I was looking over some old shows the other day, and I came across the very first Saturday Night Live (then titled NBC's Saturday Night). It features a monologue from George Carlin where he condemns the self-centered concept of God common in most of the Western Hemisphere. It is an incredible and funny monologue, but I watched it thinking that there is no way such an intelligent (albeit, humorous) discussion regarding the existence of God could ever be aired on national television nowadays. That is not to say that Carlin's remarks went by unnoticed or unchallenged: Cardinal Cooke, Archbishop of New York at the time of the broadcast, was said to have seen Carlin's monologue. Cooke, along with his staff, sent many letters of protest to NBC's corporate offices. SNL survived anyway, largely due to NBC's belief in the show outweighing the muscle of Cooke's "bully pulpit," also known as the Catholic Church.
Since today, July 4th, is the day in which we celebrate our alleged freedom of religion and speech, it seemed a wonderful reminder of how little U.S. citizens have of either in the new millennium.
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