The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 20/12/16
Don't Come Back, Baby!
I'm pretty sure that it was Michael Moorcock - a writer for whom I've never had a high regard qua writer, pace the opinion of some people whose judgment I would otherwise trust implicitly in these matters - who nevertheless got it quite right when he said that a Jesus rematerialising in contemporary England (he was writing in the 1970s, and his remarks would only become more germane in the subsequent years) and trying to do what he had done before would in no short order find himself arrested for breach of any combination of local by-laws and ordinances, brought before a God-fearing Tory magistrate and packed off to a secure hospital.
I'm absolutely sure that it was the great Lenny Bruce who wondered What Jesus Would Think if, manifesting himself anew to the hyper-pious America of Eisenhower's time, he found everyone who claimed to be his followers going around wearing miniature simulacra of the device which killed him the time before slung around their necks (*). He went on to speculate whether - had that nice Jewish carpenter boy been treated the same by Ike and Joe McCarthy's boys the same way that Pilate had dealt with him - Christians would today be walking about proudly bearing tiny silver or gold models of electric chairs on chains.
(* It's possible that it was, in fact, Bill Hicks who made this specific observation).
