Julie Sweeney's Religulous

Comedienne Julia Sweeney created a thought invoking character on past episodes of Saturday Night Live. “It’s Pat,” the fictional comedy routine she realized, effectively probed the public’s perception of gender. With her androgynous character Pat O’Neil Riley, Sweeney pushed the boundaries of sexual orientation by creating a gender-neutral human being. Her recent sketch on Comedy Central’s “Pulp Comics” parodied an English professor’s analysis of the Bible. Staunchly supporting Bill Maher’s views in Religulous, Sweeney’s effervescent literary critic uses a useless technique to try to understand the books of the Bible. Like Maher, the college professor tries to analyze a literal interpretation of the Bible. While television has digressed to a primordial level in recent years, God has not. Because education in America has been failing at an epic level does not mean God is any less intelligent. That intelligence, one capable of devising and creating the universe, is formidable. That is why the Bible not only is not the verbatim words of God, but is not an oration. In certain ways the Bible could be considered a collection of human fables designed and collected to create interest and provoke thought about the history of Christianity. Interpretation of the Bible is academic, and America is doomed to misunderstanding without a more pious and inquisitive look into its meaning. A simple decrying of the words of God’s disciples is not enough to prove that God does not exist. It is a narcissistic and self-deluded neurosis that contradicts the purpose of art and condones human sloth. As Barack Obama continues to say, Americans will have to become engaged in the processes of religion and government to reap the results of both. With dumb founding ignorance of the economic aesthetic visible in Washington, America needs to rally around something other than the hopes of an interim government. The spirituality of America’s black gospel church is being met with grave resistance in the newly convened federal government. President Obama is attempting to bring a swagger of religious confidence onto Capital Hill. Like Bush’s preceding white America always has, they fail to understand, “Taking it to church.” It is a little bit like watching James Brown saunter through the Supreme Court. While a pragmatic approach to healing America’s economy would be welcome, it is obvious no one has the answers. There is nothing wrong with trying to loosen the collar of the GOP while caustically approaching the past agenda of George W. Bush. While a newly invigorated Republican philosophy could serve such a dire economic crisis, the GOP like the Democrats have to prove they know something. At the moment we have the same discrepencies we had before January 20th. Barack Obama has undertaken a mammoth presidential agenda. Each day of his new administration has planted a singular and separate executive order in the furrows of America. With such a diverse agenda it is difficult to see his forest for of the trees. The majority of his decisions have been frugal in abiding by his former campaign promises. Each topic systematically has been reversed in what seems like a schizophrenic about face to Bush’s ironhanded Nazi regime. Stem cell research, abortion rights, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered agenda and Muslim Diplomacy all have been marinated in democratic blood. It is a lot to bite off, and America still is chewing on the lunch. Let’s just pray to the “fictional” Religulous God that the supper of an economic stimulus plan will prove a nutritious meal to the appetite of the American economy.