Michael O’Donahue

 

Michael O’Donahue was one of the geniuses behind National Lampoon magazine in the 1970’s. He was also head writer for the early Saturday Night Live shows, but I remember him for the magazine.

 

National Lampoon wasn’t to everyone’s taste, and still isn’t. To give you an idea, NL had one edition where each writer contributed a Sunday comics parody about himself. One writer cast himself as Dagwood, and gave himself a fatal heart attack in the second panel. The rest of the strip was an open-casket wake in his living room, with guests sharing cynical or off-color reminiscences. In one panel, while Blondie clutches a handkerchief and stares rigid with shock, a hot young woman starts to climb into the casket, saying, “He would have wanted me to sit on his face.”

 

You’ve been warned.

 

Hootie the Owl

 

I forget the real name of the strip Michael used for his parody, but it featured an owl that I’ll call Hootie – a big egg-shaped owl, half head, no neck, with undersized wings and feet.

 

Every Sunday, the first panel showed a child doing something thoughtless or hurtful, like a boy breaking his sister’s toy. In the 2nd panel, while the action continued to unfold, Hootie always appeared to one side with commentary: (“Oh, dear. Thaddeus wasn’t very careful, was he? I wonder how Magda feels about that?”). Thad might get defiant for one panel with his sister’s first recriminations, but by the end of strip we see insight, contrition, atonement, forgiveness and reconciliation. The gentle moral tone was similar to Bil Keane’s Family Circus (http://www.familycircus.com/),

Goofus and Gallant (http://www.dailyprobe.com/arcs/102201/goofus.jpg), or

the Davey and Goliath claymation shorts (http://www.daveyandgoliath.org/).

 

Michael and the Owl

 

I don’t have the NL parody in front of me, but my 30 year-old memories go like this. But without the asterisks.

 

Panel 1: Two well-dressed men – maybe Tony Hendra, and Sean Kelly in the bow tie  – stand in an office. There’s a closed door behind them, and through its glass we see the silhouette of a ranting man shaking a phone above his head.

Silhouette: Stupid f*cking telephone!!!

Tony: Looks like Michael is throwing one of his tantrums again.

Sean: I only get upset about ideas, never real things.

 

Panel 2: Michael’s office. He continues to rage - in fact, he’s just ripped the phone cord out of the wall. Hootie hovers on the right.

Michael: Stupid motherf*cking telephone company! Why are the numbers I call always busy?

Hootie: Oh, dear. Michael wasn’t very careful, was he? He should have counted to ten.

 

Panel 3: Michael is trying to place a call on the clearly broken phone. Hootie flits about.

Michael: I’ll call and give them a piece of my mind! Hello, pig scum phone company? Hello?

Hootie: Looks like Michael hasn’t learned you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

 

Panel 4:

Michael: Now the f*cking line is dead, and - GOTCHA, you motherf*cker!

Michael spins around and grabs Hootie by the leg!

Hootie: Michael should learn to – AWK! HELP!!

 

Panel 5: Michael pins Hootie to the floor and hefts a large hammer

Michael: I’ve been waiting years to do this!

Hootie: Help! Violence never solved anything! Help! Let’s discuss this in a reasonable manner!

 

Panel 6: Michael, still pounding, has already reduced Hootie’s head to a 2-dimensional blood puddle. Word balloons float in through the closed office door.

Michael: Stupid motherf*cking owl!

Sean: Michael is soooo immature.

Tony: Immature, my ass! He’s clinically insane!

 

Why is this story on AvC?

 

I am sometimes reminded of Hootie when a perfectly reasonable theist, the kind of person with whom I would share a drink, posts a mild statement or question here and ends up more full of barbs and arrows than Saint Stephen. (If you don’t know Stevie, think Hagar the Horrible at the doctor’s.)

 

This even happens to deists, Spinozans and Hindus, who belong on our side. As the great prophet Simpleton (praise be unto him) observed, atheists should have practical goals in this forum. Like having reasonable Christians take some responsibility for the bad behavior of their co-religionists, especially those in the power structure, and help make them clean up their act. Believe me, non-Christian theists get this! But when every post is met with an atheist spit in the eye, alliances form on less natural lines.

 

Does 93% of the population really deserve this level of scorn?

Put it another way: When you say something about “all theists”, you’re talking about my mom.

 

Own goal

 

Before Simpleton (p.b.u.h.) shuffled off this portal coil, he enumerated his goals and announced that they had been fulfilled. I never made a list of my own fuzzy goals, but one of them would be having a few more theists accept atheists as friendly, reasonable, healthy-minded fellow citizens; and to increase our current U.S. 7% acceptance rating into double digits.

 

I have come to realize that my message is not going to be heard on this forum, above the hammer blows and the squashy sound of wet owl feathers.

 

I won’t disappear from AvC, but I expect to be here less often. Summertime is not forum time anyway, and when I come online I will explore new sites.

 

I am Legend

 

I’m currently improving my French by listening over and over (until I get it) to an audio tape of “Je Suis Une Legend.” It’s a translation of the 1954 science fiction classic “I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson. [Not Will Smith’s movie, not Charlton Heston’s Omega Man, not Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth. The book of which Stephen King said, "without Richard Matheson I wouldn’t be around".]

 

Near the end, Robert Neville tells one of the vampires: in your brave new world, leave room for a little kindness. If vampires can do it, why not atheists?