- Sep 13, 2002
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I wish I could come up with sentences as creative as Sedaris' more often!
By David Sedaris
September 2, 2024
If you were to say to me, “You can be in a room with either Chris Rock or the Pope,” I’d say, “Chris Rock, please.” Nothing against the Pope, but he’s never made me laugh. Neither has he come up with a viable solution to America’s gun problem the way Chris Rock has, saying that the firearms themselves can be unregulated but that every bullet should cost five thousand dollars.
“O.K.,” you’d continue. “Julia Louis-Dreyfus or the Pope?”
“Oh, no question,” I’d tell you. “The cursing on ‘Veep’ amounted to poetry, so Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”
“Stephen Merchant or—”
“Stephen Merchant.”
The same goes for Stephen Colbert, Mike Birbiglia, Tig Notaro, Conan O’Brien, Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Fallon, Ramy Youssef, and Jim Gaffigan—most of whom I know or have met at one time or another.
The crazy thing is that I didn’t have to choose between any of the above and the Pope. For reasons I will never quite understand, I got to be in a room with all of them—plus a hundred or so others who had also been summoned, without much advance notice, to the Vatican on a late-spring morning in June, when Rome was hot but not so hot that all you could talk about was how hot it was.
Like everyone I spoke to the night before our papal audience, when, minus Jimmy Fallon, the American contingent gathered for dinner, I’d initially thought that my invitation—which was sent by e-mail—was spam. “Right,” I said to the screen of my laptop. “Nice try, Russia.” I didn’t click on the attachment until Stephen Colbert assured me that it was legitimate, and that the Pope really did want to meet with comics and humorists from around the world in three days’ time, and at six-forty-five in the morning. The invitation made it sound like there’d be a dialogue, as if the Pope had questions or needed to ask us a favor, something along the lines of “Do you think you could maybe give the pedophilia stuff a rest?”
Everyone’s got a Catholic-clergy joke up their sleeve, perhaps one they heard at a party. Mine is: A cop stops a car two priests are riding in. “I’m looking for a couple of child molesters,” he tells them.
The priests look at each other. “We’ll do it!” they say.
Substitute rabbis or Baptist ministers for priests, and you’ll get nothing. I mean, the Catholic Church earned those laughs, and every time its senior clerics look away, or quietly send an offending clergyman to the back bench, it’s making this scandal larger than its ministry, at least to an outsider such as myself.
“Can you help me turn this around?” I imagined the Pope asking. “How can we get back to the sex-starved-nun jokes we all so enjoyed in the past?”
This is a man who had just been caught using an Italian word that translated to “******ry” for the second time in three weeks. After our visit, which was covered by seemingly every news organization on Earth, the gaffe would be brought up again and again, especially in comment sections, by people convinced that, had they been invited to the Vatican, they’d have stayed home in protest, or perhaps would have attended and then caused a scene, most likely one involving paint.
It didn’t bother me, though. When I heard that the Pope had said “******ry,” I laughed, in large part because it’s a funny word. Then, too, it’s not something you’d call a person—it’s not like “Shut up, fag.” Rather, it connotes behavior: “Take your ******ry outside, please.”
Pope Francis can’t preside over same-sex marriages, but he created a firestorm within his Church by blessing gay people about to be married. “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?” he asked, in 2013.
Then, yes, he said “******ry,” but he apologized for it. Both times. I don’t think that he’s a homophobe so much as an eighty-seven-year-old. (“I said what again? Really?”)
My feeling is that if you want a church that is a hundred per cent gay-friendly, go join one—there are plenty to be had—or start your own. “Yes, but I want Our Lady of Sorrows to celebrate Pride Month,” I can hear someone whining.
It’s like going to Burger King and demanding a Big Mac. If you want a Big Mac, go across the street to McDonald’s. Jesus.
The Hem of His Garment
I thought that the e-mailed invitation was spam. “Nice try, Russia,” I said to my laptop screen. But the Pope really did want to meet with comics and humorists.By David Sedaris
September 2, 2024
If you were to say to me, “You can be in a room with either Chris Rock or the Pope,” I’d say, “Chris Rock, please.” Nothing against the Pope, but he’s never made me laugh. Neither has he come up with a viable solution to America’s gun problem the way Chris Rock has, saying that the firearms themselves can be unregulated but that every bullet should cost five thousand dollars.
“O.K.,” you’d continue. “Julia Louis-Dreyfus or the Pope?”
“Oh, no question,” I’d tell you. “The cursing on ‘Veep’ amounted to poetry, so Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”
“Stephen Merchant or—”
“Stephen Merchant.”
The same goes for Stephen Colbert, Mike Birbiglia, Tig Notaro, Conan O’Brien, Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Fallon, Ramy Youssef, and Jim Gaffigan—most of whom I know or have met at one time or another.
The crazy thing is that I didn’t have to choose between any of the above and the Pope. For reasons I will never quite understand, I got to be in a room with all of them—plus a hundred or so others who had also been summoned, without much advance notice, to the Vatican on a late-spring morning in June, when Rome was hot but not so hot that all you could talk about was how hot it was.
Like everyone I spoke to the night before our papal audience, when, minus Jimmy Fallon, the American contingent gathered for dinner, I’d initially thought that my invitation—which was sent by e-mail—was spam. “Right,” I said to the screen of my laptop. “Nice try, Russia.” I didn’t click on the attachment until Stephen Colbert assured me that it was legitimate, and that the Pope really did want to meet with comics and humorists from around the world in three days’ time, and at six-forty-five in the morning. The invitation made it sound like there’d be a dialogue, as if the Pope had questions or needed to ask us a favor, something along the lines of “Do you think you could maybe give the pedophilia stuff a rest?”
Everyone’s got a Catholic-clergy joke up their sleeve, perhaps one they heard at a party. Mine is: A cop stops a car two priests are riding in. “I’m looking for a couple of child molesters,” he tells them.
The priests look at each other. “We’ll do it!” they say.
Substitute rabbis or Baptist ministers for priests, and you’ll get nothing. I mean, the Catholic Church earned those laughs, and every time its senior clerics look away, or quietly send an offending clergyman to the back bench, it’s making this scandal larger than its ministry, at least to an outsider such as myself.
“Can you help me turn this around?” I imagined the Pope asking. “How can we get back to the sex-starved-nun jokes we all so enjoyed in the past?”
This is a man who had just been caught using an Italian word that translated to “******ry” for the second time in three weeks. After our visit, which was covered by seemingly every news organization on Earth, the gaffe would be brought up again and again, especially in comment sections, by people convinced that, had they been invited to the Vatican, they’d have stayed home in protest, or perhaps would have attended and then caused a scene, most likely one involving paint.
It didn’t bother me, though. When I heard that the Pope had said “******ry,” I laughed, in large part because it’s a funny word. Then, too, it’s not something you’d call a person—it’s not like “Shut up, fag.” Rather, it connotes behavior: “Take your ******ry outside, please.”
Pope Francis can’t preside over same-sex marriages, but he created a firestorm within his Church by blessing gay people about to be married. “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?” he asked, in 2013.
Then, yes, he said “******ry,” but he apologized for it. Both times. I don’t think that he’s a homophobe so much as an eighty-seven-year-old. (“I said what again? Really?”)
My feeling is that if you want a church that is a hundred per cent gay-friendly, go join one—there are plenty to be had—or start your own. “Yes, but I want Our Lady of Sorrows to celebrate Pride Month,” I can hear someone whining.
It’s like going to Burger King and demanding a Big Mac. If you want a Big Mac, go across the street to McDonald’s. Jesus.