All clear? All clear! Excellent. Let us proceed.
You can’t be too careful nowadays, which is why, before stepping onto this page, Sam sent in his team of highly trained inspectors to scour the entire magazine for any signs of CMD – which, as you are all well aware, stands for Cartoons of Mass Destruction.
A man with as high a public profile and as long a schlong as Samuel J. Snort Esq can’t afford to take any risks with his personal security. One waspish stroke of the pen by my old mucker Rooney or an ever so slightly contentious bit of wordplay by my other old mucker Mathews and, before you know it, the mad mullahs are chanting ‘Down with Uncle Sam’ and lads and lassies with haversacks are attempting to scale the battlements of Snort Towers.
And we can’t be having that. Especially not after what we’ve already been having.
I refer, of course, to the hysteria which seems to have taken hold of many of the Islamic persuasion in response to publication in the European press of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Now, Sam has no idea what the Prophet Muhammad looked like and, frankly, couldn’t care less, but since photographic evidence is presumably thin on the ground, I’m not quite sure how he can be depicted with any great accuracy in the first place. For all I know, the cartoons might have shown someone who looked like Ronnie Drew. (Or even what Ronnie drew, sez you, ho, ho).
No matter. Seemingly, it’s not a thing you are supposed to do, and the fact that it was done is enough to explain why gunmen took over the offices of the EU in the Gaza Strip, Danish flags were burned on the West Bank, Libya closed its embassy in Copenhagen, supermarkets in the Arab world demanded a boycott of Lurpak and, in Beirut, the leader of Lebanon’s Shia Hizbollah made bold to say that the row would never have happened if the 17-year-old fatwa on Salman Rushdie (another old mucker of mine) had been carried out.
So we can take it then that some people are a bit upset.
And not only in the east.
Religious fervour also runs deep and daft in the west. Witness, last week, reports of Christians up in arms in the States over the fact that a gay actor, Chad Allen, has been cast as a missionary in a movie called End Of The Spear.
One pastor said casting Allen was like ‘Madonna playing the Virgin Mary’ (when hasn’t she?) while Kevin Bauder, president of the Central Baptist seminary in Minneapolis vouchsafed: “It would probably be an overreaction to firebomb these men’s houses but what they have done is no mistake, it is a calculated strategy.”
Probably.
Universal Dingbat
So I think we’re beginning to see a pattern here, one in which, when all the dots are joined, there emerges a clear depiction of the unmistakable face of none other than The Universal Dingbat.
No wonder that the newspaper France Soir responded to the flag-burning and ‘kill the infidel’ placards with the headline: ‘Help, Voltaire: They’ve Gone Crazy’. (Presumably this is an admittedly obscure reference to the legendary Television guitarist Tom Voltaire. No hang on, I’m thinking of Verlaine, aren’t I? No matter, we need all the help we can get).
Anyway, just for the record, can Sam Snort take this timely opportunity get just one teeny-weeny little thing off his chest. It’s to do with the fact – not the belief, the fact – that there can be no such thing as blasphemy, on the very solid grounds that there is, in fact – not in belief, in fact – absolutely no credible evidence whatsoever for the existence of God or Allah or whatever you want to call him, it, her, when him, it, her is at home. None. Zero. Zilch. Diddly.
Oh, but you say, lots of people believe in him, it, her. Correct. But then lots of people believe in lots of things: astrology, abduction by aliens, alchemy, chakras, ghosts, monsters, UFOs, even England winning the World Cup. And you know why? Because the world is full of fucking dingbats.
Look, can we get this clear once and for all: there is exactly the same basis in fact for believing in the existence of God as there is for believing in the existence of Gandalf.
Speaking of which, permit me a digression. Has anyone else noticed how the Gandalf/Frodo relationship in Lord Of The Rings pretty much mirrors the relationship between Bobby Robson and Steve Staunton in the new Irish football management set-up?
Think about it: Gandalf/Robson is the ancient grey/white wizard of vast and almost limitless power and yet, for reasons unclear, he entrusts the life or death quest of the ring (Euro qualification) to a wet-behind-ears Hobbit (Stan) even as he insists on maintaining a critical ‘background role’.
Eerie similarity, no? When I’ve finished dissing religion, remind me to address a memo to the Sports Desk on this subject.
Horse Sense
Speaking of which, when Sam finds himself mired in the ugliness in which we all find ourselves struggling these days, his search for truth inevitably sees him turning to the pages of the good book.
I refer, of course, to that essential repository of wisdom, revelation and horse-sense, The Great Shark Hunt by Dr Hunter S. Thompson.
Please all turn to page 187 where, under the title, ‘Memo From The Sports Desk: The Great Jesus Freak Scare’ we find the following useful reminder: “Sometimes the old walls are so cock-eyed that you can’t even fit a new window. The trouble with the Jesus freak outburst is that it is less a window than a gigantic Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Rape of the Congo and the Conquest of the Incas, the Mayans and the Aztecs. Entire civilizations have been done in by vengeful monsters claiming a special relationship with ‘God’.’
Please remember that one in your prayers.