As some of you have no doubt heard, the only American currently on the list of important modern political thinkers in our standard world history textbooks is about to be cut from it, replaced by a Frenchman no less. This snub is not the work of some America-bashing academics from Marin County. Au contraire, it’s the Texas State Board of Education that’s handing Thomas Jefferson his walking papers.

The 10-5 vote is presumed to be due to Mr. Jefferson’s advocacy of “a wall of separation between church and state” and other Enlightenment ideas, considering that the phrase “Enlightenment ideas” is also being stricken from the standards. Jefferson’s replacement is the conservative French theologian Jean Cauvin, a.k.a. John Calvin, whose backers argue that the change was not ideologically driven, but merely predestined.

The Board also added Thomas Aquinas to the list, who lived in the 13^th century. As definitions of modernity go, this places the current SBOE firmly in the company of nostalgia buffs like the Knights Templar and the Taliban.

The layers of irony here are as thick as the decision itself. First, Jefferson was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence, which stands alone among  America’s trinity of founding texts for its references to both God and the Creator. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are conspicuous for their absence of any such language.

Second, Mr. Jefferson’s wall of separation has greatly benefited the religious fervor that is now being turned against him. In a clear testament to the framer’s approach to religious freedom, the United States consistently has the highest percentage of regular churchgoers of any nation in the free world. The country with the most longstanding official church, Thomas Aquinas’s Italy, has the lowest.

Jefferson’s demotion, accompanied by a width swath of revisionism cutting through the Board’s new American history standards, has sparked outrage among educators and historians in Texas and beyond. But their insistence that curricula remain connected to the best scholarship is lost on Don McLeroy, the Bryan, Texas dentist and board member leading this backwards charge, who last year summarized the majority’s disdain for all such criticism from qualified professionals in a sentence admirable only for its clarity: “Somebody’s got to stand up to these experts.”

Fortunately, with their sights set on Jefferson the Board let Voltaire slide by, meaning students may still encounter his maxim that ”prejudices are what fools use for reason”. Too bad it’s as apt a description of the Texas textbook police in 2010 as it was of Paris, circa 1750.

There was plenty of trial and error in that process. Comedy is more susceptible to the instant gratification of bad habits than most professions, because verbal self-indulgence is all but required for the beginning stand-up. Cheap laughs are lifesavers for a struggling newcomer, and the thrill of wantonly crossing the line can be heady stuff.

But both of these tactics can also backfire, with the crowd either turning off – or worse, turning on the comedian. Experience, plus a couple cautionary tales from other comedians, eventually led me to adopt two additional guidelines: Don’t pick on the powerless, and never tell a joke than can get your legs broken.

I’ve crossed both lines since, though infrequently. I can vividly remember bringing an audience member to tears once with a cruel (but funny) comment. And while I’ve never been physically threatened because of a routine, I have been fired because of one.

It was on my first-ever cruise ship gig, back in 1990. I had a Dan Quayle bit that involved playing an actual recording where he mangled the United Negro College Fund’s motto: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”. What the then Vice-President said was – and I quote -  “what a waste it is to lose one’s mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful”, thus achieving the ultra-rare Freudian misquote. I followed this recording with an admittedly tasteless joke about how Quayle and John Kennedy, who he’d been famously compared to during the 1988 vice-presidential debate, were indeed similar, at least in terms of the condition of their respective brains.

It wasn’t the tasteless part of the joke that got me fired, though. It was the fact that I had dared to mock the vice-president. After the show I saw a short, portly, bald man in a Rat Pack era tuxedo complaining stridently to the ship’s West Indian captain that he did not pay his money to “hear America’s second in command made fun of”. The captain noted the complaint, though he also asked the passenger with a look of concern if there was still free speech in America, or had that been changed? Nonetheless, it was almost a decade before I got another offer to perform on a cruise ship, leaving me with a strange debt of gratitude to Mr. Quayle.

In late 2005, I actually met the former vice-president. It was backstage during intermission at an Alice Copper Christmas benefit, where I’d just closed the first half. In deference to my guidelines, the season, and my mother’s side of my nature, I took a pass on the opportunity to thank him.

For the last 20 years I’ve been a stand-up comedian, though I’m probably best known for my “Amazing Juggling Finale” video,  which went viral with over 60,000,000 hits a few years back. 60,000,000 is an impressive number, or was until that vixen Susan Boyle came along. The experience was an incredible high. And yet it pales in comparison to the excitement I feel about the truly historic opportunity that has brought me to Austin: The Bill of Rights Plaza.

Since August of 2005, I have been working night and day to promote the freedoms and principles embodied in the Bill of Rights, through the installation of Bill of Rights displays in civic spaces across America. Why the Bill of Rights? Because, simply put, it is the single most powerful and successful legal assertion of individual rights and liberties ever written, forming the very core of our common ground and shared purpose as a people. Ideas matter, and great ideas make a great nation. Giving the Bill of Rights a tangible presence in our most prominent public spaces will help reinvigorate its many great ideas, as well as the nation they inspired.

I know: this project sounds like a stretch for a comedian/juggler. Funnily enough, it began as a comedy routine about the debate over Ten Commandments displays. My take was that instead of arguing whether to take those down, we should put the Bill of Rights up next to them, and let people comparison shop. Because the Bill of Rights gives you such an amazing deal. It tells you to speak freely, carry a gun, pursue happiness, and then presumes you are innocent, and I can’t find a religion that will match that offer!

The routine always got a good laugh. But in the aftermath of 9/11, with its rapid expansion of the national security apparatus and revelations about secret policies that broke faith with so many fundamental American principles, I didn’t find my little joke funny anymore. Beyond the obvious fear factor, I couldn’t understand how so many Americans could be so seemingly indifferent to the fate of the very foundation of our way of life. I kept asking myself: what can be done to inspire Americans to think more about their liberties?

As I always do with questions I can’t answer, I turned to Google. Repeated searches failed to find a single permanent display of the Bill of Rights. Many sleepless nights and loud conversations with friends and family culminated in my starting MyBillofRights.org (though we’re actually incorporated as the Foundation Foundation. The joke was on me with that one. Go ahead, google Foundation Foundation. It’s the internet equivalent of standing between two mirrors and staring down the wormhole into infinity).

On July 5, 2008 we dedicated our first Town Square display, and the nation’s first of any kind, in front of the Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma, Iowa. We also passed our first State Capitol resolution in Arizona in 2006, and our second in Texas the following June. All three efforts were bipartisan efforts. At long last, here was something Americans across the spectrum could agree on!

Which brings me to Austin. I am thrilled to report that the State of Texas has approved the first national destination display of the Bill of Rights ever conceived: The Bill of Rights Plaza. This achievement is the result of three years working with the legislature, state agencies, and other stakeholders, and over $125,000 in project development.

Austin designer Holly Kincannon’s imaginative and elegant redesign of the existing plaza in front of the Texas Supreme Court, directly adjacent to the Capitol, takes the visitor through the genius of the Bill of Rights, with each amendment individually displayed. The construction estimate is $4.1 million, to be raised by MyBillofRights.org through private contributions.

$4.1 million sounds like a lot of money (okay, is a lot of money). But to put it in perspective, a single skybox at the new Cowboys Stadium runs $500,000. That’s 1.25 amendments per skybox, and you only get the skybox for one season. The Bill of Rights Plaza will be here for generations.

How can you, your families, your classrooms, your offices, your neighborhoods and organizations become involved in this lasting legacy for Texas and America? How can you join in the essential part the people of Texas must play to make this project a reality? Call me. Write me. Email me. And imagine a time in the near future when you can place your palm on an undeniable acknowledgment of our rights as Americans, written in stone.

With awareness of this birthright seemingly growing dimmer by the day, I can think of no better gift for future generations than a major permanent display spotlighting these founding principles. For as Thomas Jefferson so prophetically wrote:  “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

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Copyright 2010 Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader. Posted with permission.

Comedy Central’s reaction to the threat issued against South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone by Revolution Muslim, a website promoting fundamentalist Islam run by a group in New York City, is misguided and regrettable.
The small and until now mostly obscure group posted Parker and Stone’s Colorado addresses as well as Comedy Central’s in New York, alongside a graphic image of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was brutally murdered in 2004 after the release of “Submission”, his film criticizing Islam’s treatment of women.
The network’s ill-considered response was to heavily censor the ensuing South Park episode, including the customary final speech, which the show’s creators say had no mention of Muhammed. The action was taken ostensibly to protect the employees of the network.
To their credit, the network did not censor Jon Stewart’s free-wheeling defense of Parker and Stone the following night, including his rather pointed message to Revolution Muslim. Nonetheless, Comedy Central must understand that this is not simply a matter of principle, but also one of real world consequences.
At CRNI, we are often the last line of defense for courageous cartoonists speaking truth to power in hostile circumstances around the world. The threats against them are rarely idle. They run the gamut from financially ruinous state-sanctioned lawsuits to criminal trials, imprisonment, and even disappearance and death.
We cannot think of a single instance where giving in to such threats and intimidation has led to anything other than more threats and intimidation, against a wider and wider list of “offenders” challenging the status quo.
Recent history shows that public pressure and unequivocal resolve are the only effective weapons against this sort of thuggery. These are even more effective when accompanied by the kind of pointed public ridicule Comedy Central normally champions.
A case in point: In 2005 CRNI presented it’s annual “Courage in Cartooning” award to the Turkish cartoonist Musa Kart, who was convicted in a criminal libel suit brought by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan because of an editorial cartoon he’d drawn depicting the Prime Minister as a cat. Mr. Musa’s employer stood by him during this fight, absorbing significant financial cost.
In solidarity with the cartoonist and his publisher, immediately following the conviction the cover of the Turkish humor magazine Penguen featured a series of drawings of the Prime Minister as a frog, a camel, a monkey, a snake, a duck, an elephant, a giraffe, and a cow.
The magazine suffered a similar suit and even larger fine, but in the process Mr. Erdogan’s image suffered lasting and well-deserved damage. While the outcome was far from an unequivocal victory for freedom of expression, the pushback and blowback unquestionably strengthened the still-fragile state of free expression in Turkey, in a struggle that continues today.
We at CRNI can only hope that upon further reflection Comedy Central will realize the danger of its acquiescence. The network’s abandonment of South Park will only encourage future demands and threats against this iconoclastic outpost of the right to be ridiculous. It will also embolden the miscreant cranks at Revolution Muslim, a clear lose-lose.
After almost 13 years, it’s hard to find a group or belief that hasn’t been targeted by South Park. Mockery is the currency they trade in, and Comedy Central has been rewarded handsomely for brokering that trade. Yet the network has thus far failed to grasp not only their moral responsibility, but the critical connection between free expression, creativity, and our (and their) prosperity. We urge them to rethink this miscalculation.

In a larger context, the Western world has overcome many experiences with the ultimately useless effort of the authoritarian mindset to stifle the spirit of freedom. For their right to think and speak freely, hundreds of thousands paid with their lives during the 400 years of the Catholic Inquisition, and millions more in the last century under the secular tyrannies of Hitler and Stalin.
All failed, but the mindset survives. Empowering fundamentalist Islamists, or anyone else, to undermine our free speech traditions through threats and claims of special privilege is an invitation to its return to power.

The change was the result of new guidelines from the little-known Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency set up under the Reagan Administration to do statistical cost-benefit analyses of all draft rules and regulations for the federal government, giving the executive branch approval (and effective veto power) over how new laws are interpreted and implemented by federal agencies.

As soon as the details of the EPA’s decision came to light it caused a heated controversy, forcing the agency to beat a hasty retreat. The reversal was as predictable as it was unfortunate, because the abandoned OIRA guidelines held the essence of a revolutionary insight: that our government has for too many years placed an unbalanced and fiscally irresponsible priority on assuring the longevity of average Americans.

Much of our debt and deficit problems can be traced to this interference by the federal government in the personal lives and choices of We the People. If our federal, state, and local agencies were mandated to pursue only “life expectancy neutral” regulatory regimens, not only would individual and corporate liberty soar, but over time popular programs like Social Security and Medicare could very well offer improved rather than reduced benefits.

All we need do is look at a country like Afghanistan, where the average life expectancy is 46. As many seemingly impossible challenges as that nation is facing, paying for entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare is not among them.

I’m not suggesting we need to aim that high (or low, in this instance). But even with some minor and relatively benign deregulation, such as raising the national speed limit; eliminating seat belt, airbag, and motorcycle helmet laws; and cutting back on the intrusive federal inspection of meat, we could trim 12-18 months off the national average in no time.

Since approximately 80% of Medicare expenditures come during the last two years of a recipient’s life, the savings would be more than enough to pay for a real (if somewhat counter-productive) prescription drug benefit.

Best of all, the changes would usher in a new era of freedom of choice for financially strapped consumers, who could opt for cheaper cars – and meats. This would also offer relief for that other oppressed group who has just recently gotten their due from the Supreme Court, our corporate citizens, by reducing production costs for two major industries; a clear win-win.

While there are bound to be the usual objections from the usual suspects, I predict that before too long the surviving public would be won over by its new found personal freedoms, its access to cheaper products, and the peace of mind of knowing that if you make it to 65, your benefits will be waiting for you.

At that point these same principles could be more broadly applied to create whole new sets of incentives for government, business, and the individual alike. To mention but a few:

1. Instead of ever more punitive “sin taxes” on alcohol and cigarettes, which are particularly burdensome for older Americans on fixed incomes, add both substances to the aforementioned prescription drug benefit. Here’s your carton of Kools and your quart of Wild Turkey. You go, Granny!

2. End the endless debate on juveniles and the death penalty by mandating it for all juvenile crime. Such a “one strike and you’re toast” policy will not only bend the life expectancy curve early in its arc, but will eventually result in a precipitous drop in adult crime, saving untold taxpayer billions on what has for several decades been the fastest growing budget buster for our state governments: the prison-industrial complex. Collateral benefits include fewer courts and police, and smaller class sizes for our struggling secondary schools. We’ll even save money on last requests. How much is a Happy Meal?

3. Rather than restricting the freedom of our corporate citizens by oppressive regulations that force them to spend billions cleaning up toxic waste sites, give them tax credits if they donate the land for either day care centers or nursing homes. West Virginia already has at least one enormous coal slurry pit (Marshy Fork) perched above a Head Start school, which could serve as a pilot program.

I realize that to some this sounds draconian, if not unjust. But as our friends at OIRA were trying to tell us, there is ultimately no avoiding the human toll. Anyone who has ever fallen behind on a mortgage, credit card, or IRS payment can tell you that freedom is never free, especially not freedom from creditors. The only questions are: who pays now, who pays later, and who decides. I don’t relish offering the approach outlined above. But considering the options, I’d rather have a shorter life of quality time than stick around long enough to see who gets the bill, let alone how and where they get stuck with it.

Fortunately all these crosscurrents of opinion about the Times won’t affect me, as I wasn’t actually mentioned by name. The article was headlined “Hurt at Home, and a Fall Is Likely to Blame”, and it lays out recent statistical analysis that the most common cause of injury to Americans is falling down, with most of those falls happening at home.
I’d fallen just the day before, tripping on something that wasn’t there while walking the dog. Somehow I managed to stab one shoe awkwardly into the sidewalk, where it caught, sending me tumbling to the ground.

It must’ve looked pretty bad, because a passing car to stopped to see if Grampa was okay. Pride aside, he was for the most part fine, though he had ruined his jeans and for the first time in 45 years skinned his knee. As my dog vacillated between concern and embarrassment, I picked myself up and waved off the driver, making it the rest of the way home without incident, only to find out the next day that I’d accidentally stumbled into the statistical mainstream.

In second place behind falling down came transportation injuries. Accidental poisoning was third, which raises a statistical red flag. It seems likely that a substantial number of those poisoned also fall down at some point, with more than a few winding up in traffic accidents while rushing to the emergency room. Are these incidents counted in one or multiple categories?

The article also noted that women are more likely to be injured in a fall than men, whereas men are more likely to be struck by an object. How many of those women were pushed by men, and how many of those objects were thrown by women, are questions that apparently escaped scrutiny.

This points out the problematic nature of all statistics. Numbers can be accurate without offering any clear insight into exactly what they measure. For example, gun control advocates constantly harp on the disproportionate number of gun-related deaths in our society versus the rest of the developed world, but they make no attempt to quantify how many lives may have been saved by the presence of firearms.

Nor do they ever mention that 56% of all gun deaths in America are suicides. You’d think that would be a comforting statistic to those concerned with reducing the collateral damage of gun violence, as it indicates that the number of gun owners predisposed to using their weapons is to a large extent self-limiting.

It also calls into question the efficacy of restricting ownership of the most lethal weapons and ammunition, if only for the sake of holding down the substantial costs to the health care system of all those failed firearm suicide attempts. In this context, the grenade launcher and the killer bullet are simply the most efficient means to the end. It is the wounded who are bleeding the system dry.

As to what to do about the epidemic of slips, trips, tumbles, dives, plunges, and toppling over; my suggestion it to stay in bed whenever possible. It may not be the magic bullet, but you don’t need a statistician to tell you that the best way to avoid falling down is to not get up to begin with.

Having gone through more rebirths than a bodhisattva and more re-releases than Benson the Carp, there’s no arguing that the Beatles’ music is beyond timeless. Word is this latest digital re-mastering of their last studio album has been purified to the point where you can actually hear the sound of one hand clapping as the group achieves sonic nirvana.

Or something like that. I haven’t been able to work up to taking off the shrink-wrap yet. In part, that’s because I’ve been performing to the final medley on Abbey Road for as long as I’ve been performing. I have probably spent 40 days and 40 nights of my usable lifespan with those five minutes as my personal soundtrack (I just did the math, and that’s 11,580 performances and rehearsals, or roughly 400 listens a year for 30 years – alarmingly close).  Also, by the time you hit your 50’s the thrill of the new isn’t so new, which is especially true when it’s mostly forty years old.

Back then, when you bought a record it would be on the turntable the minute you got home, with liner notes in hand; the same way that your stereo was the first box you unpacked and set-up after moving in. Today it’s easily thirty years since I read my last liner note, and almost that long since anyone’s written one. And even though I’ve got one seriously kickass sound system that can feed multiple audio sources to distinct speaker zones at the touch of a universal remote, it’s still boxed up in the storage attic of the house we moved to in July. Amid the multi-tasking gadgetry and nonstop complexity of every waking modern moment, silence is now the music most thrilling to my ears.

Kick ass stereo or not, I’m still looking forward to giving Abbey Road a fresh listen, as soon as I can find the time. I’m hoping to squeeze it in tonight, maybe right after I finish my workout, answer my email, feed and walk Titan (our minpin), and skype Daisy (my wife) in Brazil. And post this damn blog.

But it’s the fresh part that’s most problematic. I still remember the excitement of hearing Hey Jude for the first time, when it debuted on the Smothers Brothers’ show, and how I got chills when the lights came up as the final chorus kicked in, revealing a studio filled with people who surged around the band to sing along. Finding my way back to those fresh eyes and ears (and heart) gets trickier every day, but I know the mind must stay open to stay alive. After all, a man never crosses the same river twice, especially if he forgets how to swim.