Brent Bozell: "The Root Of All Evil"

At Newsbusters, you can read the latest column from Brent Bozell regarding Lewis Black and his anti-Catholic stance. He has a new show on Comedy Central called "The Root of All Evil," where with a panel of comedians they determine out of two topics who is more evil that particular week, and viewers get to vote in a poll.

This first week: The Catholic Church Vs. Oprah Winfrey.

Attacking religion is a constant staple of Black’s act. His 2005 autobiography was titled "Nothing Sacred," with a cover photo of him splayed across a statue of the Virgin Mary with a blazing halo around his head. He has another book coming out titled "Me of Little Faith." ABC’s "20/20" marveled at his angry jokes last year, like this: "The New Testament God is really kind of a great guy. He is, especially when you compare him to the Old Testament God -- who is a prick."

Black clearly delighted in starting his new show by trashing traditional religion. He began the premiere by talking about Jane Goodall, who lived in the African wild with chimpanzees: "I put on trial all the things that make me understand why Jane Goodall spends her life hanging out with monkeys instead of people."

There was no nuance of delicacy in his anti-religious bigotry. "The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus," he said with a sneer, putting text on screen under Jesus that reads "Our Founder and CEO." Black continued: "He made St. Peter the right hand of God, leaving both of God’s hands free to bitch-slap heathens and sinners." A big hand then crushes some Indians. He continued: "When not blocking social progress, the new pope cruises Vatican City and gives offensive lectures about other religions," upsetting Muslims, Jews, and Wiccans.

Now, despite the fact that I identify myself as a Christian, I don't believe in organized religion. I've seen what it can do to people. But I do have faith. And mocking a whole belief system without doing the same thing for other beliefs is just wrong. Bozell brings up "South Park" in the episode, which I don't have a problem with them doing it because they go after everyone. And they aren't afraid to go after extreme Muslims -- for them, everyone is a target. You shouldn't pick and choose if you are going to do comedy.

But I will make a confession -- anytime I'm going to be writing about anything having to do with the Muslim world I'm going to be making the distinction between extremists and moderates. It's actually for a family reason -- my mother's husband is a Muslim, and I don't want him thinking that I hate him because of that just in case he stumbles across this blog.