Betty Bowers re the Terri Schiavo case

By Mrs. Betty Bowers
America's Best Christian

Dear Fellow Citizens of Jesusland:

Verily, I thought The Swan was bad enough (mainly for its cruel refusal to book Barbara Bush), but this new Terri Schiavo Show is truly America's most crass foray into that siren call for opportunists everywhere -- Reality TV. Perhaps, my exasperation with this abysmal new program is exacerbated by the fact it appears to have been syndicated on every single station.

Parading one's piety on cable television has replaced NASCAR as America's favorite talentless sport. And no one could touch Tom DeLay last week in his outrage over Terri's husband doing precisely what Mr. DeLay did for his own father not so very long ago. Some people less charitable then I have accused my friend Tom of hypocrisy. I am forever grateful to my Lord and Savior for showing such a deft knack of showmanship by populating this planet with such amusingly stupid people. It is not hypocrisy, but selflessness, driving Mr. Delay's efforts to demonize and then criminalize that to which he so readily availed himself when not before a camera. Tom's decision to euthanatize his father is much akin to our handsome President's decision to euthanatize the unborn child being carried by his underage girlfriend back in the 1970s. In so enthusiastically embracing the GOP's favorite scripture ("Doeth as I sayeth in Jerusalem, not as I doeth back in Bethlehem"), both men merely wish you to be spared making the personal choices they made along life's rutted road, choices that clearly have left them moral ciphers, whose only sense of morality comes directly from St. Gallup.

Meanwhile, the Terri Schiavo of Rome (above), that Polish transvestite the Pope (also know to Jesus and me as the King of the Mary Worshippers) has lost his ability to communicate to such an appalling degree that -- finally! -- his sermons are worth listening to.

I can't help but wonder how many of the Catholic idol worshippers who have been making a "look at how holy I am!" spectacle of themselves by pimping their children for some TV time in front of Terri Schiavo's hospice will be willing to haul their Infant of Prague and Goddess Mary embroidered statuary onto the next Alitalia flight so they can caterwaul in St. Peter's Square after some ambitious Cardinal signals to an obedient, discrete nurse to pull one of those cute little European three-prong plugs on the Pontiff's respirator.

Patricia Heaton, the wife on Everyone Loves Raymond, was on Entertainment Tonight this week talking to Mary Hart, who is the only woman in America capable of making our charming First Lady's smile look almost biodegradable. Patricia told the eternally perky Mary that God spoke to her. Only in America would we have a sitcom shrew as our latest prophet. Yes, God chatted Pat up. And in His best Gladys Kravitz mode, He apparently told her, "Patricia, go forth and interfere with Terri Schiavo's marriage!"

That's the wonderful thing about our Christian God. He never tells us what we don't want to hear. It's uncanny. But, you know, in a moment of novel candor, I can hear the Lord telling Patricia Heaton: "Verily, I say onto thee: I f--king hate Raymond!" But, to be honest, I find it rather odd that a woman who purports to so unquestioning place God's decisions above doctors' would alter every inch of the body God gave her with enough plastic surgery to return Michael Jackson to his original race, if not gender.

The silver lining to this unseemly Terrri Schiavo debacle is, of course, that it should be clear to all inhabitants of Jesusland that we now - hallelujah! -- live in a country finally unfettered by secular laws. And that nettlesome Constitution - with its crazy separation of church and state Enlightenment nonsense? Gone the way of Ben Affleck's career and disappeared before our eyes! Glory!

While I watched Operation Rescue mercenaries praying for Mrs. Shiavo on television, I couldn't help but recall Jesus in Matthew 6:5-6:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Well, I have spent enough time in Hollywood with John and Kelly and Tom and, well, whomever to know the nonsense of Jesus' words: Closets are for Scientologists!

In reviewing my mail when I got back from my recent two-month outreach ministry to five-star resorts throughout this godless world, it became clear that many of you have not been under God -- which is a lot like being under Ann Coulter -- only significantly less hairy.

Well, the world is changing my friends! And Christianity, truly the Amway of all superstitions, sees a marketing opening. You see, Nature (which is what we call God when he cruelly torments folks in trailer parks with the weather), abhors a vacuum. Paris Hilton notwithstanding. And proof of this is how the changes currently going on in the Middle East are being inversely reflected back here in Jesusland.

Iraqis are voting Ohioans are not

The Taliban is gone They have relocated to our PTAs

Iraq has a constitution Apparently, ours, as we don't seem to have one anymore

President Bush is fighting to keep the new Iraqi government secular He's is fighting to strip America -- quicker than an SUV in Compton -- of its secularism

So close to Jesus, He told me that the sanctity of marriage between a man and a non-penised person doesn't count for squat if we can score with our base by pushing the husband aside and involuntarily cramming a feeding tube down his wife's throat,