Jules Feiffer has described Tony Auth best, "His perspective is that of a bemused and often angry comic historian. Irony, never a favorite form with Americans, is his meat and potatoes. He is not smug, and though he can be mean, he is never mean-spirited. Auth is a moralist and an optimist. He insists, even in this day and age, that hope is more than the name of a right-wing comedian or the shtick of a reactionary president."
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Comments (33) (Please sign in to comment)
walruscarver2000 said, 7 months ago
All part of the Defense of Religion Act.
masterskrain said, 7 months ago
Sad to think that it has to come to that…
Molon Labe said, 7 months ago
Atheist hate Jesus so much that they will lie, steal and cheat in order to remove him from so much as being looked at. They are so filled with guilt and sin, they don’t want anyone to be reminded of it.
ruff
said, 7 months ago
@Molon Labe
Now here is a real wacko opinion. Atheist don’t care what you display, as long as it is not displayed on public grounds. Then it becomes a community problem. Why would they steal it?
Radish
said, 7 months ago
Not in my neighborhood.
Wabbit
said, 7 months ago
sad comment on the times!
Stipple said, 7 months ago
The same people steal lawn displays as used to push over outhouses.
Religion has little to do with it, ’tis the season for jhundreds of new targets.
.
This has been a problem with young people since greek and roman times, they complained also, except it was not christmas displays as christmas had not been invented yet.
Ms. Ima said, 7 months ago
@walruscarver2000
Oh, ha ha ha defense of religion act. you should have a stand up show. Are you on Youtube?
Ms. Ima said, 7 months ago
@ruff
Why do athiests care what is displayed on public grounds? Is their anger based in the simple fact that they have nothing to pubicly display? How does one create a display that they do not believe in religion? Maybe they could have bigger than life pictures of themselves, because they believe that they are the ultimate beings in the universe?
lonecat said, 7 months ago
@Stipple
In the period just before the Athenians sent a fleet off to Sicily, a group of (probably) young men went around the city at night and mutilated the herms — little statuettes placed all over the city. (You can google “herma” to see pictures of herms.) This was considered a major desecration, and when the Athenian navy got whopped, a lot of people thought the gods were getting back for the mutilation of the herms.
ahab
said, 7 months ago
@lonecat
Lonecat, I thought they were just practicing the Bris!
lonecat said, 7 months ago
@ahab
I’ve never seen a reference in all of Greek literature to a mohel.
Doughfoot said, 7 months ago
Are people really so obtuse as to not be able to understand why people do no want religious objects enshrined on public property? Or is this another case of willful refusal to understand?
Personally I see no more harm in putting up temporary Christmas decorations on the courthouse lawn than putting up temporary Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu decorations in the same place on other holidays, so long as there is no favoritism shown by the government or the laws for one religion over another.
But all too often these things are used nowadays as stalking horses, and are not intended chiefly to celebrate a holiday, but as a means to claim possession. This is too often about TURF. The religious object is actually intended to say, “This is OUR turf.” Or: “If you do not share OUR veneration for these symbols, then you really don’t belong in, or are not really a member of, the community whose shared property this is.” I’ve seen this in practice.
I don’t claim to have the perfect answer; I don’t think there is one, but a little sympathy and consideration for the other fellow’s point of view is certainly called for.
P.S. There was a time, no so long ago, when only Catholics put up creches at Christmas, for Protestants thought them idolatrous. Christmas trees originally would be seen only in Protestant houses to set them off from Catholics. While in Puritan New England in colonial days Christmas as essentially outlawed as a pagan festival.
Henry Kujawa said, 7 months ago
The rednecks and the Nativity scene for some reason remind me of one of the funniest stand-up routines I ever saw on TV, performed by Brett Butler. It was about a huge Nativity scene set up in a shopping mall in August, which included a giant 10-foot candy cane “JUST like in the Book of Matthew” (her dead-pan delivery really pushes the whole thing over).
She’s baby-sitting a nephew who decides to knock over the candy-cane. “I know I should have said something, except I was bored and he’s not my child…” The candy cane manages to decapitate the figure of the little baby Jesus, which goes off rolling across the floor, while some frantic woman yells, “Don’t you TOUCH that, it’s it SACRED, it is HOLY!” And she replies, "I guess that’s where the phrase “holy roller” comes from."
dtroutma
said, 7 months ago
Buy a “Hannuka bush”!