Catholic League discovers freedom triumphs over hate speech at Empire State Building

I've written several times now about Bill Donohue of the Catholic League's campaign to get the Empire State Building to light up in blue and white on Mother Teresa's 100th birthday (here, here, and here). I'd also pointed to Donohue's long history of finding any reason at all to be outraged and specifically the audacity in which he declares occasions where he doesn't get his way or when Catholics aren't protected from any and all criticism as proof of anti-Catholic bigotry and persecution even though Catholicism is the largest and most powerful religion in the world.

So yesterday, August 26, was the big day, Mother Teresa's 100th birthday and the date of the Catholic League's big protest outside the Empire State Building over its owner Anthony Malkin's decision not to honor Mother Teresa in lights. Now it also happened to be my niece's birthday but nobody saw me protesting the building over not honoring her on that day. But I was present to watch the enormous spectacle Donohue had created to satisfy his need for attention when he could have simply just celebrated Mother Teresa's birthday by honoring the very charitable spirit she allegedly represented. No, instead he decided to spew hate and division, as did his speakers at a rate that even the Ku Klux Klan would envy.

In addition to hate-mongering, the rhetoric of the evening also bore the distinction of incorporating extraordinarily over the top hyperbole. This was perhaps best represented in the first speaker, Jewish comedian Jackie Mason (who incidentally has been repeatedly accused of racism in the past). Mason talked about how Mother Teresa was the most perfect person in the history of ever and that nobody could have any possible reason to not want to honor her:

“I would like to know what has Mother Teresa done to offend anybody?"

“She was helping Muslims all over the world, Jews, Gentiles. And she doesn’t care who you are. You could be a Nazi, a mass murderer. She helped you.”

She'd help Nazis and mass murderers? Really? Wow. Who knew?

Mason then began what became a reoccurring theme of the evening, chastises Mayor Michael Bloomberg's alleged hypocrisy (even though Bloomberg's position has quite consistently supporting the Constitution, freedom, and tolerance) by supporting the "Ground Zero Mosque (which incidentally is not at Ground Zero and isn't a mosque--two facts never mentioned at the protest):

“You see if you bomb a building, he fights for you. He fights for you. But if a great humanitarian, he has no time. How come Bloomberg doesn’t support this movement to put the lights on the Empire State Building in her honor?”

"It’s because she’s not a Muslim. If she was a Muslim they’d put up a mosque in her honor...because if you don’t bomb a building, you don’t get any honors.”

Yes, apparently Mr. Jackie Mason is of the belief that the people building the Cordoba House Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan are the very same people who "bombed" (I thought they were hit by airplanes) the World Trade Center. I'm just amazed the actual attackers survived, weren't thrown in prison, and are now able to build a community center. they must be indestructible.

Mason continued to assert that no one could possibly object to anything about Mother Teresa and that she was the lest controversial person who ever lived in the whole universe:

“What has she done that offended anybody? Do you know anybody who’s mad at Mother Teresa?”

“Who is against Mother Teresa? Where is the schmuck?”

Yes, who could oppose this woman who called abortion "the greatest destroyer of peace today" and who funneled millions of dollars in donations intended to feed the poor into anti-abortion campaigns. There were even people at the protest holding up signs with that particular Mother Teresa quote. And a later speaker even mentioned how Mother Teresa had "scolded" the Clintons in the 90s for their anti-life values.

So what does Jackie Mason think of the Empire State Building's decision not to honor Mother Teresa's 100th birthday?

"This is the most disgusting thing that ever happened.”

Glad to see he is keeping these things in perspective and has his priorities straight. Take that 9/11 victims' families and Holocaust survivors.

And even though the Empire state Building is privately owned by Anthony Malkin, apparently Mason thinks Mayor Bloomberg needs to force them to cooperate with the Catholic League agenda:

“And if he doesn’t [fight for the Empire State Building to honor Mother Tereas], he should be thrown out of office. Mayor Bloomberg should be looking for a job. Mayor Bloomberg should get out of this city. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

But not everyone believes Malkin owns the building. According to Bill Donohue:

“We know that Anthony Malkin owns the Empire State Building financially but I have news for him. It’s New Yorkers who own the memories. It’s New Yorkers who own the history. We own this building, not just Anthony Malkin.”

So I guess everyone in New York owns the Catholic League's headquarters at 450 Seventh Avenue. After all, we all have such fond memories of Donohue's many, many outrages.

Another speaker, attorney Raoul Felder brought up the recent bed bug infestation in the Empire State Building, citing the deadly plagues described in Exodus

“So the moral of all of this is, don’t mess with Mother Teresa.”

Apparently Felder was unaware that many Manhattan buildings are facing bed bug infestations now and that the last plague involved the death of children. Donohue later jumped on the deadly plague bandwagon and even attributed New York's week of bad weather to "God's" divine retribution for Anthony Malkin's decision:

“First we find out about the bed bugs in the Empire State Building. Then they get stiffed by the city council. Now he’s got this massive protest. The weather’s been lousy all week...But if you don’t believe in divine providence after all this, Anthony Malkin, I don’t know what it takes.”

The speakers even incoherently exploited nationalistic pride. Joe DioGuardi, president of the Albanian American Civic League shouted this  to the crowd:

“Are you proud to be American? Well I wish the owners of this building were real Americans. They would have put those colors up there honoring mother Teresa.”

So you might ask yourself what despicable, un-American thing Malkin did choose to honor that night. Surely, it couldn't have been as great as helping to propagate sycophantic worship of Mother Teresa, right? Well, Anthony Malkin decided to light the building in red, white, and blue in honor of the anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, the one that guaranteed women's suffrage. Ugh! Freedom. How un-American!

But Jackie Mason was full of examples of what turned out to be the single most popular theme of the evening, over the top, hyperbolic praise of vague Mother Teresa accomplishments:

“The greatest woman of this generation, of many generations. There never was a greater humanitarian. There’s never been a greater humanitarian in the history of this world than Mother Teresa.”

“I know thousands of Jews and I’m crazy about them. None of them has done as much for the people of this world as Mother Teresa.”

Ya know, Bill Gates is giving away half his fortune to charity and has convinced 40 other billionaires to do the same. And some would say that Jonas Salk kinda helped a lot of people too. Now what did Mother Teresa actually do again...specifically?

Well according to Uma Mysorekar, the president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, Mother Teresa was...

“...a woman who has given all her life for the sake of humanity.”

Yes, yes. But what did she specifically do? Attorney Raoul Felder, you want to field this one?

“Mother Teresa, a simple, pious, extraordinary individual who helped the helpless and spoke for the people who couldn’t speak for themselves.”

Okay, but I mean specifically. What did she literally do? Joe DioGuardi, president of the Albanian American Civic League, maybe you can answer this one:

“She is an icon to the world. She is a living saint and soon to be an announced saint to all Catholics. But she is a patron saint to the Albanian people whether they are Catholic, Muslim, Eastern orthodox, even Jewish."

No, no. you're not really answering my question. How has she helped these people? Oh, forget it. Apparently, nobody really knows. That's at least the sense I got from all the speakers and protesters, all of whom seemed to attribute different amazing feats to this strange folk hero they all agreed was called Mother Teresa. Ten feet tall, she was. And she shot fire from her eyes and bolts of lightning from her arse. A random pedestrian walking by might have learned about how Mother Teresa single-handedly defeated the hydra and ended the Holocaust. I'm of course exaggerating how ridiculous the made up accomplishments attributed to Mother Teresa at the protest were, but sadly it's not all that much of an exaggeration (See: above Jackie Mason quotes).

And the reason is that Mother Teresa is was no more a hero than the hero Canton, the man they called Jayne. As Senal Edamaruku writes, "India has no reason to be grateful to Mother Teresa". Here, Edamaruku reiterates numerous disturbing facts about this woman who must have had the greatest personal PR department in history. Many unpleasant facts about Mother Teresa came to the public's attention years ago when journalist Christopher Hitchens published the book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Back when the Church began discussing whether to declare Mother Teresa a saint, they recruited Hitchens to perform the role of advocatus diaboli or "devil's advocate," to challenge her extraordinary claims. This position no longer exists today.

But in Hitchens' book as well as in numerous articles, he reveals many facts about the woman that show a very different side to this woman whose name is often synonymous with charity and goodness. Mother Teresa did not help the poor become less poor as the Catholic Church would have us believe. On the contrary, her idea of helping the poor merely meant converting them to Catholicism. Her goal was to keep people poor, desperate, and uneducated. According to her:

"The suffering of the poor is something very beautiful and the world is being very much helped by the nobility of this example of misery and suffering."

Further, Mother Teresa profited off of the poor of India. She made millions, possibly even billions off of them. And that money did not go towards helping to end poverty. As Edamaruku writes:

"The legend of her Homes for the Dying has moved the world to tears. Reality, however, is scandalous: In the overcrowded and primitive little homes, many patients have to share a bed with others. Though there are many suffering from tuberculosis, AIDS and other highly infectious illnesses, hygiene is no concern. The patients are treated with good words and insufficient (sometimes outdated) medicines, applied with old needles, washed in lukewarm water. One can hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother Teresa's bizarre philosophy, it is 'the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ'. Once she tried to comfort a screaming sufferer: 'You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you!' The man got furious and screamed back: 'Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing.'"

And that quote about abortion attributed to Mother Teresa earlier in this article was not taken out of context. She was devoted to stamping out abortion and made paranoid accusations about it being intended for population control. That's right. The great Mother Teresa thought abortion was a far greater evil than poverty, war, famine, and disease. In fact, according to her, her charity work was all just a means to an end to get rid of abortion.

As Edamaruku writes:

"Mother Teresa did not serve the poor in Calcutta, she served the rich in the West. She helped them to overcome their bad conscience by taking billions of Dollars from them. Some of her donors were dictators and criminals, who tried to white wash their dirty vests. Mother Teresa revered them for a price. Most of her supporters, however, were honest people with good intentions and a warm heart, who fall for the illusion that the 'Saint of the Gutter' was there to wipe away all tears and end all misery and undo all injustice in the world. Those in love with an illusion often refuse to see reality"

And regarding the alleged "miracle" the Church called on Hitchens to attest to, according to Hitchens:

"Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No. (As it happens, I myself was interviewed by them but only in the most perfunctory way. The procedure still does demand a show of consultation with doubters, and a show of consultation was what, in this case, it got.)"

Then about three years ago, the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light was hit newstands. It was based on many letters Mother Teresa wrote to her spiritual counselors and confessors over an almost 50-year period. Those letters revealed a period in her life where she'd lost her faith:

"'Where is my faith?' she wrote. 'Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me.'"

"Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith."

"'Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal,' she said."

"As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask."

"'What do I labor for?' she asked in one letter. 'If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.'"

. . .

"According to her letters, Mother Teresa died with her doubts. She had even stopped praying, she once said."

Her dying wishes were to have these letters destroyed.

This is the real woman behind the myth of Mother Teresa. A woman who duped the public into sending her money to help the poor when she did no such thing, who rejoiced in the suffering of others, who thought abortion was the worst evil in the world and actively campaigned to eliminate it, and who lived a life of total hypocrisy. That is her legacy. That is why it's an insult to have our tax dollars go towards stamps with this woman's image plastered on them. And that is why America has no reason whatsoever to honor this despicable excuse for a human being. Anthony Malkin chose to honor something that actually was worth honoring, women's suffrage, as opposed to Mother Teresa, who was just in favor of women suffering.

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