by SASKATCHEWAN KOLONOSCOGRAD, Alternate Reality News Service Religion Writer
The Messiah's miracle of feeding the multitudes with loaves and fishes, while generally impressive, has not been universally lauded.
"First of all," talk show host Rush Limbaugh said on last night's broadcast, "it wasn't a multitude, okay? This is just typical liberal media self-aggrandizement. It was more like a group. And, not a very large group, either. A small group, really - definitely not a multitude.
"Second, I wouldn't categorize this as a miracle. A member of the Democrat Party actually having a sound fiscal policy? That's a miracle. Feeding a few bums with loaves and fishes, that's just a pretty good trick, okay? Some people with feeble minds might be dazzled by it, but let's be serious: a miracle, it wasn't!"
Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly, on The O'Reilly Factor, made a different, though equally tough point: "What exactly were these loaves made of? Regular wheat, I'll bet. Did the Messiah give any consideration to people who were gluten intolerant? I suspect not. Or, how about people who just don't like chalah? You don't have to be an anti-Semite to prefer some other kind of bread. Any chance some of the loaves were rye? Or, sourdough? Or, white? Somehow, I doubt it.
"Am I supposed to be impressed by the lack of bread options that the Messiah gave his people? Well, I'm not. If he wants to do something really impressive to feed the multitudes, next time he'll create a buffet!"
Former Presidential Republican candidate John McCain voiced a different complaint in an interview on Morning Joe. "I wasn't consulted when the Messiah decided to enact his loaves and fishes plan," McCain stated. "You know, he's been claiming that he wanted to reach out to his enemies, that he was willing to work with anybody, but he's practicing the same old divisive partisan politics that has ruled Jerusalem for too long. I'm disappointed by that. Very disappointed."
As for the loaves and fishes policy, the Jerusalem Post ran an editorial condemning the Messiah's actions. "If you create miracles to feed starving masses," it ran, "you create a dependency on the Messiah for survival. If the Messiah really wanted to help the poor, he would promote job creation by cutting taxes...
"Too often, we have seen the long-term damage reliance on the Messiah State can do, and we once again forcefully reject it."
"Okay, look," Messiah Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded to the criticism, doing his best not to roll his eyes. "The Messiah is too gentle to say this Himself, but He inherited one hell of a mess from the Rabbis that came before him. One hell of a mess. You can't expect him to fix a problem overnight that had taken decades to create. He's been saying all along that the problems we face are going to take a long time to fix - maybe millennia. So, why don't you stop complaining that His plans won't work before they've even had a chance to?"
"Oh," Gibbs added, "and cheap shots like the ones about the Sermon on the Mount don't help, either."
Gibbs was referring, of course, to the press' response to last year's Sermon on the Mount. The Jerusalem Post's Charles Krauthammer wrote that, "...the Messiah is acting like a celebrity, not an important political figure. Instead of making so many public appearances, his time would be better spent working on problems like the Roman occupation of Palestine."
This sentiment was echoed in the press (almost like they all got the idea from the same source...) over the next few days. "We don't need the Messiah to be an entertainer," Limbaugh crowed. "That's what I'm for!" "Entertainment bad politics! Messiah bad!" Anne Coulter shouted into the ether. "Come on, people!" Glenn Beck fulminated on his Fox show. "The world is going to hell, and the Messiah is having fun making nice in public appearances? Why doesn't somebody get rid of this ‘Superstar' so we can get somebody serious in charge?"
Arianna Huffington, in the Huffington Post, disagreed. "Elite consensus is that the Messiah is doing a bad job," she recently wrote. "What is behind this, of course, is that the Messiah is going over their heads to speak directly to the people, and - the nerve of the ungrateful masses! - the people are listening to Him and not the pundits."
Will the Messiah prevail against this tide of negativity? Only time will tell.