On “Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat.”

[The Colbert Report.]

Back in 2010, Stephen Colbert did a funny bit entitled “Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat,” which I watched again recently. He did it round Christmastime. When it came out, there was much rejoicing among the Christian Left blogosphere, and one of the lefty blogs I glance at re-posted it for fun. It still applies.

[Update, 10/20/24: Paramount has taken it down, so you’ll have to settle for my transcript.]

COLBERT. Just seems to me the Democrats don’t get Christmas. Another example: Congressman Jim McDermott, who used the baby Jesus to push his pro-poor people agenda. Jim?

MCDERMOTT. [video clip from Hardball] This is Christmastime. We talk about good Samaritans. We talk about the poor, and the little baby Jesus in the cradle, and all this stuff, and then we say to the unemployed, “We won’t give you a check to feed your family.” That’s simply wrong!

COLBERT. Of course it’s wrong! We should’t be talking to them at all! They’ve got unemployment cooties.

And I am not the only one upset by McDermott’s flagrant injection of charity into the Christmas season. So is Papa Bear Bill O'Reilly. In his weekly column, he wrote, “Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who need assistance through no fault of their own. But guys like McDermott don’t make distinctions like that. For them, the baby Jesus wants us to ‘provide’ no matter what he circumstance. But being a Christian, I know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not self-destructive.”

Good point, Bill. Jesus said we only have to love those who deserve it.

And what I like best about Bill’s argument is its complete factual inaccuracy. Because it would be inconvenient to guys like us to repeat what Jesus actually said. For instance “If someone wants your coat, give them your cloak as well.” “Rich people should sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor.”

Plus the fact is, Jesus was way beyond self-destructive. He was self-sacrificial. I mean, the guy is God. He could’ve floated off that cross like Criss Angel: Mindfreak.

And I love, I love how Bill closes with, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Kind of implying Jesus said that, when it was actually Ben Franklin, who I believe belched out that proverb between mouthfuls of French whore.

But as much, as much as I’m a fan of Bill’s willfully ignorant, borderline heretical self-justification, I gotta tip my hat to Bernie Goldberg, who came on The Factor to call Jesus like he seezus. Jim?

GOLDBERG. [video clip from The O'Reilly Factor] As a matter of fact, y'know, Jesus probably would be, except for one or two issues, a liberal Democrat if he were around today.

COLBERT. Yes. Jesus was a liberal Democrat. It’s right there in his name: Jesus H. Christ! The H clearly stands for Hussein.

Plus, Jesus was always flapping his gums about the poor, but not once did he call for tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Romans, even though they create all the good slave jobs. And don’t forget, Jesus hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes, and no good conservative would be caught dead with tax collectors.

What frightens me, what frightens me really, what really frightens me about this is now we know we got a liberal Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father. He’s basically Yahweh’s Joe Biden. Anything happens to the Big Guy, we could end up with a socialist deity redistributing my loaves and fishes.

It hurts me to say this, folks, but if Jesus really is a liberal, it’s time to get the Christ out of Christmas.

Now, listen listen listen. You know me, you know me. I’m no fan of the term X-mas. Or X-anything. I make my kids play Christ-box 360. And if they break a bone, they get Christ-rays.

But it is time to take baby Jesus out of the manger. Replace him with something that’s easier to swallow. How about a honey-baked ham?

Because if this is gonna be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition—and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

Merry X-mas everybody.

The bit was inspired by—heck, the entire premise of The Colbert Report was inspired by—Bill O’Reilly. He’d written a newspaper commentary, “Keep Christ in Unemployment,” in which he bellyached about some statements congressman Jim McDermott made on Hardball with Chris Matthews on 2 December 2010.

MCDERMOTT. …I care about the unemployed. They are the—they should be the number one question. This is Christmastime. We talk about Good Samaritans. We talk about the poor, the little baby Jesus in the cradle, and all this stuff, and then we say to the unemployed, “We won’t give you a check to feed your family.” That’s simply wrong!

And I don’t care—tax cuts can wait. We can get to them down the road someplace. But I think you have to force the Republicans out in the open and take all their clothes off and let them stand there naked and say, “We will not take care of the poor. We will not take care of unemployed people who were creamed by Wall Street not through any fault of their own. They were working along, they’ve been working for 50 years at a job, and suddenly, they got nothing. And that kind of stuff has got to be met directly. You cannot back down to that.”

MATTHEWS. Okay, well, Christmas isn’t just that stuff, by the way. Just to correct you from my point of view. I don’t know what yours is, Congressman, but I wouldn’t call Christmas just that stuff. It happens to be my favorite day of the year for every possible reason, including religion.

Technically Matthews is right. Christmas isn’t about caring for the poor and needy. Christianity is. Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus. Unless you’re a pagan, in which case Christmas is about making sure that you’ve given out presents of an approximately equal value to the ones you’ve received. (Or, if you’ve been lucky enough to come out ahead, it’s making sure nobody really notices.) Any giving is, of course, for tax purposes. In my experience, every time a liberal invokes Jesus, conservatives can’t sit silent and let them do so. As far as conservatives are concerned, they own Jesus. He’s been on their side ever since the Moral Majority threw in their lot with the Republicans in favor of segregation in federally funded Christian colleges against abortion. Now, O’Reilly claims he’s not a conservative because he’s not a registered Republican. As if party affiliation makes any bloody difference; actions and words do.

O'Reilly couldn’t let McDermott’s statement stand without rebuttal, because Jesus, he believes, is on his side. Even though he clearly knows nothing about Christ, and has demonstrated as much through his book Killing Jesus, through being clueless about common Christian interpretations of the gospel, through flubbing basic Catholic doctrine, and by consistently referring to Jesus in the past tense, as if he’s dead. You realize if Jesus is dead to you, your religion is dead to him.

Hence his “Keep Christ in Unemployment” …which provoked Colbert’s ire.

Now let me explain why Colbert did such a poor job with this bit. That’s right, poor job. Don’t get me wrong; it’s really funny. It’s just poor satire.

Satire is when you use exaggeration to point out foolishness. The Colbert Report is a satire of The O’Reilly Factor: It takes the persona of a right-wing blowhard, amps it up to outrageous levels, and has fun with it. Everyone knows Stephen Colbert doesn’t mean it when he acts like a conservative ninny. It’s a character he’s playing so he can poke fun at talk shows, and the fools who say truly stupid things on those shows. He’s at his funniest when he does so.

But in “Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat,” he breaks character a bit. Colbert is a devout Roman Catholic. Though he makes plenty of Jesus jokes in the show (’cause he likes to call himself “America’s most famous Catholic”) you’ll notice ultimately he can’t help himself: He takes Jesus’s side. If it came down to staying in character, or defending Jesus, he chose to defend Jesus.

I don’t fault him at all for that. That’s how most of us Christians are. Fun is fun, but you don’t bash our Lord. Not just ’cause there’s nothing bashable about him, but because we don’t want anyone confusing our kidding around with actual anti-Jesus sentiment. People confuse Colbert with his right-wing parody character all the time, so you can see why he’d be worried people might misread an anti-Jesus statement.

But in defending Jesus with typical Christian zeal, it’s not satire anymore. It’s earnest. Which is the opposite of satire.

The way to parody O’Reilly’s commentary is pretty obvious: You take O’Reilly’s side. And then you go overboard. O'Reilly claims Jesus promoted charity but wasn’t self-destructive. Okay, so for satire, we take that bit in the gospels about how Jesus sacrificed himself for the sins of the world, and claim it must be a fabrication. As well as every statement which purports to say Jesus talked about helping the needy.

“Give your tunic as well as your coat”—yeah, Matthew claims Jesus said that, but conservatives know this was falsified by some left-wing Christians to back their liberal agenda. Feeding the five thousand? Never happened, and God helps those who help themselves, so Jesus would’ve told them, “Go ye into the towns and stimulate the economy.”

Not to worry, true conservative Christians: Papa Bear will tell you which parts of the bible to believe, and which parts to cross out with a Sharpie. In the end he can guide us to a nice, benign Christ who doesn’t challenge or disturb us at all. A god made in his own image.

Or, instead of bible-editing, Colbert could point out how he, O’Reilly, and his fellow free-market conservatives need to find a new religion, ’cause their beliefs aren’t consistent with Christianity. (He kinda did that at the end, but didn’t go far enough.) Since O'Reilly isn’t big on Islam, and is a little too violent for Buddhism, and Judaism is big on social justice too, clearly those religions aren’t for him. If you’re looking for a religion which perpetuates social castes, rewards you for wealth, demeans you for poverty, and gives you plenty of gods to choose from, Hinduism would be perfect if it weren’t for the vegetarianism. But if you want something more simple, with a basic credo of “If it feels good, do it” (cue the graphic of dirty hippies) or “Do as thou wilt” (cue the horns and pentagrams) there are other options. Just not Christianity. ’Cause Jesus expects different.

See, the soul of satire is subtlety. And you have to trust your audience to know you’re kidding, to follow your twisted logic and know it’s twisted logic. Trust them to realize—even if they know as little about Jesus as Bill O'Reilly—that O'Reilly is entirely wrong about Jesus.

Yet in this segment, Colbert tossed most of the subtlety out the window, ignored the fake-conservative character he’s been playing for years, and called O’Reilly a heretic and social-Darwinist Christians hypocrites. Which they are. And it’s funny. But that ain’t satire.