Bush-Jesus Election Recap

[progressivejazz]

RECAP OF THE RECENT BUSH-JESUS PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST

The initial name recognition enjoyed by Jesus held the promise of a close Presidential race this year. But his own words and actions caught up with Jesus and the result was that George W. Bush won the recent election by the largest landslide in American History. How did it happen? Let’s look at the race as it unfolded.

The first of Jesus’ actions to garner criticism was his alleged “walk on water”. Republican spokesmen tried to brand him and the witnesses liars, but this didn’t resonate with the American public until a hard-headed commentator on a cable news channel said of the alleged “walk”-- “A cheap parlor trick meant to impress the naïve will not be the key to victory with the American electorate”. And, as it turns out, this was the beginning of the public’s disenchantment with Jesus.

At the beginning of summer, it came to light that Jesus had stopped a legitimately-gathered crowd from stoning a woman taken in adultery. Extremists on the right immediately took this as evidence that he was both against the death penalty and in favor of adultery. These serious charges could have been ignored but were soon reinforced by two revelations in stories that broke in the same respected conservative newspaper. The first was the acknowledged “close relationship” between Jesus and a woman named Mary Magdalene. She was initially described as a prostitute, but this was later revised to a “follower in the Jesus camp”. When Jesus claimed she was a “disciple”, many who were not naïve in this case either, merely laughed. The second involved the alleged “raising of the dead” man Lazarus. Seasoned conservative commentators pointed out that since this was clearly impossible, Jesus must have simply nursed him back to health. And who would a man like Jesus be more likely to nurse back to health than a criminal? It was most likely; their analysis showed, that Lazarus had been legitimately condemned to death, but that the death penalty was improperly carried out, leaving him dying, not dead. Whereupon Jesus came along and brought him back to health, thereby cheating the public of its right to see the sentence come to its legitimate end. The fact that all the witnesses to the “miracle” disagreed with these commentators was taken as proof of the bias of the witnesses. But it was really the Jesus’ own words that cause the issue to resonate. “How can a man who believes that ‘The meek shall inherit the Earth’ be anything but soft on crime, soft on terrorism, and soft on morality”, the American people asked? And Jesus had no acceptable answer.

Toward the end of summer, the “Marriage Feast At Cana Attendees For Truth” ran a series of political ads that denied that Jesus had turned water into wine at the marriage feast. They were then interviewed by every newsman on every cable news channel, sometimes with a Jesus supporter to provide balance. The Jesus supporters pointed out that not all the “Attendees For Truth” had really attended the marriage feast, and that everyone else who had attended had attested to the reality of the so-called “miracle”. So the issue was not resolved, and did Jesus’ candidacy grave harm. The attendant controversy over whether Jesus should have turned the water into something more “family friendly”, such as Kool Aid hurt his candidacy even more, as it showed Jesus and his backers were in favor of intoxicating beverages.

The final blow came in early autumn, when it was revealed that Jesus had driven the money changers out of the Temple. By now, it wasn’t just conservative pundits who pointed out that the way he did this indicated a lack of control, a possibly unbalanced mind. The Bush campaign also labeled Jesus as “liberal, anti-capitalist, and possibly un-American”, a charge that stuck when it was revealed that Jesus had, earlier in his career, likened the chances of a rich man’s getting into Heaven to those of a camel passing through the eye of the needle.

In the end, Jesus lost not because he was a Jew, not because he was a liberal. It was simply a matter of character.