Snap Out Of It, Jordan Klepper!

Snap Out Of It is a segment on the Sacred Cow Wursthaus podcast where I tell people who should be on the freethinking side, but somehow aren't, to snap out of it and get their act together.

Some background info:  Jordan Klepper did a skit three weeks ago on the Daily Show in which he chided Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation for scolding a restaurant called Mary's Gourmet Diner.  Mary's, it turns out, had previously been offering a 15% discount for publicly praying before eating the meal, and FFRF quite rightly cried foul over it, sending them a threatening letter.  It seems the restaurant might not have been quite so discriminatory, as the discount also was offered for other things.  Still, Mary's quickly capitulated, and FFRF recommended that all its members patronize Mary's Diner afterwards.  Still, the story went viral.  Jordan Klepper took this and, after a two-hour interview in which he ground Dan Barker down, edited out all but the silliest bits from the interview and made Dan Barker look incredibly foolish.  He strongly felt that sending a harsh letter to a small diner threatening suit over atheists' "civil rights" was an egregious overreach.  Well, that's fine, but Jordan was in a glass house throwing stones.

Now, I subsequently called this a "wake up call" on the Sacred Cow Wursthaus podcast, mostly because the Daily Show is hardly Fox news!  And it's true that we as atheists need to change our tactics and abandon the bullheaded Madalyn Murray O'Hare approach to litigation.  Still, if FFRF overreached, Jordan Klepper did so even worse, both with Dan Barker and especially so on the skit he did the following week.  Hence the tirade below, which I will be reading live on the podcast today.  Here you go:

"This week I'm telling YOU to snap out of it, Jordan Klepper!  Yes, I somewhat took your side on last week’s podcast when I called your fake news segment about Mary’s Gourmet Diner a wake-up call, but your subsequent installments on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have convinced me that you are not the moralist you make yourself out to be.  Like the skit you did the following week where you defended the civil rights of people dressed up as Santa Claus to get drunk and party during Santa Con in New York.  Yes, we get it: In the wake of so many news stories featuring cops killing blacks and not getting indicted, lesser civil rights struggles seem funny by comparison, and you’re cashing in on that.  But how can you call Dan Barker, a man who makes Fred Rodgers look mean by comparison, a “dick,” and a “petty asshole,” and then in your next segment, act like a drunken Santa Claus who stumbles into a daycare center and starts cursing and swearing at a bunch of kids!?  Jordan, you may insult a man whose organization overreached “petty,” but saying “Fuck you!” repeatedly to a room full of little kids is a new definition of low.  Even if it was done off-camera (which I very much doubt), it made you look a thousand times worse than Saddam Hussein, much less Dan Barker – a man who, by the way, is defending YOUR rights as an admitted fellow atheist, and to whom you owe a great deal of respect, even if his organization does overreach on occasion, which it does only rarely!  

"So, Mr. Fake News, we at the Sacred Cow Wursthaus take great pride in twisting up our locker-room towels and giving YOU a well-earned crack across your hyper-sensitive ass!  Jordan Klepper, SNAP OUT OF IT!"

Eric

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