For the new pope, tell your cardinal to vote for Chuck Lorre (pass it on!)

Chuck 'n' Charlie: Not to worry -- given the current state of relations between them, it seems highly unlikely that Charlie would be popping in at the Vatican (with or without "goddesses") to visit Pope Chuck.

"[D]on't get me started on the demographic potential of a TV show entitled 'Pope Chuck, P.I.' (Kiss the ring, or get punched by it!)"

- from Chuck Lorre's vanity card (#409) proposing
himself as an "outside the box" candidate for pope

by Ken

I was turning over ideas to maybe kick off a weekly series of musings on TV tonight when I got derailed.

As to the TV musings, I haven't done much writing about TV lately, I think because I've been feeling less and less confident that what I'm looking at (let alone looking for) has any relevance to anybody else. I'm not sure why I should be the only person in the world who seems to pay attention to this factor, but it's made it tough.

But for tonight I had this idea of writing about the purge I just did on my DVR "Series Manager," finally freeing myself from shows I've stopped watching anyway and finally got tired of deleting every week. (It can be really tough with the cable shows, because if you delete one "scheduled recording," the device will attempt -- helpfully, it thinks -- to substitute another showing of the same damned episode, and will keep doing it as long as there are other showings to schedule-and-delete.) So I wouldn't be so much "reviewing" these shows as explaining the decision to sever those DVR ties.

Meanwhile, while I was turning these ideas over, I was watching this week's Big Bang Theory, reflecting that you could take any two minutes at random from the show's entire run to date and that would represent a vastly greater achievement in terms of creativity, character insight, human empathy, intellectual seriousness, and entertainment value than the entire bloated corpus of these HBO and Showtime shows I've finally flushed. And then came the vanity card came on, and I realized I had to stop the presses, or whatever the blog equivalent of stopping the presses is, to spread the word about this bold proposal from the show's runner.

I myself have made my own suggestion for a new pope: one of those pesky nuns who have been causing such agita to outgoing Pope Cardinal Ratguts and the rest of his cadre of deviant sociopathic Church overlords. Of course I have no standing in matters papal, but surely it has occurred to you faithful Catholics that neither do you! You're just going to let the old cardinals bicker and come up with some other repellent scumbag and you can all pretend that this dingbat too is infallible.

(I was delighted, by the way, to see that my idea of one of those pesky nuns for pope also occurred to E. J. Dionne Jr. Sorry I can't find a link, but that piece seemed to me at the time to disappear when E.J.'s studiously fair-minded appraisal of Ratguts appeared.)

Anyway, I think it's time for you Catholics to start kicking up a fuss to make sure your cardinal knows that you're an interested party. (That's assuming you have a cardinal. As I understand it, you aren't automatically entitled to one. You get a bishop and very likely arching over him an archbishop, you lucky devils, but only the pope can determine if and when your archbishop is entitled to a cardinal's beanie. You folks in the L.A. area, for example, are still having to make do with just an archbishop. He will no doubt be elevated by the next pope, since it's unimaginable that L.A. won't have a cardinal. But for now, remember that you still have a conclave-eligible cardinal in the person of your former "ecclesiastical prince," that douchebag Mahony. So e-mail him; I'm sure he'll be interested in your views, just as he always was.)

Now Chuck L may indeed be an, um, unexpected candidate for Bishop of Rome. But I can pretty well guarantee you that he's a better prospect than any of the slugs who'll be handicapped as potential candidates between now and the day the white smoke blows.

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #409

I'm a big believer in the old maxim, "If you don't ask, you don't get." With that in mind, I'd like to throw caution to the wind and ask the Vatican's College of Cardinals to consider me for the job opening that recently became available. Now, before you say anything, let me be the first to point out the many reasons "why not." I'm Jewish. I've never understood the hoopla over the Old Testament, with all the smiting and begetting. I'm a twice- divorced sitcom writer with a shady past. And perhaps most importantly, I look silly in a hat. No argument, the cons are plentiful. But let's take a moment to examine the pros. First, I am completely untouched by the abuse scandal that is currently engulfing the church. I can stand on the balcony that overlooks St. Peter's Square and say to the adoring masses, with a straight, albeit Semitic face, "Folks, I've never even met an altar boy." With me as your pontiff you buy yourself some serious deniability. Next, believe it or not, I happen to be a very spiritually inclined guy. I would love a job where my primary thrust was encouraging prayer, meditation and acts of loving kindness. (Although in the interest of full disclosure, we would have to negotiate some common sense middle ground for any other thrusting I might want to do. It'd be a shame to waste adoring masses as long as they consist entirely of consenting adults.) And finally, there's the issue of my name. How can a billion true believers not smile and breathe a sigh of relief when the white smoke coming from the chimney is to announce the investiture of Pope Chuck? Cardinals, I want to assure you that while my papacy is a little "outside the box," you can rest assured that I would passionately carry the good word to all the poor and the downtrodden, beginning with a holy visit to Saint-Tropez, or maybe the Bahamas or Turks & Caicos. And just think of the marketing opportunities! How is "Pope Chuck" not the name of the next Adam Sandler movie? What's to stop me from busting a move on the balcony and starting a dance craze called "Pope Chuckin'"? And don't get me started on the demographic potential of a TV show entitled "Pope Chuck, P.I." (Kiss the ring, or get punched by it!) Yes, this transition represents an incredible opportunity for the church to be reborn. And at the end of the day, isn't that the name of the game?

Are you going to tell me Chuck L wouldn't look better than Pope Cardinal Ratguts in this new-style pope hat? I'm not saying he'd look great in this monstrosity, but he could hardly help looking better, no?

#

Arizona Republican Party Declares War On Latinos

Doug Kahn, who lives in Phoenix, has been warning me lately about some really extreme legislation coming out of his adopted state. There's some crazy new gun law that makes it possible to carry concealed weapons without permits; at least you can't conceal a tank or a nuke! And this week the whole country was shocked at the draconian new anti-immigrants law Arizona passed-- well, not the whole country. McCain is using it to prove to teabaggers that he's one of them at heart and hates Latinos as much as they do.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, on the other hand, isn't hesitating to compare Republicans like McCain to Nazis, pretty strong message for the head of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese.

The measure wrongly assumes that Arizonans "will now shift their total attention to guessing which Latino-looking or foreign-looking person may or may not have proper documents," Cardinal Roger Mahony said in his blog Sunday-- a day before Arizona's Legislature sent the immigration enforcement measure to the Republican governor.

Gov. Jan Brewer has not indicated whether she will sign the bill, which creates a new state misdemeanor of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document. It would also require officers to determine people's immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally... Mahony, whose archdiocese has a huge Hispanic immigrant population, said the Arizona Legislature was passing "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law."

Similar laws that were previously passed in other states have been repealed or struck down in the courts, he said.

"The tragedy of the law is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources," Mahony said.

"I can't imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation," the cardinal said. "Are children supposed to call 911 because one parent does not have proper papers? Are family members and neighbors now supposed to spy on one another, create total distrust across neighborhoods and communities, and report people because of suspicions based upon appearance?"

"The country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law?" Exactly what McCain was looking for. In fact, virtually the entire Arizona Republican Party just found something to run on. This law is a Tom Tancredo/Heath Shuler wet dream. Congressman Raúl Grijalva, easily Arizona's most beloved and respected member of Congress-- at least in terms of ordinary Arizona families-- doesn't agree, not even a little. He asked Gov. Brewer to veto the clearly unconstitutional law which forces police to stop and question "anyone" (though probably not Irishmen or Swedes suspected of being an illegal immigrant, including a demand for papers verifying U.S. citizenship).

“This bill will be rejected by the courts, and in the meantime, Arizonans will be subjected to unnecessary indignity at the hands of a racist law,” Grijalva said. “I cannot stress enough the scale of the damage Arizona’s prestige and credibility will suffer if this bill is finalized.”
 
Grijalva called on national organizations of all kinds to reject Arizona as a convention destination unless the bill is vetoed. A Super Bowl ban by the National Football League Players Association after the state refused to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. day was effective in changing the policy in 1993.
 
“If the state follows through with this, the cost will be high,” Grijalva said. “This bill is not a serious approach to the immigration issue. This is grandstanding at taxpayer expense. Turning every police officer in the state into a roving immigration official, armed with a racial profiling mandate, is un-American on its face and cannot withstand even casual legal scrutiny.”

"Grandstanding at taxpayer expense?" Seems like no one can get John McCain off their minds these days. Raúl will be speaking on the Keith Olbermann show on MSNBC at 5:00pm, Arizona time (8:00pm eastern). SB 1070 is a racist law that will negatively affect Arizona's economy. It allows for racial profiling and it is simply un-American. We should all stand with Raúl as he urges Governor Brewer to Veto SB 1070.