Originally published March 24, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1375
I’ve been doing this column for nigh unto a decade now, and I’ve come to the startling realization that I’ve been going about it all wrong.
What I write doesn’t matter. What people think I’ve written, that’s the important thing.
I’ve experienced this on-and-off over the years, because I never know which things I write are going to set people off. I’ve scribed opinions in these pages that I thought would get a rousing response, and instead there was dead silence. I’ve tossed off throwaway comments that I thought were mild and they resulted in a cavalcade of angry letters.
But what I have noticed is the tendency for people to ascribe thoughts and notions to things that I’ve said, or even change them completely for the purpose of getting upset.
This was brought home for me recently when a thread was begun on Usenet entitled, “PAD is Anti-Catholic??” Considering that my girlfriend is Catholic, this is a sentiment that is right up there with the time that some folks decided I was anti-Semitic. What was most striking to me, however, was one poster stating, “Well, PAD did recently say in a BID column that Christ was ‘likely mythological.’ That may not be a direct quote, but it is close.”
Except it wasn’t close. The original quote was:
But for the average Jew, what can we count on for the day where the country which mandates a separation between church and state shuts down offices (including all government ones) in order to celebrate the (most likely mythical) birthday of a noted religious figure?
Obviously I was saying that the birthday was mythical, and many Biblical scholars concur that the “noted religious figure” of Jesus was probably not born on the day that corresponds to December 25 (if nothing else, the odds are one in 365.) The phrasing itself should have made it obvious, and it was also pointed out in “Oh So” when a reader complained.
But all that was remembered for the purpose of the posting (not to mention several subsequent comments) was the notion that I had said Jesus was mythical, which somehow further implied that I didn’t like Catholics (or any Christian, I guess.) Someone finally did point out the truth of what I’d written, but in the meantime there were assorted messages treating the misquote as truth.
All of which led me to realize that I’ve been wasting my time and the readers’ time. Instead of writing something relatively straightforward and having it misinterpreted to occasionally ludicrous extremes, I should just cut straight to the chase, as it were. Write stuff that is completely over the top, because if that’s what people are going to say I wrote, I might as well do it and really give them something to complain about.
For instance:
You know all those times when I’ve advocated crackdowns on guns? Well, I was wrong. Dead wrong. The recent events in Flint, Michigan have made that clear. Just as the response to speech should be more free speech, the response to armed children should clearly be more armed children.
The profile that has been constructed of the young shooter has made it sound as if a life of crime was inevitability. The thing is, he could have grown up without anyone fully knowing the direction he was likely to head. Consequently, by the time he reached adulthood, he might have been able to catch people off guard. “It’s always the quiet ones.” “He seemed so nice.” How many times have we heard that refrain?
Thanks, however, to a society that facilitated his getting his hands on a loaded gun, we now know at age six that the kid was an accident waiting to happen. Oh, sure, a little girl is dead. But think of all the potential future victims whose lives have been spared since we now know the boy is dangerous. So he can be handled in the manner appropriate to my newfound worldview: He can be sent to Texas and executed.
I’m telling you, why should we wait? Guns don’t kill people, after all. People kill people. But the average child is going to have trouble annihilating his classmates without .32 caliber assistance, and we’ll all have to wait until he’s a more troublesome adult to learn about his proclivities. So we need to provide more temptation, not less. Make guns easily available so that, if a child is so anti-social that he’s ready, willing and able to cap a playmate, we know now. Granted, some children will die in the process. But hey, omelets and eggs, y’know?
Speaking of criminals, here in New York, an unarmed suspect (and known drug dealer) was shot and killed. The neighborhood was in an uproar, and one citizen demanded, “When is this going to stop?”
Well, gee, maybe it’ll stop when people stop breaking the law. Hello? Is the message getting through? Welcome to New York where, if you find yourself running up against the police, you’re going to get a bullet or two or fifty in the brain. If you don’t want to get shot by the police, then here’s two wacky ideas: First, don’t commit crimes which could give them an excuse to shoot you, and second, don’t hang out in places such as crack houses where police are likely to show up and shoot you.
It’s time we stopped being soft on crime, coddling criminals and giving them the impression that they have a right to complain just because the price of resisting arrest or selling drugs is execution by firing squad.
In fact… I’ve an even better idea.
Round up all the six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds who have proven to be good shots with an utter lack of care for human life and send them in, armed, against addicts, pushers and criminals. How many times have we heard that the schoolyards are dens of temptation? No longer. What pusher is going to try and scare up business in the nation’s schools if he’s worried that one of the kids is going to whip out a .32 and blow the pusher’s face off? And then there’s the crack houses. No more clumsy and risky police raids. Instead send in an army of armed kiddies and tell them to shoot anything that moves. Oh, sure, the crack dealers might try to shoot back, but six-year-olds aren’t easy targets. A kevlar vest would serve as a head-to-toe protection, and their small stature should do the rest in terms of maximizing safety.
Guns. Guns and violence and homicidal kids. These are the keys to a safer, healthier, and better America.
I’ve seen the light.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. I hear they’re casting about for a Canadian to perform “Blame Canada” at the Oscars. To my mind, only one individual, whose song stylings are legendary, can do justice to the song: William Shatner. Note to the Academy: Get on this immediately.)
• 
I have only one thing to say…
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The sad thing about your gun solution is that you were trying to joke about it; trying to make an exaggerated parody of an idea. A decade later that’s almost become the NRA’s official slogan.
The basic problem with trying to make fun of the NRA is that you hit Poe’s Law almost immediately, especially if Wayne LaPierre is off his meds again.
Meanwhile, the NRA approved body count continues to climb with no end in sight.
Your story of the confusion over Christ’s birthday reminds me of something that happened to me when I was 11 years old.
I was selling Christmas cards that year. They were the kind that came with the family’s name already printed in them, which meant you had to try and sell them September or October, which was hard for anyone to do, let alone an 11-year-old kid. But, I did well enough that I actually earned myself my very own tape recorder, something I told my parents I wanted to try and overcome my speech impediment. I did use it for that, but I also played around with it a lot.
Anyway, one day after school, I walked the neighborhoods going door-to-door trying to sell Christmas cards. It wasn’t quite as bad as it might sound now: It was 1964 and my little Northern Indiana town had a population of only about 2,000 people. Not a rampant area for crime.
But I was trying to sell my cards, when I knocked on the door of one woman who, looking back at her, I now realize was one of that breed found in nearly every small town in America — and probably in a lot of the larger towns as well: The Crazy Christian Lady.
No, I’m not talking about the kind trying to get everyone to repent, or who tells everyone what an exemplary life she herself lives. I’m talking about the kind who spends so much time thinking about her faith that she comes up with some ideas that are, well — not Gospel.
In this case, she told me that she had figured it out, and The Bible said Christ was 33-and-a-half years old when he was crucified. And, she looked at the calendar, and, going six months back or forward from Christmas doesn’t put him anywhere near when Easter is observed.
(I know, if I knew then what I’d know today, I’d’ve pointed out that The Roman Year was only 10-months long, so figuring Christ’s birth six months in the modern calendar — which would take you to the same period in the year whether you went forward and backward — wouldn’t work.)
Now, as if it weren’t bad enough to tell a little kid something like that, she made it even worse. She said that the birthday people were actually celebrating was that of King Nebuchadnezzar,who was NOT a nice person, to put it mildly.
An adult would’ve walked away shaking his or her head, thinking “There, but for the grace of God — ” But I went home thoroughly heartsick, wondering if the holiday I looked forward to so much every year was actually celebrating an evil king. It took my mother about an hour to explain that the woman didn’t know what she was talking about, and why she didn’t know it.
We have plenty of such people in the world these days. The hard part is when they get a chance to talk to kids and cause, not merely heartache, but soul-ache in them.
That’s why, to this day, whenever I hear someone pronounce something right or wrong because of how they interpret The Bible, I take it with a grain (okay, a boulder) of salt.