Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!: More Magical Tales from the Author of God, No! (12 page)

CNN was there doing a piece on our TV special, and when I was done doing the hype, I said to the camera guy, “Want something for your Christmas reel? Shoot this.” I pulled down my pants and pulled out my balls. He was freaked. Sometimes I’m more of a nut than I realize. The skin on the top of my feet did peel off too, but that was so much less entertaining.

That kind of stupid can’t be fixed with a resolution, so I don’t try. I read an article in the
Times
that said that New Year’s resolutions really do help people. I was surprised by that. I thought they helped only health clubs. People make a promise to work out and get in shape, they join a health club and then they stop going. Health clubs, like insurance, are businesses based on people paying for but not using the business. They count on people not showing up. They count on people not knowing themselves.

I have a friend who runs a legal whorehouse. He told me his whole business model is based on having a guy pay for what he wants before he knows what he can really use. Have a guy pay for three sex partners for six hours, and when he uses one and a third partner for fifteen minutes, the men and women supplying the service get to sell that same time slot again to another guy who thinks he’s going to fuck for six hours. If you can do six hours of work in fifteen minutes, you start to turn a profit.

I played Reno the New Year’s Day that my mom died. It was her dying request that I miss no shows for her sake, so I didn’t. I don’t remember anything from the sound check or the show. I just know that I got through it. My friend who runs the brothel came to the show, with a couple of his co-workers in tow. They were scantily clad and they were there to enjoy the show and say hi afterward. I had offered my friend my complimentary tickets for the show a few months before, so they were all set up, and with my mom’s death, I’d forgotten all about them, but there he was with a couple/three co-workers to help him reciprocate. They were ushered back to my dressing room after the show.

I don’t know a lot of etiquette, but I approve of those rules that tell us how to act when we don’t know how to act. When someone experiences the death of a loved one, one says, “I’m sorry for your loss.” If you say something other than that, you may cause even more discomfort. You don’t want to say “I know how you feel” because you just fucking don’t. You don’t want to say, “They’re in a better place” because they’re fucking not. You don’t want to say, “Things happen for a reason” because they fucking don’t. “I’m sorry for your loss” is safe and kind. They are magic words. There is no etiquette for how you tell an attractive person who is not wearing any underwear that your mother died that day. I’m not saying it’s wrong to fuck or be fucked on the day a loved one dies. It’s very good to throw raw life in the face of death. I understand the point of view that it’s good to be human when you’ve lost a human that you love. I understand all of that, but it hasn’t been the way I’ve felt. I didn’t want to be crying with a prostitute in Reno in the middle of the night. I know I wouldn’t be the first, but I didn’t want to do it. Go ahead, call me a pussy.

That was the scene in my dressing room the night my mom died. A pimp, three prostitutes, a friend of mine who’d driven up from L.A. separately, and me. The prostitutes had seen the show, and they were guessing I was a fun guy. No etiquette. I said, “Um, yeah. Thanks for coming to the show. Thanks for coming backstage. It’s nice to meet you. Um. My mom died today and I’m in kind of a weird mood. Not a weird mood for my mom having died—I think my mood is appropriate for my mom having just died—but a weird mood for the way you’re dressed.” They were dressed very appropriately for a performer’s dressing room backstage, but inappropriately for a wake. They put their legs together and crossed their arms. “So, thanks a lot. Nice to meet you. Hope you come see the show again. Good night.” My friend showed them to the door, and I got to the work of mourning and crying.

New Year’s Day is a complicated holiday for me. Everyone in showbiz works on New Year’s Eve. I don’t. People drink. I don’t. People watch sports. I don’t. It’s a day of resolutions that I don’t make.

It’s an important day for me. It’s a real holiday for me. On New Year’s, I think about death, and remember my losses fondly, and I celebrate life by bribing my children with toys.

Listening to: Bach’s Sonata #2, BWV 1028, Andante—Gary Karr

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY— YOU CAN BE IN MY DREAM, IF I CAN BE IN YOURS (BOB DYLAN SAID THAT)

OKAY, HOLD YOUR HORSES. JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN.
I’m NOT going to write about race. I’m not going to write about racism. I’m not going to take a quote from someone on Twitter, credit it to Martin Luther King Jr. and send it around the world. Not again. I’m going to try not to write anything stupid. Most of the time I’m trying not to write anything stupid, but maybe I’ll get lucky this time.

In my little, dead-factory hometown of Greenfield, we had only a few African-American families. The few African-American students in my little school were cousins, and they would dance with each other at school dances. It’s a small town and maybe a lot of cousins were dancing together; I just didn’t notice the others. I didn’t go to many school dances. I’m not the one to write about racism in Greenfield, Massachusetts. I just don’t know anything about it. I never heard overt racism until I left Greenfield, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. The cousins dancing together certainly showed we weren’t living in utopia. Utopia would have everyone dancing and fucking with everyone else.

My buddy Karen Russell, the daughter of Bill Russell, was in Massachusetts when her superstar dad was playing basketball for the Boston team. I know nothing about sports, so the few times I met Bill Russell we talked about magic and comedy. Mr. Russell knows more about magic and comedy than I know about basketball. It’s likely Mr. Russell knows more about magic and comedy than I know about magic and comedy. He’s a smart cat. The best thing about having Bill come backstage was how much it pisses off my buddy Arsenio Hall that I’ve spent more time with Bill Russell than Arsenio has. Maybe the secret to Bill Russell’s attention is not talking about basketball. Or maybe it’s because he loves his daughter. I bet both help. Bill Russell being a superstar could not protect his family from subtle, overt, and criminal racism. Karen tells me stories and I listen, but those are her stories. It’s not my place to write down those stories. I’m not qualified to comment.

I am welcome to write about Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, because Dr. King included me in that speech. I’m one of the ones he wrote it for. I just watched it and read it again while thinking about Martin Luther King Day. We can ignore everything else Dr. King did, and I’d be okay with celebrating Martin Luther King Day based just on that one delivery of that one speech. The being-on-a-Monday thing instead of his birthday pisses me off, but I like observance. He was the best of us.

Before I reread the “Dream” speech, I listened to Dr. King’s “The Drum Major Instinct” speech. That was the last speech he gave before he was assassinated. “I Have a Dream” is way different. “The Drum Major Instinct” speech was given in a church. It’s a sermon. He was speaking to believers about religious issues. The “Dream” speech was given during a secular March on Washington. That difference matters. The difference mattered to Martin Luther King. He knew I wasn’t going to be at church, but he knew I was going to listen to the speech he gave from in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and he wanted to make sure I was included. He was a preacher, a religious man, and a real no-kidding minister. I don’t doubt his faith, but he constructed that speech to make sure I knew his faith shouldn’t exclude people who didn’t share his faith.

I’m going to write about this speech from my tunnel-vision perspective. What I’m about to do with the “Dream” speech is the equivalent of writing about Bob Dylan’s life work by critiquing his three-ball juggling cascade in the “Blood in my Eyes” video.
(Bob does almost five throws of a three-ball cascade before we cut away. Those throws qualify him, barely, as a juggler. Mr. Dylan never really has this pattern under control. Every throw is too late. Instead of throwing at the apex of the subsequent ball, he throws when the next ball is already on the way down. This gives his juggle a precarious feel. The audience never relaxes in the knowledge that Bob is in control of his props. Juggling should be carefree at least until the final trick. Mr. Dylan’s throws don’t stay in the same plane; they aren’t straight up and down. Bob throws every throw a bit in front of the last. This reviewer would humbly suggest more practice with his knees pressed against his couch. I would also humbly suggest that he think more musically and less visually about the throws. Each throw must be connected to the pattern and not a separate event. You can’t do that if you’re waiting to see when to throw; you have to feel the beat of the next throw independent from the visual. Bob gives us a new thought with every toss, and we never really feel the security of an established pattern. Bob Dylan’s juggling is a tentative series of throws, a very long way from a professional juggling routine. It’s acceptable juggling for his grandchildren, but Bob Dylan doesn’t seem prepared for juggling clubs or rings outdoors where his props might be blowing in the idiot wind.)
I want to write about Martin Luther King’s “Dream” speech from the POV of separation of church and state, about how religious folk can include the non-religious folk without distorting their messages or their philosophies.

I will attempt to do this without distorting Dr. King’s message or philosophy. After the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting state-supported prayer in public schools, Dr. King said it was “sound and good, reaffirming something basic in the Nation’s life: separation of church and state.” I’m using that quote as my defense for thinking about Dr. King’s speech from a secular point of view.

That March on Washington had no shortage of religious speakers talking religion. There were a lot of Christian ministers in the civil rights movement. There were also plenty of Muslims and Jews and, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, Martin Luther King’s inner circle was maggoty with atheists. Many of the ministers were very open in mentioning god and religion and the singers sang bunches of gospel music. Many of the individuals holding the lectern before MLK wore their religion on their sleeves and I’m fine with that. I’m also glad their speeches are less remembered. Bill Russell was at that speech. Next time Karen brings her dad backstage, that’s something else we can talk about that he knows way more than I do.

Bob Dylan isn’t just remembered for his juggling. He was at the March on Washington with Martin Luther King, and Dylan sang “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” spreading the guilt from the active racists to our whole culture. He brought Joan Baez out to sing “When the Ship Comes In,” about how the bad guys will go down, and we’re all still waiting for all that to come true. I love that Bob brought Joan out after he started singing. Didn’t they plan this? There weren’t any jugglers or magicians asked to perform on that historic day. I guess I don’t know that for sure, but I’m guessing that if any were asked, they would have shown up. We don’t get asked to work historic days very often; we work children’s birthday parties.

I pulled up the “I Have a Dream” speech on my computer and did some searching. I typed in “Jesus.” “‘Jesus’ is not found.” Well, that’s the joyous story of my life.

I typed in “Religion.”

“‘Religion’ is not found.” Yup.

“‘Churches’ is not found.” Probably should be “
are
not found,” but I’m looking forward to that day when we don’t need churches.

“Pray” is found once in the speech. It’s in a list of things people should be able to do together. I’m okay with that, as long as it isn’t a list of things we have to do together. The list includes being able to work together and stand up for freedom together. I’m all for those. It also includes struggling together and going to jail together. A lot of people did those things together to get us to where we are now.

“Faith” is found five times. Once, it’s faith that “unearned suffering is redemptive.” I’m not sure if this is afterlife redemption, redemption in this life, or both. I’m betting King meant in the afterlife, but I can spin that to this life and be content. The other mentions of “faith” are faith in himself and his dream and, finally, faith in the people of the United States of America, and indeed in the world, to share that dream. I’m way more than just okay with all that.

“Lord” is mentioned once in the context of the “Glory of the Lord” being revealed.

“God” is found four times—three times under “all God’s children,” and once, at the end, quoting the spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank god almighty, we are free at last!”

Dr. King doesn’t avoid the Bible in this speech. He uses biblical images, including quotes from Psalms, Amos, and Isaiah. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use many images from the Bible, so why isn’t there a day named after me? Just kidding. King is just using poetic imagery from the Bible, using the Bible for its images and rhythms, not justification for any action. He holds the truths to be self-evident. He doesn’t go to a higher power. Bible imagery is part of our culture, like Shakespeare, which Dr. King alludes to in the exact same way with his reference to “this sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn.”

I must mention the fact that the Bible condones slavery and tribalism, but I won’t dwell on it. Martin Luther King’s speech has more wisdom, bravery, humanity, compassion and love than the whole Bible and that is damning it with faint praise. Gilbert Gottfried’s act also contains more wisdom, bravery, humanity, compassion and love than the Bible, and Gilbert is doing dick jokes. The Bible sets a low bar for compassion.

I’m not trying to paint Martin Luther King as an atheist. I do not doubt his religious faith in any way. I’m showing that when he made the most important speech of his life, one of the most important speeches in American and world history, he backs off the god shit. He chooses to include instead of exclude.

The word most conspicuous in its absence in that speech to our twenty-first-century ears is “Christian.” “‘Christian’ is not found.”

The word “Christian” has become a magic word in my lifetime. It means something different now than when I was born. It used to be a throwaway word. People didn’t used to use it much. Martin Luther King was a Baptist—Progressive National Baptist Convention—but not even the word “Baptist” appears in the speech. People just started self-labeling or getting labeled “Christian” in the last part of the twentieth century. A little before my time, in the nineteenth century, people weren’t even using the general term “Protestant” very much. They were Baptists or Southern Baptists or Dave’s Specific Southern Mississippi Snakes, but no Poison Pentecostal Church of our Unique Christ. Every religious cult was afraid of every other religious cult. The bugnutty Pentecostals didn’t want the bugnutty Methodists to have too much power. There was no “Christian Nation”—the Christians were all afraid of each other. America was founded on Christians not trusting each other. Robert Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic,” was also an atheist and was courted by many politicians. He spoke on atheism (three of the top speakers of that time were atheists speaking about atheism: Ingersoll, Mark Twain, and Darwin’s Bulldog, Thomas Huxley, who used the weasel word “agnostic” but he doesn’t fool me). Contemporary candidates wanted Ingersoll on board to show they were open to free thought. It was a rhetorical trick to show that they weren’t going to use their political position to give their own specific flavor of Baptist too much power. Ingersoll on board showed they’d let the other cults flourish. I’m no Ingersoll, but I’m an atheist who speaks on atheism and no politicians ever courted me.

Even in my lifetime, when I was a child, John F. Kennedy could have never talked much about his religion, except to alibi it. He was Catholic, and that scared all the Protestants. He just ducked and covered. If he could have used the word “Christian,” he would have and been able to go hog wild on the Jesus stuff. As it was, he spoke of the separation of church and state and made Rick Santorum vomit.

Freethinkers
, a great book by Susan Jacoby, explained that the modern use of the word “Christian” was pushed to fight
Roe v. Wade
, and that was almost a full decade after Dr. King inspired his country talking real inclusion. The anti-choice people wanted a big tent word for the religious objection to abortion, they had to bring all the Protestants and Catholics together, and “Christian” did that. It was their magic word.

Jimmy Carter was “born again” and that phrase and the magic word started to be used more and more. I heard on NPR (Yup, I’m an atheist who reads the Bible every day and a libertarian who reads
The New York Times
and listens to NPR every day) that if religion is measured as references to god and appearing in churches, our most religious president was Bill Clinton. Slick Willy really rammed home the idea of “Christian” as a church slut, not caring what church he appeared in, as long as he was seen at a church.

I’ve had friends argue that Clinton was not our most religious president, but he sucked up to churches because he was our least religious president and wanted to stay president. That argument is a bit cynical for my tastes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Now we have TV political talking heads who are disgusted by Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich, and the TV announcers use that magic word that gives those whackjobs their power. They don’t say “Southern Baptist”; they say “Christian.” I’ve sat around with my atheist friends and tried to be as blasphemous as possible. I’ve used pornographic images, obscenity and poetry to try to make even the most doubtful blush, but I’ve never touched Michele Bachmann’s insult to the gentle honest faithful by saying the suffering and casualties of natural disasters are her god’s message to wayward politicians. It’s hard to imagine Martin Luther King even thinking that. What she said was disgusting, and not general “Christian” belief at all, but her blasphemous religious message was delivered on the news clips as a message from a Christian. Imagine if that had been positioned as a message from Michele Bachmann of the Salem Lutheran Church, a specific cult that had stated that the pope is the antichrist. Michele denied they believe that, but all the same, how are the non–Salem Lutherans (and that group includes all the Catholics, most of the Protestants, Martin Luther King, Mitt Romney and me) going to react to that bugnutty stuff coming from a Salem Lutheran? Even in the broad, broad definition of Lutheran, you have only about 13.5 million and that’s not enough to be president. Now Michele has moved to the Eagle Brook Evangelical Church, but without the alibi term “Christian,” that gives her only 26.3 percent of the American people. With that percentage, you need to shut up about religion. You need me on board to show that you won’t sell out all the others.