Billy Sunday warns America 1929 (things havent changed much)

[Mari333]

Run time: 01:22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykn8YcIbmfo   Posted on YouTube: January 31, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 01, 2010 By DU Member: Mari333 Views on DU: 1722

 

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Brickbat]

2. To Billy Sunday, by Carl Sandburg, 1915

You come along... tearing your shirt... yelling about Jesus. I want to know... what the hell... you know about Jesus.

Jesus had a way of talking softly and everybody except a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem liked to have this Jesus around because he never made any fake passes and everything he said went and he helped the sick and gave the people hope.

You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist and calling us damn fools so fierce the froth of your own spit slobbers over your lips -- always blabbing we're all going to hell straight off and you know all about it.

I've read Jesus' words. I know what he said. You don't throw any scare into me. I've got your number. I know how much you know about Jesus.

He never came near clean people or dirty people but they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers that hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out of the running.

I say it was the same bunch that's backing you that nailed the nails into the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men now lined up with you paying your way.

This Jesus guy was good to look at, smelled good, listened good. He threw out something fresh and beautiful from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands wherever he passed along.

You, Billy Sunday, put a smut on every human blossom that comes within reach of your rotten breath belching about hell-fire and hiccuping about this man who lived a clean life in Galilee.

When are you going to quit making the carpenters build emergency hospitals for women and girls driven crazy with wrecked nerves from your goddam gibberish about Jesus -- I put it to you again: What the hell do you know about Jesus?

Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance. Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your nutty head. If it wasn't for the way you scare women and kids, I'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat.

I like to wash a good four-flusher work but not when he starts people to puking and calling for the doctors.

I like a man that's got guts and can pull off a great original performance, but you -- hell, you're only a bughouse peddler of second-hand gospel -- you're only shoving out a phony imitation of the goods this Jesus guy told us ought to be free as air and sunlight.

Sometimes I wonder what sort of pups born from mongrel bitches there are in the world less heroic than you.

You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they're dead and the worms have eaten 'em.

You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he'll be all right.

You tell poor people they don't need any more money on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job, Jesus'll fix that all right, all right -- all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.

I'm telling you this Jesus guy wouldn't stand for the stuff you're handing out. Jesus played it different. The bankers and corporation lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus wouldn't play their game. He didn't sit in with the big thieves.

I don't want a lot of gab from the bunkshooter in my religion.

I won't take my religion from a man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes a memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.

I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.

I've been in this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgotha, where they nailed Him, and I know if the story is straight it was real blood ran from his hand and the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted out where the spear of the Roman soldier rammed in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth.

* * * * * * * * * *

This is the original version of the poem. Sandburg later toned it down a bit and took out the direct reference to Billy Sunday when this was published.

[Hyper_Eye]

5. That's a great read. Thanks! n/t

[Raoul]

7. Amen

Amen to Carl and Brickbat for posting this - it says it all. I'm am SSOOO f-ing sick of their childish rants and threats. They really hate the human race but hide behind misinterpretations of the bible to mask their own evil.

[truedelphi]

10. Thank you for this poem. n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Thank you

I had never seen a motion picture version of Billy Sunday preaching. I had read about his style and heard about him from my late mother (b. 1914), who heard him on the radio while growing up in Nebraska.

Before he became a preacher, Sunday was professional baseball player, a pitcher. While preaching he'd go through motions like he was winding up and throwing a change up. That is evident here.

[midnight]

4. Nope things haven't changed much.

[YOY]

6. So much for Rich man and eye of a needle, eh?

Fucking fraud and a liar.

[Plucketeer]

8. Amazing!

So just how long are the "end of days" scheduled to last??? I think it's something like 10 Billion years before the sun's predicted to start to expand. I'm bettin' I'm gonna die of old (OK, OLDER) age.

[Poll_Blind]

9. Didn't this dude get busted years later for sneaking into the stable and touching goat asses?

I heard when he was caught he blamed the "whiskey-soaked" goats.

BTW, The Whiskey-Soaked Goats is the name of my new jug band. Just sayin'

PB

[truedelphi]

11. K & R. Thank you for the trip down memory lane.

And I love the quirky music from that era as well.

[GoneOffShore]

12. Ah, the rantings of the religiously insane.

They haven't changed a bit - The Rushdoony's, the Dominionists, the Taliban, the Talibornagain's and the Rapture Ready. All crazy.
Time for religion to be relegated to the status of a hobby - an eccentric but not particularly wholesome hobby, but a hobby nonetheless.

[suede1]

16. +1!

[hmorehead]

13. Damn. Beck is Billy Sunday,jr.

[Epyonm]

14. Well

that takes DU back

[Quixote1818]

15. Someone should re-title the video "Glenn Beck". It might open some eyes

because that is exactly what he is like.

[Bucky]

17. Mark for viewing later at home

stupid work filter...

[BR_Parkway]

18. I didn't realize Pat Robertson had been around so long