Al Franken: Senate Hopeful, God Hater.

So I was reading this piece about Katherine Kersten’s apparent Christian based hatred of Al Franken (yes, that Al Franken) and I gotta stand up for Al, or against Kersten, I’m not sure which. Kersten by the way is a columnist for The Star Tribune in Minneapolis / St. Paul, I’m sure she and PZ are good friends.

Al Franken is running for the US Senate in Minnesota and Katherine seems to really hates this idea. Why, you might ask? Because he made jokes about God and that’s a no-no.

Now I don’t know how many of my readers (the three of you) actually grew up going to church but let me just say one thing. One of the biggest pastimes for any religious group is making fun of other religious groups. I have personally been a part of making fun of Baptists, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Scientologists, Hindus, and Buddhists, I actually didn’t get that Buddhism is not a religion at the time. The only difference now is that I make fun of all denominations of Christianity rather than just most of them.

The interesting thing about it in retrospect was that the joke was never the important part, the important part to my friends and fellow congregation members at the time was that we all agreed that those other sects and religions were wrong. It’s never the tenets of a religion that matter, it’s the need to be with those who agree. That’s why Christianity is so big on Sundays but the rest of the week is really vacation time for most followers.

I assure you that barring Katherine Kersten being an unusually upright person (and maybe she is, I’ve never met her) then she’s just as culpable as Franken. If in the past she hasn’t made the jokes herself about other religions then she has certainly taken part in laughing at other faiths, belittling them, looking down on them, and judging them. It is simply a part of fitting in with the Christian faith. But when it comes to their faith, they won’t stand for jokes all of a sudden. Typical Christian rhetoric. We can say whatever we want because we’re “washed in the blood of Jesus” but you heathens can’t say anything about us.

As the bumper sticker says Kathy, “If you don’t want me laughing at your beliefs, don’t have such funny beliefs.”

In her column she drones on for three paragraphs that Franken made a joke about her lord and savior Jesus T. F. Christ. To Franken’s credit it seemed like a funny bit, I’m not certain though because Kathy butchered it. She closed out that section of her article with the usual Christian moxie “Anyone wanna do a joke about Mohammed?”

Sure, I’ll give it a shot. “Mohammed, your followers are so stupid their lips move at stop signs.” Yeah it wasn’t that good, I basically just changed “Jesus” to “Mohammed” to make the joke. I phoned it in, so sue me.

One of my favorite pieces from the article is this gem “We’re used to slanderers of Christianity getting government arts grants.” Right, because the only people that would not believe in god are liberal artists who are smoking weed all the time and tripping balls on acid.

Bottom line is this, if you don’t like him, don’t vote for him. But if you’re trying to convince Americans that Franken shouldn’t be voted into office because of his religion then you Mrs. Kersten are very un-American.

The end of your article is a description of what the Senate is supposed to do, even going so far as to state that the Senate serves “the broader interests” of the people. Sounds to me like you only want Senators to serve the broader interests of Christians. And not once in all your political science rhetoric did you mention that whole separation of church and state idea.

Religion should have nothing to do with it Kathy, nothing at all. We’re talking about politics and government, you know, real entities. Whether he likes Christians or not has no bearing on whether or not he can do a good job in the Senate.

This sounds like yet another Christian trying to perpetuate the myth that Christianity and our government go hand in hand. Apparently history books aren't available to these people.