satire crucified

Veteran satirist Tom Lehrer said that the world of comedy changed in 1973 when the greatest living war criminal, Henry Kissinger, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 'At that moment, satire died. There was nothing more to say after that'.

Lehrer still stands by his comment.

There are things that oppose him on that, with the consistently brilliant The Onion heading the list.

As part of the Radio Savage Houndy Beasty team, I wrote some satirical comedy. My ability to do so in future was hobbled by the TV show Celebrity Fit Club. It was an amazing idea, much better than anything I was writing. Except it was for real.

Anne Widdecombe and some also-ran from Pop Idol whose name you can't remember were made to perform exercises by a real US Marines drill sergeant. It had that title, even though the premise was to get people who were almost but not quite celebrities, who were not fit and not in a club. Genius.

The cult of celebrity in the mass media is but a pinprick on the map compared to the sweeping plains of satirical opportunity open to those who go for Christianity.

It's such an bizarre, contradictory and blatantly ludicrous belief. As Stephen F Roberts said, 'I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods you will understand why I dismiss yours'.

Christianity's absurdity means it not only readily lends itself to ridicule, but the reality easily outstrips the satire.

The popular smiley-malevolent American fundamentalist brand of Christianity is especially deranged and especially well represented on the internet. My favourite bit is the belief in The Rapture.

It's a thing that happens before the second coming proper. Jesus comes in the air and takes all the 'true believers' - just those who believe in the exact brand of Christianity that proclaims the idea - pulls all their clothes off and like a holy coffee percolator physically floats them up to heaven where, as George Monbiot explains,

Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.

How soon is The Rapture? Click here to find out. Are you a true believer who'd like an email sent to non-believing friends after you've been divinely hoovered up in The Rapture? Then click here.

The agressively inane nonsense at God's Garden, ('the sunniest spot on the web') features 70 excruciating cheesy midi instrumentals of pop tunes, including Imagine. That would be Imagine as in 'Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky... No religion too'. Yet it is, as far as I can ascertain, a real Christian site.

The sadly defunct site Molatar.com was also a real one, despite being the rants and ideas of a Christian werewolf. ('Certain werewolves will probably ostracize me for my middle-of-the-road views on vampires').

His explanation of God's invention of Hell seeming to contradict His supposed love for all things was dismissed with 'Mockers are more likely to regret their mistake when the feel their flesh melting from their bones.' He's got a point there.

He unsurprisingly went for that anti-abortion thing too.

If you've been raped, don't take your anger out on the baby. Thank God that you're still living after the attack. That baby didn't rape you - the rapist did. If you want revenge, pray to God for justice. You'll get results. That rapist will go to jail, where HE will be raped - and probably murdered. THAT should satisfy your need for vengeance!

At least your baby will go to Heaven. I don't know about you, though.

If you're a grandparent whose granddaughter has had an abortion and 'your heart still aches for the grandchild you'll only hold in heaven', then why not spend $25 on a Post-Abortion Grandparents' Kit from the same people who bring you the essential book A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.

See what I mean? You couldn't make this shit up could you? They're seriously saying this stuff, agreed with by the people who control the largest stockpile of armaments in history, and we're expected not to take drugs?

There's an essay debating Are cats for true Christians? Is it appropriate for a Christian to own a cat, in light of their past pagan religious affiliation and the medical information that is now coming to light?

It comes out firmly against humano-feline relations, advocating getting rid of them with Old Testament style stonings. Surely a joke, right? I can't be sure. The home page has rather a lot of other material, and most of it not at all funny or weird (except in the usual Christian way).

Mind you, magnitude is no guarantee of serious intent. An enormous amount of work clearly went into the funny not-really-Christian site The Brick Testament (illustrating Bible quotes with scenes in LEGO), and extensive archives exist at True Christian and Landover Baptist Church (and their hefty Bush Administration spoof Whitehouse.org), all of which certainly are hilarious satire.

I particularly love Do You Have Demons In Your Colon? and the bit in the Christian Kids Want To Know... section Why Did Jesus Have Long Hair Like a Homo?

Jesus had short hair, Billy-Joe... The reason you see so many pictures of Jesus with long hair is because those pictures were drawn by unsaved people. Most of them were drawn by hell-bound, pasta-slurping, Mary-worshipping, hell-bound Catholics.

Rather like the absurd American campaigns promoting sexual abstinence to teenagers, the satire is funnier but not actually any more extreme.

On that particular subject there really is a serious idea called renewed virginity for those who have already had sex.

The abstinence thing is a load of puritanical guff that wilfully ignores the facts. As, again, brother George Monbiot says;

Were we to accept the conservatives’ version, we would expect the nations in which sex education and access to contraception are most widespread to be those which suffer most from teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. The truth is the other way around.

The two western countries at the top of the disaster league, the United States and the United Kingdom, are those in which conservative campaigns are among the strongest and sex education and access to contraception are among the weakest. The United States, the UN Population Fund’s figures show, is the only rich nation stuck in the middle of the Third World block, with 53 births per 1000 teenagers – a worse record than India, the Philippines and Rwanda. The United Kingdom comes next at 20.

The nations the conservatives would place at the top of the list are clumped at the bottom. Germany and Norway produce 11 babies per 1000 teenagers, Finland eight, Sweden and Denmark seven and the Netherlands five.

The idea and its promotion are a real test for satirists. They are just as barking as anything on pisstake sites like boy-abstinence Sex Is For Fags, its sister site for girls Iron Hymen or Technical Virgin which advocates anal sex as an alternative (check out the superb TV commercials!).

Tonight Radio Savage Houndy Beasty has a one-off show on a local radio station, the fab and funky one-week-only Lifeforce FM. We've not come up with any new satirical sketches. I really can't do it any more.

But while satire may be difficult, surreal and weird shit lives on. In that spirit, I'm going to have a T-shirt printed saying Widdecombe's Star Jumps Were My Kissinger's Peace Prize.