John Lennon | The Electron Pencil

09/20/2013

Abortion, Food Stamps, Homophobia, John Lennon, Jorge Bergoglio, Michael Moore, Pope Francis, Roman Catholic Church, SNAP Programs, Tea Party

Air. Hot.

Let ’em Eat Cake

One in seven Americans puts food on the table with the help of Food Stamps.

That’s 14 goddamned percent of our brothers and sisters in this holy land.

Without Food Stamps, many millions of our brothers and sisters would go hungry or suffer insufficient nourishment.

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The Republican House leadership, meanwhile, doesn’t give a holy shit about its American brothers and sisters. In fact, the Tea Party-led party doesn’t even consider all Americans to be related to them. Not when so many Americans are brown or black or equipped with ladyparts or, ugh, poor.

As you well know if you’re a loyal reader, I call America a holy land only in the spirit of smart-assedness.

No Poors Allowed

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We are not holy.

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Girls, Ugh!

Speaking of holy, Pope Frankie has made a name for himself as a progressive. Well, relatively so, in comparison to his immediate predecessors and the boys club that constitutes the leadership councils of the Holy Mother Church.

Occupy The Vatican

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He has, for instance, spoken eloquently about the poor and the growing inequality of wealth across the globe, and against war and our “culture of waste.” Cool, so far.

Not long ago, he speculated that atheists who lead good lives might even gain entrance to heaven.

In July, il Papa shrugged and said, “Hey man, who am I to judge? in regard to folks who dig sex with members of, well, their own sex.

Cool again, eh?

But wait, there’s more. A wide-ranging interview with Pope Francis reveals that the successor to St. Peter, the Bishop of Rome, the Vicar of Christ, the rock upon which the Roman Catholic Church stands, and the most powerful man in the world who wears a tiara pronounced that his outfit has become obsessed of late. “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage, and the use of contraceptive methods…,” he said. “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”

He also added, “I have never been a right winger.”

Wow.

It’s as though good old Jorge Bergoglio is lobbying to become the Michael Moore of the sacred set.

Separated At Birth?

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The Pope is teeing a lot of people off, natch. Anti-abortionists in this holy land at this very moment are searching for evidence that Bergoglio is a socialist, a commie and, for that matter, not even born into the Catholic religion. I misplaced the link but I’m pretty sure someone, somewhere, has accused him of producing a phony baptismal record.

As for the gay thing, well, scads of grown men who have taken vows never to have sex with women and who wear skirts are tut-tutting and wagging their fingers at the Pope. He admits, “I have been reprimanded.”

Nevertheless, he still holds the crozier. Hell, you’d think the Church is a mere rubber-stamp vote away from ordaining women as priests.

Whoa. Not so fast.

Either because he is against the idea or he can read in the tea leaves that his cabinet and the rank and file among the priesthood might rise as one against him were he to come out for the ordination of women, Pope Francis said in the interview that there’s no chance women will become mid-level managers within the Catholic corporation. Unsaid, of course, is the understanding that they’ll never, ever, ever reach the boardroom. “The door,” he said, “is closed.”

Now we know: The worst sin a Catholic can commit is to possess a vagina.

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Woman Is The Nigger Of The World

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12/14/2012

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” — Rebecca West

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NYAH, NYAH

So, the Republicans now have their pound of flesh.

Feeling all sissified by the results of the November election, the political decision makers within the Party of God racked their brains for a few days and then hit upon a forward course.

Does it include becoming more inclusive toward black and brown people, women, gays, the poor, and those whose IQs are north of 30?

Republicans

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Well, no. At least not yet.

How about a concerted effort to purge the party’s ranks of antediluvian racists — both crypto- and overt? Or accepting the fact that geologists, zoologists, biologists, and other learned souls just might know a little bit more about the nature of our physical world than do bizarrely-coiffed backwoods Bible-thumpers?

Nah.

Our friends the Republicans have decided their best first step forward was to stand firm against that greatest threat to our nation’s very existence: the putative nomination of Susan Rice to the post of Secretary of State.

Susan Rice

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And whaddya know? They scored big time!

Rice, the current Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the United Nations, has informed her boss that she’s withdrawing her name from consideration to replace the outgoing S of S (and 45th President of the United States-in-waiting), Hillary Clinton.

Rice’s boss, the anti-Christ Barack Obama, was in for a bruising mud wrestling match had he tabbed Rice to don Clinton’s sash. And when all is said and done, even if Rice’s nomination were indeed approved by the Democratic-majority Senate, she’d have been viewed around the world as a weak PR agent for this holy land simply because so many fought against her.

Woo-hoo, we showed him, the Republicans are now telling themselves.

And guess what — the likely rebound nominee is said to be John Kerry.

Imagine that! The Republicans have indicated they’d be four-square in favor of approving Kerry. You remember him, don’t you? The traitor who protested against the war in Vietnam, only after he’d committed fraud to gain a pile heroism medals while there? The Republicans saved us from him in 2004.

Dangerous Johns: Kerry & Lennon

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Now they love him. And why not? He’s a white male.

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ANNIE’S LITTLE SECRET

The republic has survived yet another threat to its very existence. We’ve awakened four mornings in a row and discovered that the Earth remains in its orbit even after actress Anne Hathaway’s cooter was viewed by all concerned Monday night.

The temporarily-gaunt star of Les Miserables wore a gown made of coffin lining as well as some S&M accoutrements, all of which pass for haute couture, to the premiere of her big new blockbuster in New York.

She arrived at the red carpet in a positively presidential-looking SUV limousine. Her bodyguard leaped out and helped her exit the vehicle. She swung her legs out in an oh-so-ladylike fashion. Sadly (or not, depending on your level of sexual and emotional maturity) her knees separated and, thanks to a strategic split in her gown, her external reproductive organs were exposed and, within a nanosecond, were illuminated by a camera flash.

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Naturally, the image of her fancy bit immediately flashed around the planet.

Just as naturally, Anne Hathaway is aghast even as tens of millions of adolescent boys are furiously masturbating to the point of pain.

“It was devastating,” she told Vanity Fair’s Ingrid Sischy.

Fair enough.

Hathaway — whom, by the way, I intend to marry should The Loved One ever come to her senses and throw me overboard — went a step further on NBC’s Today Show: “… I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and rather than delete it and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants….”

Fair enough again. I guess.

Only we’re not talking about powerless young girls being bought and sold in the Middle East (see chart). Nor are we talking about someone pointing a camera through a hotel room peephole so he can peddle nude pix of an unsuspecting sports reporter.

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Yes, it’s a crying shame that pix of Hathaway’s Little Secret should turn out to be such a valuable commodity but isn’t she being a tad disingenuous here?

I mean, I love the woman. She’s well on her way to becoming the Meryl Streep of the 2030s. She’s generally considered dignified.

But she has a knockout body and she knows it. And she trades on it. Google images of her and you’ll see tons of her flesh. Nothing tasteless, mind you. But anyone who cares to can examine her breasts and other parts of her anatomy.

Again, she’s no Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan but, still, she understands what exposed female flesh means in Hollywood. It’s like a being a lawyer and having been a member of the right fraternity in college.

Anyway, it was Hathaway herself who went commando. Which is usually harmless, except when you’re wearing a gown that’s slit some eight and a half yards from talus to ilium.

Hindsight is 20/20 but from this outpost, her best bet would have been to ignore the breathless and puerile questioning of the likes of Matt Lauer and let the incident pass without comment. She should have let the whole issue die a deserved death.

Matt Lauer Grosses Out The Universe While Interviewing Hathaway

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And maybe — just maybe — we’ll all grow up and stop tee-hee-ing when somebody’s business gets exposed.

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A LADY LEXICON

The fun gals at feministing.com have provided us with an invaluable guide to the euphemisms for the human vagina.

That’s the technical term for it, of course. Vagina comes directly to us from the Latin, meaning a sheath for a soldier’s sword, which our old pals the Romans called a ferrum — literally, iron — but commonly used the word to refer to the penis.

Cicero and Co. had a way with words, no?

“Sheathe Your Swords, Men Of Rome.”

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So do we. Our words reveal our fears and distastes. Apparently, the vagina is scary and distasteful to far too many sword-bearers around this funny globe. Dig how many terms confer frightening, weird, and/or disgusting connotations on that place we’ve all passed through.

Study this. There’ll be a pop quiz later this semester.

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SHE’S A BAD MAMA JAMA

By Carl Carlton, this song rocketed up the Billboard soul chart in 1981.

She’s poetry in motion/

A beautiful sight to see.

I get so excited/

Viewin’ her anatomy.

At least he wasn’t being a sneak about it.

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03/23/2012

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.” — Lenny Bruce

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MAN WAS HIS PET, AFTER THE HOUSEFLY*

In this holy land it’s a lot easier to believe in god than it is not to.

America’s biggest holiday is Christmas.

Our coins read “In God We Trust.”

Every candidate for president must declare what a pious soul he or she is.

We say “… one nation under god…” we we pledge allegiance.

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Both houses of Congress begin each day’s proceedings with a benediction delivered by a professional believer.

When someone sneezes we say, “God bless you.”

When we’re annoyed we say, “For Christ’s sake!” When we’re really mad we say, “God damn it.”

When we go to war, we ask god to help us blow the brains out of enemy soldiers’ heads.

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In America, god is everywhere.

This weekend the putative creator of the universe will be the object of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of special assemblies.

There will be, for instance, a series of “Stand Up for Religious Freedom” rallies in cities around the country. These folks believe their BFF in the sky doesn’t like sex and is miffed because employer health care plans will soon be forced to cover contraceptives.

One Way To Get Under God’s Skin

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Unindicted co-conspirator Pope Benedict XVI travels this weekend to Mexico. Monday he hops over to Cuba. He’ll draw huge throngs in both countries.

And Saturday, atheists will crowd the Mall in Washington, DC to proclaim that they have no invisible friends or protectors. Organizers hope the Reason Rally, also dubbed Woodstock for atheists, will attract some 30,000 godless souls.

When I was a kid, a woman named Madalyn Murray O’Hair made a big splash. She was America’s most well-known atheist in the 1960s. It seems her son Bill was compelled to participate in Bible readings while a student in the Baltimore City Public Schools. So she filed suit, which eventually made its way to the US Supreme Court as part of a broader case.

I was a nominal Roman Catholic at the time. My parents (Ma, mostly) still went to church and dragged me along. Ma and Dad wouldn’t drop out for another five or so years. I couldn’t drop out of the faith because I’d never had it.

However, I had some clubbish loyalty to the faithful and so felt that Madeline Murray O’Hair, who soon would found American Atheists, was a villain. She was called “America’s most hated woman.” It didn’t help that O’Hair was pretty much a lunatic.

The Most Hated Woman In America

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So even though I had no particular allegiance to any god, I was on the side of those who did. But I was a kid.

By the age of 12, I’d given up childish things — like blind loyalty — and started thinking for myself. The nuns at St. Giles school had told me god was love. They’d said I must love him.

Man, I had a tough time with that one. How do I love god? I mean, he’s this big, powerful guy who doesn’t say much and is always aggravated. In fact, he’s just like my father.

So I imagined kissing god’s cheeks profusely. See, Ma always made me kiss Dad goodnight. He’d sit there in his recliner, purportedly watching TV but actually dozing noisily. I’d have to stretch and strain to plant my tender little lips on his sandpaper face. He wouldn’t budge an inch.

“Wait’ll I Get My Hands on You!”

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I figured that’s the way it would be with god. I’d imagine myself up in heaven, standing on a chair on my tiptoes, raining smooches on god’s abrasive cheek. He, too, would remain impassive while I gushed over him.

By 12, that fever dream didn’t cut it anymore. I never did figure out how to love god.

I’m not going to Washington for the Atheists’ Woodstock. I’ve long believed atheism is about not being part of a team.

Christians’ll have an easier time of it at their rallies here in America, as well as in Mexico and Cuba. They can all pat each other on the back and say how great it is to be the apple of god’s eye.

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What are the atheists going to do? You can’t really celebrate the non-existence of something, can you?

Actually, I don’t even like the term atheist. There is, of course, the association with Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s weirdness. Then there’s the matter of identifying myself by what I’m not.

It’s like joining a club for people who’ve never murdered anyone. After introducing yourself and proclaiming you’ve never taken a life, there isn’t much else to do.

A better term might be Other — as in the only box I can honestly check on an application that asks me my religion.

I’m a devout Other.

(* Quote from Mark Twain’s “Letters from the Earth.”)

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IMAGINE

My second favorite Beatle.

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