The Eye of Sauron has once again turned his baleful gaze on magicians/freethinkers Penn & Teller. This time around Catholic League president Bill Donohue is unhappy about P&T’s treatment of the Vatican in an episode of Bullshit! that hasn’t even aired yet. (TiVo check: Showtime, Thursday, August 27, 10PM. Got it?)
Are P&T profane? Yes. Insulting? Always. Provocative? They don’t call their show Bullshit! for nothing.
But really, hate speech? Donohue’s press release, plus the full-page ad he just took out in Variety, contains his usual hyperventilated, alarmist rhetoric. Making fun of Catholics is hate speech; it’s a “vicious assault”; P&T wouldn’t dare do this to Muslims, ’cause Muslims are crazy and they kill people; yadda yadda yadda. I’ve said this before: I’ll grant Donohue’s contention that the Western media treat Muslims with kid gloves precisely because of their sometimes murderous reaction to perceived insult (Salman Rushdie, anyone? Jyllens-Posten?). What I resent is Donohue’s implied threat that maybe Catholics ought to take to the streets as well.
Anyway, the Eye is fond of posting the contact information of people who have drawn its stare, so I’ll do what little I can to counter it. Contact Showtime CEO Matthew Blank at Matthew.Blank@Showtime.net and let him know P&T have your full support. You can also email the Catholic League at cl@catholicleague.org and let them know they’re full of it (use phrases like “Catholic League engages in hate speech against free speech” and “vicious assault against the rights of non-Catholics” just go get their goat). Probably neither email actually goes to Blank or Donohue, respectively, but it’s worth a shot.
Oh, this could be good! Penn does *not* back down from douche-bags like Bill Donohue. “Then there’s THIS asshole…”
Hey I just watched Season six and Penn did not say “Then there’s this asshole” even one time.
As an ex-catholic, I say insult away. Let the bastards have it. How else would you treat an organization of con artists, professional child molesters and those who enable them? Really, if you take away all the window dressing and surface characteristics that distinguish it as the catholic church, what else are they? A subsidiary organization (the CL) that acts in their defense deserves no better.
(If Donohue is the Eye, is the Pope Sauron himself?)