In today’s Easter Sunday epic, The Slog goes all out to offend everyone from Lefties, neoliberals, Jews, Islamics, Christians, Buddhists, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May to the Pope, Blairites, feminists, Arabs, Israelis, Satanists, the Devil and God. Hell, it seems, does not exist, so one might as well go for it.
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This must be an odd time for the followers of Jeremy of Islington, because it’s one of those days in the calendar when the Imposter from Galilee pushes himself to the front of the queue – like some biblical Benjamin Netanyahu – and demands the attention of devout Christians. So in an outstanding act of political opportunism, Semitiphilia and all-round hprocrisy, our Jezzer has this morning tweeted as follows:
And so it came to pass that the Corbynistas finally got a CorbynEaster, ba-boom haha, and oh, how we laughed. But hey, Jesus was a Jew, and Jeremy has always loved the Jews, so whatTF am I on about, eh? You may well ask. Possibly something to do with religion being the opiate of the People?
You might also ask why God’s Messenger on Earth chose last week to deflate the entire occasion by saying “Tee-hee, only kidding….no fire and brimstone really, Hell doesn’t exist….hoho, just a metaphor, carry on chaps”.
The Pope did equivocate on the Devil thing, but if there’s no Hell than the Hornèd One is homeless and deserving of our support. He’ll also get Jeremy’s support when The Revolution Comes, because the later JC has promised to buy every homeless person a house. Just imagine: you look out the window, and see Lucifer mowing the lawn next door. “There goes the neighbourhood,” you think.
However, such considerations are mere trifles compared to the Big One, which is, “If Jesus died to wash our sins away and save us from Hell, I mean what was the point, Sybil?” Sybil is God’s name, by the way. All this crap about God being a Man is fundamentally just more rapist domineering male-gender fascism depriving wimmin of their rightful place in Heaven as the mother, daughter and Holy Harpie.
Imagine having those rusty nails hammered into your extremities, and just as you’re about to expire, an old bloke with a white cap pitches up and yells, “IABATO!”* What a let-down.
The Pontiff once agains shows himself to be a bit of a killjoy, because in telling his Children that Hell doesn’t exist three days before Easter, he is like the Dad who tells his kids on Christmas Eve that there’s no Santa Claus. It’s not a good look: and like so many people these days, he just you know got a bit pissed and shot his mouth off and now, well, the secret’s out. I bet he felt a right pillock the morning after.
He just didn’t think through the consequences. What about all those gags about Hell, rendered redundant at a stroke? Thousands of them there are, although this I always thought was the best of the bunch….
So this bloke goes down to Hell, and the Devil says, “Right, you got three choices of rooms in which to spend eternity” and leads him down a corridor…at the end of which are three huge plate-glass windows draped in curtains.
“Room number one,” announces the Devil as he draws open the first curtain to reveal a room full of people in freezing cold water up to their thighs. The bloke is not impressed. He shakes his head.
So Lucifer opens the second curtain, and we see hordes of people up to their necks in arctic water, their faces blue, looking for all the world like a host of miserable Smurfs. Anxious but resolved to continue, the bloke shakes his head again.
With a flourish, the Devil reveals the third room. Somewhat to the novitiate’s relief, he sees a room packed with fully-clothed people, standing in shit to just below the knee and drinking tea. At least, he thinks, they’re warm and have tea. So he nods, picks up his free cuppa and wades in.
Just as he raises cup to lip, a voice comes over the tannoy to announce, “Right folks, tea break over….back on your heads”.
All religion is based on at least one extremely silly opening proposition. Building the Universe in sen days, Ten Commandments on a stone and parting the Red sea are, let’s face it, not events from which you’d construct a credible conspiracy theory. Even the Buddhists have the reincarnation cobblers, and of course the Sons of Allah will each ravish 77 underage virgins in Heaven, and then play footie afterwards with the heads of Infidels. Christians went for the Full Monty of flesh being bread, wine being blood, Hell being down below and celestial harps playing up above. And whereas for Hindus, the cow is sacred, for Catholics that honour belongs to the sperm. But one by one, the Church has declared that none of this sacredness exists. We might as well rename Sacre Coeur in Paris Sacre Bleu!
So today, all we have left is Easter eggs. Don’t ask me how we got from Calvary to chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies, but now the Great Hordes of the Offended are out to ban Hot Cross buns too. Perhaps we should ban croissants: nothing like a bit of fanatical tit for tit to promote Peace on Earth.
As always, dysfunctional religions thrive on all things political. Political Correctness, for example, must be like Halal meat dropping from the sky for Muslim believers: you can call for death to all unbelievers, murder Europeans with abandon and get pig pub signs taken down or else effendi, and yet still be the Religion of Peace….despite the fact that your founder was, um, a military man who propagated slaughter from the age of 27 onwards.
But equally, religion itself is a powerful weapon in the hands of a politician:
….to which the answer is, “No, not under any circumstances”. Maybe Mother Theresa was offering new life in adversity from the Bible on the grounds that the Conservative Party’s claims in that direction have clearly run out of road. Or perhaps she was, you know, just taking the piss:
There is but one saving grace in the Pope coming clean on weeping statues, nuns’ visions and the Turin Shroud: he is setting an example to all those pols lying through their teeth about how neoliberalism and socialism will, eventually – at the final Trump, perhaps – solve all our problems. Picture our two “leaders” trying to outdo each other at PMQs:
Theresa: It is time for a fresh start, another approach and a New Frontier….here and now today in front of all of you, with a light heart and a clear conscience, I insist on changing politics forever by confirming that Milt Friedman was an intellectual plonker hijacked by herds of greedy bankers and industrial fatties, George Osborne’s austerity politics were scribbled on the back of a fag packet after he’d done a line of coke, and for fuck’s sake get real, wealth gushes up I mean what are you like…..
SFX: Cheering wah-wahs going “Heeyah, heeyah!” “You tell em Theresa!” etc etc
Mr Speaker: Order, Order! Mr Jeremy Corbyn…
Jeremy: Mister Speaker, can I just say that while the lady opposite is a hopeless Prime Minister, she would’ve done well selling humbugs to working class fans in the good old days of hooliganised professional football.
SFX: Loss of bladder control on the Labour benches, amid shouts of “Ideology is bunkum!”, “Sock it to ’em Jezzer!”, “IABATO!”* and so forth.
Jeremy: ….whereas Mister Speaker, on this side of the House we are clear that Groucho Marx knew more about economics than his uncle Karl and told better gags, gags are better than gulags which were all that old paranoiac Stalin had to offer, feminism is all bull and no cock and all women are gagging for it anyway, Jews have big noses because the air’s free and if Arabs spent more time doing useful work and less time jockeying camels while firing rifles at clouds we’d all be better off.
SFX: Pandemonium as cries of “Shame!” from the Tory benches battle against female Labour MPs yelling, “Give it to me Big Boy!”
Mr Speaker: Order! Order!! Order!!!
All: Oh do shut up you overblown, arrogant midget.
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In the final analysis, when all’s said and done, looking back with wisdom, adding it all up and taking everything into consideration in the round with the benefit of a helicopter view while getting down to brass tacks on the ground, there is a case for arguing that politicians don’t need the authoritative stamp of religion any more, as their own ideologies are more willing to stamp out heretics and scientists than even the most homicidal religious bigots.
Which might explain why in the West, every country is split right down the middle between two sets of political zealots. In the Middle East – where things are still about 1,000 years behind – the various Islamic sects fight amongst themselves, uniting only in their hatred of the Jews. The choice of where you live is thus between an Unholy mess, and Holier than thou.
* IABATO – It’s all bollocks and that’s Official
Twas ever thus with humanity.
The Slog 