What About God?

There's a scene toward the end in the 1991 classic, What About Bob? in which Dr. Leo Monroe has had it with his "patient" Bob Wiley. Bob's followed the doctor to his summer home in New Hampshire and ingratiates himself so deeply into Leo's family, he's practically a member. Finally, Leo goes off the deep end, takes Bob into the woods at gunpoint and ties him up, well, Wiley Coyote-style, to a bunch of gunpowder. The classic naif, Bob persists in believing the bomb ticking around his neck is part of his therapy, which Leo calls "death therapy."

But sometimes life imitates art a little too much, as these Bible-thumping whack jobs in SantorumLand recently proved.

I'll get you started: This Assembly of Maniacs is invaded one night by gun-wielding thugs who then proceed to take several children hostage. They shove them into a van then drive to the pastor's house where they then appeared to beat him. One of the victims was a 14 year-old girl who wasn't even part of the congregation but went with a friend who said the church activities were "fun."

As it turned out, the stunt was just that- a stunt designed to "teach" the children about the religious persecution Christian missionaries face when they're trying to proselytize and subjugate ignorant, brown people (such as during the Crusades, for instance, which I'm sure got conveniently left out of the lesson plan).

And these Bible-humping gibberish talkers wonder why they're being persecuted. Well, now they could be prosecuted as well as persecuted since they never got either the child's consent to do this nor her mother's, which is a felony in Pennsylvania and in other parts of the country. What really disturbs me is that one of the thugs they got to carry out this What About God? exercise was an offduty cop using his own service semiauto.

Both Pastor John Lanes and youth pastor Andrew Jordan both say the staged abduction "was never meant to horrify", which just goes to show you how clueless these lunatics are. How the hell is a Columbine-style abduction with masked men and guns not going to terrify adolescents, especially those who aren't in on the prank? And when you take away the shock value, how are you supposed to impart a valuable life lesson like the persecution of Christian missionaries?

Believe it or not, even though they're being investigated by the Dauphin County District Attorney's Office, Pastor Lanes said he has no intention of suspending the "lesson" but added that from now on, he'll get parental permission.

Like Sinclair Lewis said, when fascism comes to America, it'll come swaddled in an American flag and clutching a cross.