This is a little bit that Troy Johnson and I unveiled for our radio show That Ain’t Right on 103.7 Free Fm. They’re basically movie reviews in Haiku form. It was Troy’s idea.

While there are several types of haiku, I’ve chosen to go with the English version of Japanese haiku. Here’s a little haiku brush-up:

1. Haiku is usually three lines of poetry. The first being five syllables long, then seven, then five again.

2. No rhyming.

3. There must be a “season” type word in the poem. Avoid using the season itself, rather, a word that is associated with it such as how toboggans are associated with winter. Nature words are also acceptable.

4. Avoid metaphors. Only the best of the best haiku poets know how to subtly use a metaphor in haiku. For the mediocre Haikuist (read: me), best to avoid them altogether.

5. The poems must be in the present tense since they are intended, primarily, to make us live in the now — a dying art to be certain.

6. It is permissible on occasion to use more or less than 3 lines and different syllable counts than 5-7-5 but there must always be less than 17 syllables in all.

Director: Tim Burton

Starring: That dude from 21 Jump Street

Summary: Really? You don’t know this story?

Handroll Ranking:

(3 out of 5 handrolls)

Haiku Review

“Off with her he-eaaad!”
Bellows the bloodthirsty queen
(Clearly the best part).

Director: If you have to ask…

Starring: That chick from Alien

Summary: (See Pocahontas)

Handroll Ranking:
(2 out of 5 handrolls)

Haiku Review

Dialogue was for shit

Plot, infantile

But it looked reaaal purty.

At the behest of a friend, I logged on to The Mikey Show website to listen to several of his Friday-morning radio testimonials.

For those who don’t know the back-story, in January, Mikey Esparza, the infamous morning cock-jock, left Rock 105.3 (KIOX), and moved to FM 94/9 (KZBT), where the new Mikey morning show now resides. The Mikey Show is like every other morning monkey-house program, with one exception: Every Friday, at the end of his broadcast, Mikey—former purveyor of filth, smut and depravity; former self-proclaimed shit-talking assdouche—tells his audience the story of how Jesus saved his life. He calls the segment his “testimony,” and it is, judging from the shows I’ve heard, the same thing every week: Mikey cues up the melodramatic music bed—a gloomy, meandering, reverb-drenched guitar track (think Ry Cooder on morphine)—and, in a soft, contemplative voice, tells the story of his sexual molestation as a child and the vortex of depression, self-loathing and addictions that ravaged him until Christ came along.

“In 2003, I was laying in bed one night,” he says. “I knew I was going to die, so I asked Jesus to come into my life.” Apparently, Jesus did just that, because soon after, Mikey’s life began to steadily improve.

At the end of his Friday testimony, Mikey tells people with addiction problems where on his website they can find help, then segues into a song. It’s usually the same song, a tune by Third Day called “Tunnel,” about which he implores, “Listen to the lyrics. I mean, really listen. It’s a song of hope.”

Now, I want you to understand that despite my many sarcastic writings about religion and the religious, I don’t have a problem with Mikey’s radio testimonial—per se. For one thing, I’m usually up all night drinking, drugging and sacrificing small animals, so rising early enough to catch his blubbering is difficult. Secondly, and I’ve said this before, I don’t blame believers for spreading The Word as they tend to do. Truth is, if I were to believe in that stuff—if I were to believe that there’s a great ancient king who sits in a throne overlooking a city on the clouds, where the houses are carved from giant strawberries and a chocolate river runs through the village square, and all you have to do to live in this fantastic city is to heed the king, but if you don’t heed the king, then you go to this other city, down below, where it rains boiling blood all day and the vapors from a lake of fire melt your eyeballs over and over again, for eternity—then, yeah, you bet, every freaking column I were to write till the day I die would be about accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior and how to stay the hell out of Hell. So, I get why Mikey talks Jesus talk on the air. What I don’t get is why 94/9 allows it. Everybody knows, rock ’n’ roll radio is no place for religious worship!

Hey look, 94/9, I love you guys, but c’mon. Forget about the contradiction in your scheduling one of those morning hornblower shows after years of snickering at other radio stations for having morning hornblower shows. Forget that your tagline says you’re “about the music,” even though these morning chatgasms have nothing to do with the music. And forget how you incessantly bragged that you never talked over the songs, even though, now, not only are you talking over the music, but you’re talking over the music—with Jesus talk!

Et tu, rock radio station? Can’t you just leave the Jesus music to the choirboys, church organists, sweater-vested smiley-minstrel  folk groups and vocally marginal, Brillo-haired housewives whose families convinced them to record albums of drippy worship songs? Rock ’n’ Roll is Satan’s domain, dammit, and any radio outfit that doesn’t understand that should be stripped of its rock credentials and become a 24-hour Pat Boone-a-palooza station.

So, yeah, it’s 94/9, not Mikey Esparza, who’s to blame for this crime against rhythm and bluesmanity. That said, Mikey, if you’re reading, I have two pieces of advice, both involving the music in your testimonial segment:

1. Lose the guitar bed. It’s an obvious manipulation of your listeners’ emotions. Earnest testimonials about molestation, addiction and despair don’t need sappy, reverby music backgrounds. Once you rip a listener’s heart out of his or her chest, it doesn’t much matter what you do with it next. After that, it’s all overkill. Just tell your story unaccompanied by musical melodrama and let the words do all the heart-ripping.

2. If you’re going to play the same song at the end of your testimonials, and you implore the audience to listen to the words, well, then, you had better be certain the words do not suck. They need to be intelligent, unique, creative words and not a repetition of clichés, such as with the lyrics of “Tunnel”:

“There’s a light at the end of this tunnel / Shinin’ bright at the end of this tunnel / For you, for you / So keep holdin’ on…”

That’s your song of hope? Ok, sure, if by “hope” you mean, I hope somebody stabs me in the ears with a pair of scissors. Telling someone to concentrate on the words to Tunnel is like telling the heretic you’re torturing to concentrate on the spikes of the iron maiden you’ve strapped him into. “OK, now, listen carefully to the sound of the blades as they pierce your flesh and organs. I want you to listen, I mean really listen, to the sound of your own screams.”

Other than that, Mikey, good job on taking your life back. I would argue that it wasn’t Jesus that saved you, but that’s hardly what matters here. You are alive and thriving and helping people in your sincere, though utterly ridiculous, way. I can respect that.

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat

EJD
03.03.10

My bride

It was February 1999. I had just written a Sordid rant condemning a cluster of City Council-proposed anti-stripper laws that prompted a dozen or so local dancers to e-mail me in gratitude. It was an exciting chapter in my life as I had—for a brief moment—realized my boyhood dreams and became a hero to the strippers of the land.

Among these e-mails was a complimentary letter from a gal named Willow in which she noted, among other things, that she was not an exotic dancer. Somehow, I missed that part because, during our subsequent e-mail conversations, I got it in my head that Willow—a stripper alias to be sure—did make her living hanging upside-down upon the glittery poles of golden grandeur.

Fast forward two weeks: I’m at the gym when I notice this scary-looking wife-beater type—arms, legs and face popping with muscles and prison tats—staring at me in such a manner that I can’t tell if he wants to shank me or be my Valentine. Eventually, he approaches and asks if my name is Ed Decker.

“Um, yeah,” I respond, timidly, hoping and praying that it’s a Hallmark card he’s reaching for and not a shiv.

It’s a cell phone.

“I know somebody who wants to meet you,” he informs me, dialing.

“Hey, Willow, it’s Scott,” he says into the mouthpiece. “That Ed Decker guy you were talking about is here in the gym” and hands me the phone.

As Willow is on the other end explaining how embarrassed she is, that her friend Scott is nuts and that she swears she is not stalking me, I’m thinking, How cool is this? Willow the upside-down-stripper-pole-hanging hot-dancer mama digs me so much that she appointed her gangster pimp bodyguard to locate me. I must be supa-bad!

We agree to meet that night, midnight, at a bar in Ocean Beach, and, man, I have to say, I am psyched! I’ve dated a couple of strippers in my day, and my impression was, up until the time they go batshit crazy from hanging upside-down on stripper poles all the time, they’re a blast to run with. And I know, as long as I don’t bungle this thing, that the night will most certainly end up back at her kick-ass stripper apartment, with her big, bay bedroom windows—overlooking the ocean, or some kick-ass canyon—balling each other till sunrise with a handle of Jack and a pile of blow on the nightstand.

When I arrive, Willow is already seated. She’s a hottie, to be sure, but I am surprised by her lack of stereotypical stripper qualities. She isn’t all that busty or sparkly; rather, she’s more what I call a “pecutie” (petite cutie), with cream-colored skin, shoulder-length amaretto hair, slender figure and a juicy-wide Jew nose, which, for me, seals the deal.

We introduce ourselves, order drinks, and are off and running, quickly settling into a conversation devoid of any contrivance or awkwardness—until, that is, I inquire about her occupation.

“So, where do you dance?” I ask.

“Huh?” she snaps.

“In which gentleman’s club do you work?”

“I’m not a stripper!” she protests. And just like that, it’s up—The Great Wall of YouBlewIt towering over us as she sits on the other side metaphorically filing her nails.

“Look,” I say, “it was an honest mistake: You responded to a column about strippers, you have ex-con gangster pimps arranging your dates, you meet strangers in bars at midnight and you’ve got a stripper name. What am I supposed to take from all that?”

“My parents gave me that name!” she snorts and, like a strong, smart game fish, wrenches herself off the hook and swims away. In a panic, I do the only thing a man can do when a fish goes rogue, and that is to ditch the lures and use a worm instead—and by “worm” I mean shots of Mezcal, and more shots, and more, and soon we’re back to effortlessly laughing and drinking our way through closing time. Then we stumble back to her place, which, sadly, is nothing like a stripper pad—totally lacking a view, or whiskey, or drugs, or all-night balling, for that matter, as she repeatedly throws me out trying to steal third base. No matter, though; I’m crazy about her. That much is clear.

At about 4 a.m., we kiss goodnight and I step out onto her courtyard.

Now, this is where the story gets goofy. And, I swear, what happens next is not a bogus literary device intended to create some sweetly clean Sleepless in San Diego ending for you. It happened just as it is written, in all its goofball glory.

Stepping off the stoop, I look up to see—as if on cue, as if it had been sitting there the whole time waiting for me to look up—the biggest, brightest, bitchinest shooting star streak across the width of the sky in a blaze of ultra-white. I have seen shooting stars before but never anything like this. It is—no exaggeration—10 times as big, 10 times as bright, with a tail 10 times as long as any I’d witnessed, causing me to freeze in my tracks and my jaw to drop. And though I’m neither a superstitious person nor a believer in destiny, nor a subscriber to the theory of “The One,” I can’t help but perceive this encounter as a signal that I have met the one girl in the universe I could love forever, and that the universe is happy about that and wanted me to know.

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat 02/16/2010

Every time somebody gets fired for something they said or wrote, such as recently when blogger Paul Shirley was fired by ESPN for making retarded comments about Haiti, there’s usually an interminable supply of Constitutionally confounded news commentators yammering about the First Amendment—such as CNN’s Joy Behar, who said, “I don’t think he should be fired for [exercising] free speech. I’m strict about the First Amendment.”

It always perplexes me whenever somebody in the media (read: a person who makes a living from free speech) doesn’t know what the goddamn First Amendment is. Anybody with fewer than three lobotomies to their name knows that terminating someone for expressing their opinion does not violate their First Amendment rights. In fact, the opposite is true. It would be an act of censorship if ESPN was prohibited from firing Shirley, because ESPN, like all networks, has rights, too, including the right to shitcan serially lobotomized news commentators who don’t understand what protected speech is.

For someone who is so “strict” about the First Amendment, Ms. Behar sure does have a pretty lame understanding. She’s not alone. You hear it over and over again—all these talking heads screeching, “This is America!” and “What ever happened to free speech!?” every time somebody loses a job for expressing an opinion. And this is from news personnel—anchors, commentators, writers—people who are supposed to, you know, know shit and shit.

I’d understand if it were, say, the 11th Amendment that put their brains in a barrel hitch (“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity or blah blah blah blah…”) or even the 23rd Amendment (“The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as yada yada yada…”). But we’re talking about the First Amendment here. It’s first! It’s the amendment upon which all the other amendments were built—the foundation amendment. It’s the amendment that can do no wrong. When the First Amendment breaks wind, all the other amendments look up from what they’re doing and say, “Hey now! Who brought me flowers?” The First Amendment directly affects every one of us in such a crucial, tangible manner that it’s unlike any other, and, really, what kind of constitutional retard doesn’t know what the dang thing means?

Question: Little Joey Munson runs a lemonade stand on his block. However, Joey is afraid of cooties and refuses to serve girls, forcing LemCorp (the company that owns the lemonade stand) to terminate Joey’s employment. Were his First Amendment rights violated?

Answer: No. There is nothing illegal about firing ignorant, insubordinate cootiephobes.

Q: At the expense of journalistic ethics, a cable television network—let’s call it “POX News”—exhibits severe bias toward a certain political party. POX News demands that its staff support the bias or be fired. Are the staff’s First Amendment rights being violated?

A: No. POX is a private corporation and can climb into bed with Satan and take turns lighting each other’s farts for all the Constitution cares.

Q: The management at an alternative-news magazine—let’s call it “PrettyBeat”—is upset with one of its columnists. The columnist routinely makes fart jokes to appeal to a lowbrow audience. PrettyBeat instructs the columnist to lose the fart jokes, but the columnist refuses (not on principle but, rather, because fart jokes are all he knows) and is fired. Is the paper violating the columnist’s First Amendment rights?

A: Duh, no. Again, PrettyBeat has rights too.

Q: A bartender arrives to work in a shirt that depicts a burning flag. His boss tells him to take it off or go home because it irritates the shitkickers. Was the bartender’s First Amendment rights violated?

A: No! It’s the owner’s right not to alienate redneck customers. Who could blame him? Shitkickers can booze!

Q: A public park has a sign that depicts a person flapping his left arm with his right hand burrowed in the armpit—to produce a sound similar to that which originates from the anal opening. The image on the sign has a circle with a line through it, indicating that you may not make such a sound in the park. Is this a violation of the First Amendment?

A: Yessir! The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that arm-farting is protected speech (People v. JoJo the Clown). As long as you do not use armpit farts to incite violence and you do not fart falsely in a crowded movie theater, you are free to indulge yourself on public property.

So, how’d you do on my little quiz? I should think you scored a 100 percent, especially if you’re a member of the news media. I mean, really, if they’re going to allow you to be on TV, shouldn’t you have a basic understanding of free frickin speech? I think Congress should enact a law decreeing that any person with a public platform—whether on TV, radio or print—who does not wholly understand the First Amendment, will immediately be fired and, um—uh-oh. Scratch that. Doing so would actually be a violation of the First Amendment, which means I would have to be fired for recommending it. Crap! I sure hope my editor doesn’t noti—Columnist terminated.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the 14-year-old South Pasadena boy who recently lobbied to have profanity banned in his hometown. Apparently, the City Council liked the idea so much that they officially proclaimed the first week in March as No Cussing Week and The State of California is considering adopting No Cussing Week as well.

Now keep in mind, No Cussing Week is not law. It’s an official proclamation, which means–it don’t mean squat. It is unenforceable, un-punishable, not in violation of the First Amendment and, therefore, not deserving of our contempt.

It is, however, deserving of our ridicule.

Forget the obvious reason, which is that swearing is a valuable element of human communication. Anyone who doesn’t know that has never had their plane stuck on the tarmac for three hours, their shampoo bottles leak into their suitcase or their hotel reservation misplaced–all during the same trip. You just try to tell me that having access to a couple of choice obscenities at that moment wouldn’t save at least a couple of lives.

But the main reason No Cussing Week deserves our ridicule is because it’s fucking retarded.

The person responsible is McKay Hatch, the 14-year-old founder of the South Pasadena High School No Cussing Club. The No Cussing Club (NCC) is well-organized and proactive. It has a website, a logo, a motto, a T-shirt and even a theme song with accompanying music video. The song is called, “Don’t Cuss,” which is sung by young Hatch, who raps about the origins of the movement. The video opens with him watching some older kids playing basketball.

“I was sitting in the schoolyard, hanging with my crowd / When some kids came walking by, talking really foul / Every other word was burning in my ear / So I took a new stand and I challenged all my peers.”

At this point, two of the older kids step into frame and begin fighting over the basketball. Heath, a pasty-faced, puny little twerp, stands up, snatches the rock from their hands and gets in their faces with the chorus:

“If you wanna hang with us, I don’t wanna hear you cuss–don’t cuss!”

OK, look, I know the boy is only 14, and it’s fabulous that he’s expressing himself artistically. It’s just, when I watch this video, I can’t help but think, Man, you are sooo gonna get your ass kicked in school tomorrow.

When asked what made him decide to go on this anti-cussing mission, Hatch–whom I call Dead Kid Walking–said, “My mom and dad taught me good morals… and not cussing was one of them.”

Obviously, an adolescent boy has no deeper understanding of the word “morals” beyond whatever slop his parents have been pouring into his trough for the last 14 years. But swear words are just words, and words have no moral attributes. If anything, it’s bad morality to teach your kids not to curse. Especially if your child is puny and twerpy and tends to go on no-cussing crusades, wearing that holier-than-thou-boy-prodigy smirk that makes you want to bash his teeth in.

It’s just not safe is what I’m saying.

Imagine a bunch of non-puny seniors in the school cafeteria talking smack and dropping F-bombs for fun. Then up walks some pasty-faced twerp like McKay Hatch with his cloud of holier-than-thouness floating over his puny little body and announces, “My dad says it’s wrong to use bad words”–a sentence that he will be permitted to finish upside-down in the cafeteria dumpster with globs of ketchup smeared on his face.

Parents, if you love your kids, teach them to curse. And for god’s sake, don’t let them join no No Cussing Club! Can you imagine those meetings, sitting around the tree fort drinking SunnyD and planning their anti-cussing patrol?

“OK, gang, tomorrow we go out in teams of two. Tom and Jimmy will monitor the bathrooms. Sally and Ralph, you guys canvass the cafeteria. Log every cussword you hear. And, please, no heroes! Remember how long it took to dig Hatch out of the dumpster last time?

Yeah, um, no, I’m telling you, you teach your kids to curse. Teach them everything there is to know about swearing. Teach them all kinds of wonderful dirty words that none of their friends have heard–everything from underground cult hits to old-school classics like “Up yours” and “Pecker” and my all-time favorite, “Get bent.” Teach them how to coin their own obscene insults by placing a vulgar word next to a body part. Words like “Douchenose” and “Assmouth” are sure to be big winners in the cafeteria.

Teach them, also, about obscenity etiquette, like the importance of not cursing in front of adults, as a matter of respect, and because it might lead to a visit from Child Protective Services.

Teach them about restraint. Tell your children, “Children, go forth and curse righteous. But remember, like everything thing else in this world, foul language is best delivered in moderation. Use your four-letter words sparingly. And don’t forget to mix it up. Don’t just use the F-word, use the S-word, too. And the P-word, and the A-word. Remember to use all the delightful nuggets in the J-word series, and D-words, and even the B-word, though never against women, unless they are total C-words.

If W. and I had kids and lived in South Pasadena, No Cussing Week would be a holiday. Once a year, on the first Saturday in March, the Decker Clan would go on a field day. We would decorate the family SUV with tin cans and ribbons–like the newlyweds do–only instead of writing “Just married” on the back, it’ll say, “Get bent, South Pasadena!” Then we’d cruise down Main Street blaring Too Short at top volume.

For lunch, we’d take the crew into McDonalds. When it was our turn at the register, I would face the kids and shout, “OK, you little bastards, whaddya want?!” To which they would respond, “We want the happy meal, motherfucker!” Then we’d laugh and cuss and make fart noises with our armpits until the manager had no choice but to kick us out and we would have no choice but to give him the unanimous finger as we stumbled toward the door doubled over in laughter.

“You see I’m not proper, I’m rarely polite / Too Short, Too Short, don’t say it tonight.”
–From “Cusswords” by Too Short

Originally published in CityBeat March 2008

Ed Decker
03/14/08

Even worse are political euphemisms used to influence the public mindset, such as Dick Cheney’s “enhanced interrogation” to replace “torture,” which is offensive and an insult to our intelligence.

And let us not forget The Dark Lord of euphemisms, former Bush administration consultant Frank Luntz, who gave the president such doozies as “climate change,” “opportunity scholarships” and “responsible energy exploration,” which works well as a euphemism for “drill” but really isn’t all that bumper-sticker-friendly.

“Explore responsibly, baby, explore!”

The opposite of euphemism, by the way, is dysphemism. This is when you use an intentionally unpleasant or offensive expression in place of a polite one, such as “pro-abortion” instead of “pro-choice,” which is particularly offensive considering that those who are for choice are rarely for abortions. Luntz coined a few dysphemisms as well, such as “death tax” and “global war on terror.” Here’s a dysphemism I just made up: “Frank Luntz is a manipulative asshole who would kill his own mother and call it euthanasia if it got him more screen time” in place of “misguided.”

The reason I bring all this up is because, lately, I have been revisiting my disdain for manipulative language and believe it might be time for a change of heart. For one reason, when you think about it, isn’t everything a euphemism or a dysphemism of something else? I mean, is “passed away” a euphemism for “dead” or is “dead” a dysphemism for “passed away”?

The other reason is a recent Pew Research poll that found global warming to be last on a list of 20 voter concerns.

Last!

“It’s the terms we’re using that are holding us back with the American people,” says Robert Perkowitz of EcoAmerica. If true, that means Americans are not delving into the problem any further than the name of the problem. It means they hear “global warming” and think, OK, that’s fine. I’m tired of these miserable New York winters anyway.

Indeed, the phrase “global warming” doesn’t sound all that bad. It sounds like the globe was attending a patio party and started getting a little chilly, so somebody turned on the propane heaters to warm her up a bit. That’s why EcoAmerica says we should change the term to something more alarming, more doom-inducing. I’m typically opposed to such word manipulation, but now, I wonder.

One of the more infuriating arguments from the anti-environmentalist crowd (and I use the term “anti-environmentalist” as a dysphemism because they probably aren’t, actually, against the environment) is this notion that environmentalists are anti-people.

For example, when you have one of these situations where a bunch of tree-huggers (a dysphemism for “environmental activists”) try to block the construction of a shopping mall because it will destroy the habitat of some obscure, tiny animal, the anti-environmentalists will ridicule the tiny, obscure animal as though its size and unpopularity makes it insignificant to the ecosystem.

Fox News Anchor: “I can’t believe these tree-hugging hippies are more concerned about the North American red-snotted apple gnat than people, jobs and families!”

Token Liberal Guest: “Uh, um, duh, but, uh, uh, um….”

Another example is when the anti-environmentalists argue that clear cutting (a term that should totally be dysphemized to something like, “massive tree, earth, air, water and species devastation”) is good for people because without it, the timber industry would have to axe (a dysphemism for “lay off,” which is a euphemism for “fire”) more employees.

It is a noble concern.

However, accusing the environmentalists of not caring about people—forgetting that when we tinker with the delicate balance of the ecosystem, we tinker with people’s ability to live on this planet—is absurd.

The anti-environmentalists, who are typically conservative Republicans (which is a euphemism for “utterly myopic retards”) are right about one thing, though. The planet is not under stress. Not really. Because the planet doesn’t give a flying nuclear warhead about us, and there’s nothing we could do to the planet from which it would not recover. Even if it didn’t recover, what would the planet care? It’s a freaking floating rock in space among a zillion other floating space rocks—which proves my point, not theirs. It’s not about the planet. It’s about our ability to survive on it, and you can’t get any more pro-people than that.

So, yes, I have had a change of heart about these kinds of word manipulation. I’m all for dysphemizing the phrase “global warming” because, well, if it’s going to help the planet, which is a euphemism for “save our sorry, doomed asses,” then whatever it takes.

How about “global boiling” for instance? That don’t sound so pleasant. Or “global cornholing”? Ick. Perhaps we should replace “climate change” with “primate change,” because it will be us, not the climate, who get screwed. Or, I know, how about we just call it “imminent planetary mayhem ending with a brutal, agonizing death for every living creature and that means you, too, utterly myopic retards, so wake the fuck up!”—which, come to think of it, isn’t much of a dysphemism considering it’s all too terribly true

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a discrimination case brought by The Christian Legal Society (CLS) against University of California’s Hastings College of Law (UC Hastings) because the university denied the Christian group recognition as an official campus organization based on the Christian group’s policy against homosexuality.

Put another way, UC Hastings excluded the CLS because the CLS excludes gays.

Of course, the CLS—and just about every other Christian group in the country that thinks “The First Amendment” is a term Italian seamstresses use to describe the initial time they repaired an item of clothing—have expressed their disgust for the UC Hastings’ decision.

“Public universities shouldn’t single out Christian student groups for discrimination,” said Kim Colby, a spokesperson for the CLS. “We trust the Supreme Court will not allow UC Hastings to continue to deprive Christian Legal Society… by forcing the group to abandon its identity as a Christian student organization.”

Wow. “Discriminate”? “Deprive”? “Single out”? “Force to abandon”? This from the people who are always running at the mouth about how this country was founded on Christian principles, by Christian forefathers, and is overwhelmingly populated by Christians—yet somehow manage to get their rectums all in a rectangle because they think they are the ones who are being excluded.

Not only are these people not victims of exclusion, they are the excluders of the worst sort. They are The Exclusionista—an organized, rampaging junta invading The City of Inclusivity, storming its palace, killing the burgermeister and raping his wife and daughters. After all, who “discriminates” more than the religious right? Who “deprives” and “singles out” more than the moral majority. Who “forces to abandon” more than those fundamentalist faith-crazed homothropes who commit their sons and daughters to reparative aversion therapy and other forms of mind control to “force them to abandon” their same-sex predilections? I believe there is a special desk job in Hell’s DMV for anyone who can do that in the name of their faith and have the gall to claim victimhood.

Take, for instance, the holiday season. Oh, how they stomped and spit and shat themselves when (and if) they were prohibited from erecting their nativity scenes on government property, all the while ignoring that, when government favors one religion, it does so at the exclusion of the others.

Ditto the Mount Soledad war memorial controversy (which, incidentally, may be headed back to court). The Exclusionista howled to Christ on high whenever anyone tried to exclude their precious, bloated cross from city land, forgetting that the cross excludes every fallen soldier who did not believe Jesus died for our sins yet died in our fucking wars regardless.

Then you have Proposition 8 and the gay-marriage debate. Prop. 8 is The Exclusionista’s magnum opus. It is their finest symphony and, really, Prop. 8 should be called, “Symphony Eight,” because it’s so good that it’s actually one better than Beethoven’s Ninth.

Also known as “My little symphony in F.U.,” The Exclusionista’s eighth begins with two oboes prancing across the first movement like two fems figure-skating upon a frozen lake of gayness. Then the baritone bassoons thunder in, as if to say to the oboes, “Get off our ice, get off our ice, you are so gay, get off our ice.” And the oboes go, “No, no, no, we will not go,” and back and forth they continue until the clarinets and flutes—the goodwinds—pipe in, imploring the gays, “Please, gays, please, get off the ice. The bassoons will kick your ass real bad if you do not soon get off that ice,” and the trumpets trumpet their approval and the chimes chime-in in agreement, and then, for the finale, the bassoons and woodwinds (et tu, woodwinds?) all come crashing down on the oboes to the savage beat of the homophobic timpani.

“All student groups have the right to associate with people of like-mind and interest,” said Gregory S. Baylor, a lawyer representing the CLS. And you know what? He’s right. Indeed, not only student groups, but every organization or individual has the right to associate with whom they choose, such as, hmm—say—the people who attend or operate a university. UC Hastings has the same right, right? They have a right to jettison the CLS because, if it’s OK for the CLS to exclude gays, then it’s OK for UC Hastings to exclude gay excluders. Ditto the rest of us. If you want to have a lodge that doesn’t allow gays, then fine, go ahead and exclude the gays. You can call it the He-Man Homo-Haters Club for all I care. And if you want to start a group that excludes Jews, blacks, Albanians or alcoholic mimes, then so be it. Alcoholic mimes can start their own group. And they, in turn, can jettison the stoner clowns. Exclude all you want, people, just don’t cry like Glenn Beck at a Coldplay concert when you get excluded, too.

And don’t expect a dime of the public’s money to support your bigoted private clubs. Don’t expect to be endorsed with land grants or tax exemptions that were paid for by the very people you want to exclude. And, most assuredly, Christian Legal Society, if you want to be an officially recognized organization on the campus of a publicly funded school, then dump your group’s medieval bylaws into a time capsule and send them back to the 14th century, where they belong.

The ladies are bantering about how it’s become politically incorrect to say or write the words “Merry Christmas” and how that complicates the process of sending holiday cards.

“All my cards say ‘Merry Christmas,’” Shepherd barks defiantly, “because people know I’m a Christian, and if they are offended, they don’t have to get my card.”

Joy Behar, one of the co-hosts on The View who can actually see and shit, explains to Shepherd that the point of a greeting card is to commemorate the holiday that the recipient is celebrating. “I’m a Christian, too,” Behar says, “but I send my Jewish friends ‘Happy Hanukkah’ cards.”

“No,” spurts Shepherd, “this is my holiday!”

And there you have it, folks. It’s Sherri Shepherd’s holiday; we’re just decorating it for her.

There are few people in this whole wide world whom I despise more than that woman. Her unwavering conviction to fatuous, infantile concepts is astounding. This is a person who believes Christianity predates all religions, wasn’t sure if the world is flat or round and thought that taking Andy Dick to a Pentecostal church service would get him to change his ways.

So, no, I am not surprised that Ms. Shepherd would make such a remark, but when Elisabeth Hasselbeck agreed, well, that was a bit much. Hasselbeck—the blonde, right-wing, bumper-sticker spewing co-host of The View—ain’t no Copernicus, either, but she’s nowhere near as vacuous as Shepherd. Or so I thought.

Says Hasselbeck, “The Christmas card is not about who is receiving it—it’s about who is sending,” to which Shepherd wildly claps her hands as though Hasselbeck had just given her a gift certificate to The Weave Hut.

“It’s not about you,” she says, snidely, to all the anonymous greeting-card-receivers out there who have the gall to think that a greeting card is supposed to greet them. “It’s about”—Hasselbeck pauses—“you know,. . . ” stopping herself before saying that word: the word she realized, if uttered, would sound really, really bad, the word that explains exactly where these women are coming from. The word is, “me,” as in, “It’s not about you; it’s about me. Me, me, me, all me, all the time,” and twist my tits if that isn’t the best news I’ve heard in a while. Greeting cards are about the sender!? That’s fantastic! I can’t wait to start mailing out my “Merry Agnostmas” and “Happy Satanukkah” cards. And to think I was going to throw away my “Jesus is the Reason for the Weasels” greetings. And I’m thinking  the same logic should be applied to gift giving. Because if that’s the case, then I finally know what to buy my mother for Christmas: A bottle of Rumple Minze and the complete original re-mastered Black Sabbath box set, which I know she will enjoy watching me enjoy when I blast it repeatedly during my visit this year.

Are these ladies retarded? If holiday greeting cards are about the sender, why do they all say, “Wishing you…” and “Hope you have…” fer crissake?! What a malignant narcissistic idiot-child you must be to think the greeting cards you send should celebrate you. I can only imagine what those cards will say.

“To the Goldstein family: We are wishing ourselves a merry Christmas and praying that we have a joyous and lucrative new year. As you know, Christmas is about our lord Jesus Christ the Savior, whom you reject, because you’re Jewish, so I’m sorry to report that your whole family is going to burn in Hell for eternity. Otherwise, hope all is well. Give our best to the twins. Love, Sherri and Elizabeth of The View.”

Christmas cards are about the sender? What a laugh. It’s exactly this sort of self-centered, under-actualized thinking that drives the people who are against the separation of church and state. The kind of thinking that blinds people who want the nativity scene on the city hall lawn, prayer in schools and the Ten Commandments posted in courthouses. They think the establishment clause was meant to establish their religion because, as Shepherd and Hasselbeck have demonstrated, it’s all about them, and anyone who doesn’t like it can stick a straw in the baby Jesus’ diaper and suck it.

At one point in the discussion, Shepherd—the flat-Earth-believing, evolution-denying, walking contradiction to natural selection—remarks that she can’t understand why anyone would be insulted by her Christmas cards.

“I wouldn’t be offended if a friend sent me a Hare Krishna card. I’d just look at it and throw it in the garbage.”

Oh, Sherri, don’t you know? It’s not about being offended. It’s about being thoughtful. That’s why you would throw the Hare Krishna card in the garbage, because the person who sent it wasn’t thinking about you, they were thinking about themselves. So, ask yourself, shouldn’t all the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and secularists to whom you sent Christmas greetings throw those cards in the garbage as well? Not that they would. Friends don’t throw friends’ greeting cards in the trash. I know if we were pals and you sent me one of your drippy Jesus Christ is Lord, Hark the Herald Angels Vomit-type cards, I certainly wouldn’t be offended, nor would I throw it out. I would just think to myself, What a self-important infant you are and place it on the mantelpiece, upside-down, beside my copy of the Necronomicon and set of human-sacrifice knives.

Ed Decker

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat,

12/22/09