Good Friday's No Shame Theatre piece

Friday Nights I'm always at No Shame Theatre...last night was Good Friday and it was no exception.
Here's the piece I did last night--

Easter Greetings from the Heart of Archie
(Lights up on Archie at his desk. He is eerily calm and serene.)

Hey, I'm Archie Levine...and THIS is what I think....I think you're probably wondering where my anger is.

Why aren't my veins popping out of my head?

Why aren't I yelling and screaming?

God knows I've got plenty I could be yelling and screaming about.

There are more retired generals calling for Rumsfeld to resign than there are Americans who think Bush is doing a great job.

(Rising anger through this section)

There's Tom DeLay's resignation, there's the Homeland Security official caught in an online underage sex sting, and there's the Scooter Libby revelation that Bush was the leaker he said he'd fire for leaking the information that led to the outing of a covert CIA operative in a time of war.

There's Bush telling us that for our protection and to help America understand why he was saying what he said in his speeches about the war, he declassified the tiny part of the National Intelligence Estimate which addressed his claims of WMD in Iraq, but didn't declassify the overwhelming majority of the same classified document which contradicted that very claim...

There's the fact that even Rush Limbaugh is saying you can't execute Moussaui for not telling us something because we have a 5th amendment right not to incriminate ourselves.

There's the insane perversion of logic in the argument that Moussaui deserves to be put to death because his not telling everything he knew to the FBI was the cause of the deaths of 3,000 innocent people on September 11th....even though Bush not telling us everything he knew caused us to launch a pre-emptive war which killed at least 33,000 innocent people!

There's the Council on Family Relations who are bankrolling lawsuits by students around the country who want to use the courts to force universities with anti-discrimination codes of conduct to repeal those codes so that Christians can have the freedom to express their religion by telling fags that God hates them and will make them burn in Hell.

There is John McCain speaking at the Liberty University where Jerry Falwell is putting everything he can into the creation of a biblically based Law School so that there will be wave after wave of Dominionist End Time Theologians with the legal credentials to sweep secularists from the benches in our courts and liberals from the seats of power in our government.

(At the peak of apoplexy)

There are revelations after revelations about the lies, greed, corruption, and incompetence of our current government that are staggering in the extreme and so dangerous I can't get to sleep at night without taking a bottle of vodka to bed with me!

(Calming to serentity again)

So, why am I so calm?

Because it is Holy Week. Because instead of thinking about what the Theocratic Elite are telling me Jesus says to hate, and destroy, and punish...instead of watching Pat Robertson and Falwell and the Council of Conservative Christians try to figure out how to get God to start the End Times ahead of schedule....I had a little look at what Jesus had to say about his life, and his message...and his death...which we commemorate this day.

If I were to meet Judge Roy Moore, who said his Christianity had moved him to donate a graven stone image of the Ten Commandments to the foyer of the Alabama Courthouse in which he was the sitting Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court...I'd ask him why he didn't instead donate a stone memorial to the commandment Jesus gave, just before he was taken by the Romans?

Jesus told his disciples, "I have a new commandment for you...that you should love one another."

Wouldn't that be a world changing thing to have inscribed above every courthouse in the nation? Or, for that matter, above the front doors of every school, church, and town hall in the land? Emblazened on every drinking fountain, every fountain pen, every bumpersticker, on every lapel pin, every coin, every dollar bill, and every prison gate in America?

"I command you to love one another" --signed, Jesus.

God gave Moses Ten Commandments. Jesus gave us one.

And so, I'm trying to fulfill that commandment.

At least through Easter.

George Bush, I love you. John Ashcroft, I love you. Judge Roy Moore, I love you. Donald Rumsfeld, I love you. Dick Cheney, I love you. Zacharias Moussaui, I love you. Mohammad Atta, I love you. Osama bin Laden, I love you. Saddam Hussein, I love you.

And I love each of you, too.

Who Would Jesus Love?

It went extremely well...with strong audience response even though after all these years of yelling and screaming my voice gave out at a couple of the screechiest parts and my mouth was incredibly dry for some reason...need to remember to have a Ricola handy to suck on right before each piece I do.

One of the nicest comments I got afterwards came from a fellow who is a conservative enough Libertarian to make Neal Boortz shift uncomfortably in his seat. This guy came up to me and said he loved the piece. Another guy told me it was the best Archie Levine editorial he'd ever seen, and two others asked if I'd be putting it up on my blog...so, by popular request, here you go.