a chance at easy comedy, I decided to fix that. So:

INSTANCE #10: Jack Black Musical Video
In a short video posted on FunnyorDie.com entitled, “Prop 8 The Musical,” an all star cast of Hollywood celebrities perform a low budget musical farce that defames Christ, mocks Christians and distorts the teaching of the Bible. Jack Black played the lead role of Jesus.

Starting off on a really delightful note, they confuse a policy disagreement with a deliberate effort to destroy their religion. And is it just me, or did that “low-budget” comment seem a bit gratuitous, like they’re trying to undermine the credibility of a comedy sketch by pointing out their lousy production values?

Now, in all fairness, the budget for Prop 8 - The Musical was pretty low, and it’s fair to point that out, especially if you’re angling for some DIY/hipster cred. It’s a safe bet that the writers of this list were angling for no such thing, and are just being dicks because LOL stupid heathens didn’t have a decent FX budget!

INSTANCE #9: Bill Maher Gratuitously Attacks Pope
Bill Maher, host of the HBO program Real Time, made light of the Pope during his recent visit and the tragic sexual abuse scandal. Maher said, “Now I know what you’re thinking, Bill. You can’t be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy (radical Mormon polygamist) Texas cult. For one thing, alter boys can’t even get pregnant. But really, what tripped up the little cult on the prairie was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided; religions get parades… If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope.”

“Bill Maher . . . made light of the Pope during his recent visit and the tragic sex abuse scandal.” Okay, he did make fun of the Pope, as comedians tend to do with public figures. But the scandal itself? Yeah, Bill Maher sure let those abused children have it! Serves ‘em right! Whether or not Maher’s quote has been taken out of context, there’s very little here to get offended over; Catholic priests got away with molestation because they belonged to a wealthy and venerable organization that could afford to hide their crimes and deflect criticism. It’s unpleasant, but not nearly as bad for Christianity’s reputation as, say, members of the clergy raping children.

INSTANCE #8: ESPN Anchor Dana Jacobson’s “F— Jesus” Remark
Speaking at an ESPN corporate event in Atlantic City, N.J., to honor ESPN Radio personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, Dana Jacobson let go with a steam of vulgar remarks; “F— Notre Dame,” “F— Touchdown Jesus” and finally “F— Jesus.” Jacobson was suspended for a few days for the incident.

Did this even happen? I’m not that big on sports, and even when I do watch a game, I don’t really give a fuck what they’re saying on ESPN. I tried to find video of this incident, but guess what? This “corporate event” wasn’t on the air. It was a celebrity roast for Greenberg and Golic, complete with comedians, and apparently the whole thing was painfully unfunny. Jacobson apparently decided to play the role of Courtney Love, and was disciplined accordingly by her employer.

This was a non-story that happened at a private event, far from the innocent ears of our God-fearing women and children, and it would have stayed that way if people like the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition hadn’t freaked out about it. So fuck them, and fuck Jesus.

INSTANCE #7: Minnesota University Professor Desecrates Communion
A Biology Professor from the University of Minnesota, Paul Zachary Myers, recently desecrated a consecrated communion wafer from a Catholic Mass. Meyer’s has also asked people to steal the Eucharist for him in order that he might desecrate it and display it on his blog.

Bite my ass, CADC. That shit was funny.

INSTANCE #6: Religulous the Movie
Bill Maher released a very shallow, pseudo-intellectual documentary entitled Religulous. The movie did not cover any new intellectual ground. It simply raised the old attacks on the faith. Maher studiously avoided being fair and did not allow for legitimate Christian answers from any leading Christian intellectuals.

Really? Two mentions of Bill Maher on the same list? Pretty lazy, not to mention a sure sign of your misplaced priorities. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone with less patience for religion than me, but even I hated Religulous. I didn’t even bother reviewing it here, but I can do that now:

“Religulous: A Review. Bill Maher occasionally gets close to a good point, then fucks it up by throwing in a completely unnecessary “funny” editorial, even though his subjects could have provided all the comedy he needed if he had a goddamn clue how to conduct an interview.”

There. Anyway, there are plenty of godless-types who offered far more eloquent criticisms of faith in 2008, but you ignored them because you have an inexplicable vendetta against atheism’s least-entertaining field agent.

All right, that’s enough for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with the second half of this dumb-ass list, which I promise will be completely devoid of Bill Maher references.

The too-close-to-call Senate race in Minnesota has finally been called… in favor of Al Franken. We all saw it coming for the last few days, sure, but now it’s official!

That’s Al Franken, the comedian. Al Franken from Saturday Night Live. Al Franken who presided over your Daily Affirmations in the guise of Stuart Smalley. My fellow sorta-creative losers — the English majors and theater geeks and 13-year-old wannabe stand-up comics — have a new hero today, because Al Franken is a motherfucking United States Senator.

Now, entertainers get elected to office fairly often, and Minnesota used to have a former professional wrestler for a governor, so that aspect of the story isn’t all that thrilling. What does excite me about this is that Franken got elected despite having long been cast as a villain in Bill O’Reilly’s twisted morality plays. When asked to rattle off a list of dangerous liberals, O’Reilly always mentions Franken’s name, presumably because Franken had numerous well-documented complaints about O’Reilly, and Fox News commentators really know how to hold a grudge.

If this had just been another of Bill-O’s pointless vendettas, I could have ignored it, but the meme caught on. Franken somehow became a symbol of both wicked liberalism and Hollywood elitism. Bernard Goldberg even wrote a book — a fairly typical conservative rant — titled, “100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37).” Well, it turns out slightly more than half of the people of Minnesota wanted #37 to represent them in Washington.

Franken’s opponent, Still-Technically-Senator Norm Coleman, is challenging this decision, and Senate Republicans are threatening to filibuster if the Democrats attempt to seat Franken when the rest of the Senate is sworn in. No doubt if that fails they’ll find other ways to challenge or undermine Franken, and spend his entire term complaining about voting irregularities, and unfair recounts, and possibly full-blown fraud.

You know, all the shit Al Gore should have done eight years ago. Sometimes I really hate belonging to the polite party.