The Pope puts a hit out on Larry David
By Tom Quiner
Larry David, the comedic creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, has gone into hiding. No one knows where he is. His career is over.
It all happened quickly following a controversial episode of his HBO sitcom, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Here’s what happened in the fateful episode. Mr. David’s character was medicated with a pill that would compensate for the shortcomings of his middle-aged prostrate. In his haste to relieve himself, urine (from Mr. David’s character) inadvertently splattered onto a painting of Jesus hanging on the bathroom wall. The show milked this low brow humor for all it was worth.
Typical Hollywood bathroom humor, right?
Pope Benedict found nothing funny about another assault on the Christian faith. The Pontiff had it and blew a liturgical gasket in a public address from St. Peter’s Square. Here is an excerpt of the stunning pronouncement:
“My fellow Christians. The American media and entertainment establishment has heaped one blasphemy after another on our faith. We have meekly turned the other cheek time and time again. And where has it gotten us? The blasphemers are only emboldened. Each act of sacrilege is worse than the previous. In the name of God, in the name of Christ, this must stop. Today, I am calling on the faithful to act. The perpetrator of this outrage must be hunted down. He must pay for this atrocity with his life. The honor of Jesus Christ demands it. The dignity of religious faith demands it. And I demand it.”
A terrified Larry David immediately went into hiding.
The reaction from the media was explosive.
The New York Times devoted a full six pages to denouncing the Pope and the Catholic Church specifically, and Christianity generally. The Times editorial called for immediate governmental action:
“It is time for Catholic Churches, and perhaps Christian churches everywhere, to immediately lose their tax-exempt status. God, if she even exists, only knows what is being said within the hallowed halls of these so-called churches. The Church and its representatives should not be allowed to foment unchecked fear and unrest. The social order demands quick government intervention to protect us from these religious crackpots.”
The Seattle Weekly was less reserved:
“It is time for the government to board up these simmering dens of anti-secular malcontents. More Americans are going to be hurt, more are going to be forced underground unless something is done, and done quickly.”
The Des Moines Register struck a more moderate tone:
“No one believes in freedom of religion more than the paper Iowa depends on. But the time has come for more government oversight and regulation of houses faiths in this country. Religion in American has become an inefficient hodgepodge with 33,000 competing denominations. We need to move to a single prayer system. We are not calling for the establishment of a state religion. However, we advocate that we begin a process of creating a more logical and orderly way for Americans to approach their spirituality.”
Okay, this isn’t quite what happened. The Pope didn’t really say that, nor did those papers write the above editorials. Larry David is fine. Yes, he offended the faithful in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm as described above. But no one threatened him. He is rich and famous and by all accounts doing well.
Here’s the real story. It’s about an American cartoonist named Molly Norris who has lost her identity because a Muslim terrorist has called for Muslims to murder her.
Ms. Norris reacted to the self-censorship imposed by Comedy Central, the Yale University Press, and other stewards of American culture when it came to Muslim matters. Muslim jokes are out. Muslim commentary must be carefully couched. Or you may be killed.
Molly Norris came up with the idea of a “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” The thinking went that if a ton of people do just that, Muslim terrorists can’t kill everyone, can they? No, just Ms. Norris.
Muslim terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki, the man who inspired the Fort Hood mass murderer, learned of Ms. Norris’ idea. He immediately issued a fatwa, calling for her to be immediately murdered. She is now a marked person. She is in permanent hiding. Her identity is gone. Her career is finished.
I would find at least a little comfort if the media demonstrated even a smidge of concern for this, another barbarous assault on Western Civilization. I would feel that America was unified even if the media expressed some outrage for this Muslim-imposed assault on free speech.
Here is how the Seattle Weekly responded:
“You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.
The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program – except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. . . .
Norris views the situation with her customary sense of the world’s complexity, and absurdity. When FBI agents, on a recent visit, instructed her to always keep watch for anyone following her, she joked, “Well, at least it’ll keep me from being so self-involved!” . . .
[W]e wish her the best.”
We wish her the best?
May I ask you a question? If the tables were turned, if public hits were being directed at members of the American media by Christians, if Christian-directed attacks on free speech were on the upswing in Western Civilization, would the liberal press say, “we wish her the best?”
***
This post ran on Quiner’s Diner seven years. Still, Molly Norris lives in hiding.
Still, Molly Norris is no more.
Still, no one cares.
The very people who make excuses for every Islamic atrocity while trumpeting every scandal involving conservative and Catholic Christians, have Donald Trump in their crosshairs because he dares to do something about keeping Americans safe from Islamic terrorism.
Will Molly Norris ever get her life back? Not if the American Left has anything to say about it.
Tom, thanks for again mentioning Molly Norris. The indifference of the Des Moines Register to her plight was appalling, even after I brought it to their attention a number of times.
In 2010 on September 20th and 28th I sent an e-mail to Linda Fandel, then-Register Editorial Page Editor, about what happened to Norris, with links to Seattle Weekly News articles about it. Only after the second e-mail did I get a response: “Dear Mr. Kirby, Thanks much for sending this. Best regards, Linda.” No coverage in the paper.
A few days later, on October 7th, I attended a forum at Drake University titled “What it means to be an American Muslim.” I mentioned Norris to the panel of Muslim Americans and asked if they would be willing to go on record and say that the 1st Amendment gives anyone the right to criticize or draw a picture of Muhammad. The moderator, Drake professor Mahmoud Hamad, did not allow any of the panelists to answer the question and moved on to the question of the person standing behind me. As I found out later, Hamad considered my question “not relevant.” Later on one of the panelists, Zuhdi Jasser, attempted to answer my question, saying that it was relevant, but Hamad actually took the microphone out of Jasser’s hand and said, “As the moderator I am the one who decides.”
On October 23rd I sent an e-mail to Linda Fandel about the incident at Drake. On October 25th I received her reply: “Dear Mr. Kirby, Thank you for your follow up on this. I appreciate your calling our attention to this story. Sincerely, Linda.” But still nothing in the Register about Norris.
In 2011 Rick Green came in as the new editor of the newspaper. On January 16th he wrote a column introducing himself and stated that one of the most “prominent” responsibilities of a newspaper was to “defend the First Amendment.” So on January 28th and again on February 4th I e-mailed him about Molly Norris. Receiving no response, I mailed him a letter with the same comments from my e-mails. I never received a reply from Green and there was no coverage of Norris.
The fact that newspapers have no problem offending Christians, but fear to offend Muslims says a lot about the reality of Islam.
Steve, I originally wrote this piece in 2010 early on in my blog. I ran across it today and checked it on Snopes to verify it had actually happened. The reaction by the Seattle Weekly was so cavalier, that I wanted to be sure I hadn’t been suckered by fake news. Obviously, it really happened, and there’s a Fox News report on the subject from 2010. I cannot fathom why there is no outrage over a story like this, when there is so much outrage over Donald Trump doing pretty much what Barack Obama in 2011. Thanks for sharing your connection to the story. All I can say is, “amazing.”
Two reasons for the lack of outrage come quickly to mind:
2005 – Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad. Since then repeated attempts by Muslims to kill the cartoonist responsible for the drawings.
Attacks by Muslims on the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2011 and 2015 for satirizing Muhammad. In the 2015 attack 12 people were killed.
Virtually all of Western Media is afraid to criticize Islam. That’s why you hear artificial terms like “radical Islam,” “Islamists,” and “Political Islam.” The reality is that these three are based on the Islamic Doctrine found in the Koran, taught by Muhammad, and acknowledged as mainstream for most of the 1,400 years of Islamic history. They are just politically correct, and safe, euphemisms for Islam.
Thanks for clarifying the media’s reticence to pursue these stories with integrity.