Two weeks ago, SWiFT, the Southeast Wisconsin Freethinkers, of whom I am a member, worked in collaboration with American Atheists to put up a provocative billboard for the holidays. For those who missed it, here's what the billboard looked like:
Charlie Sykes, the premier talking head on the 3-time Marconi Award winning local radio station WTMJ, which monopolizes all sporting events, as well as news, traffic and snow-closings, had this to say about the billboard after he ranked it #3 on his weekly "Deep Tunnel" awards:
"Hey, we get that atheists don't believe in God and don't celebrate Christmas, but you know, Christians don't put up billboards mocking their darkened, soulless beliefs. So my advice to atheists is..." [And here he plays his sound clip of a man screaming, 'Shut up! Shut up! Shut! Up!' Followed by the sound of a toilet flushing.]
Well, in the words of an old commercial for Starkist Tuna, "Sorry, Charlie!" First off, atheists DO celebrate Christmas. Only a small percentage of us choose not to, and they are usually chided by their fellow unbelievers for being sticks-in-the-mud. But more importantly, it is simply, empirically FALSE that Christians don't put up billboards mocking atheists "beliefs." (He meant so say, 'lack of beliefs,' I'm sure.) So, to help set Charlie straight, here is just a small sample of the many anti-atheist billboards out there, not including the ones currently visible from I-894 and I-94 in Waukesha:
There was one more which I mentioned on the Sacred Cow Wursthaus podcast, which featured Jeffrey Dahmer, but that billboard illegally used the copyrighted trademarks of the American Humanist Association and Planned Parenthood, and so the image has been removed from the Internet.
So to you, Charlie, I give my own award: The Whoopie-Cushion Award!
"Bplbplbplbplbpltttt!!!"
Eric
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