By SKIP TUCKER, Alabama Daily News Featured Columnist
You know those semi-nightmares where you’re naked in public and creeped out? One man makes me feel that way in open daylight. Like a recurring nightmare, ex-Judge Roy Moore is back. Did anyone seriously think he was going away?
As of now, I doubt the fossil has any chance of becoming a U.S. Senator, ever, without a string of unmitigated disasters for other candidates. Roy Moore as a member of our national congress would be a disaster of Biblical proportions.
A new independent poll in the U.S. Senate race says 28 percent of Republicans view the ex-judge favorably while 65 percent view him unfavorably. Moore sits in “distant third place” behind Tommy Tuberville and Bradley Byrne.
But Moore won’t quit the race so long as he can squeeze money from it. This is how the disgraced judge makes his living.
Like Judge Roy Bean, Moore is proud of his hang-ups and smug about his charade.
He reminds me of another man of the cloth who was full of coprolite (I’ll get back to that word.) A Holier-Than-Thou minister of music at a church in Jasper was also principal of a small county middle school.
A ninth grade boy at his school was mentally challenged and sweet natured as only those truly special to God can be. He had little control over basic body functions. Sometimes he became a titch aromatic.
The principal, who nearly matched Roy for undue arrogance, told the young man to stop dirtying himself or he’d rub his nose in it. Sweet man. Any Apostle would’ve done the same. Heal him, you know.
If only it could’ve been that easy a fix. What a medical breakthrough! Take a mentally challenged person, rub his or her nose in excrement and voila! Control is restored. What could possibly go wrong. As it was, of course, the boy had a better chance of understanding Einstein’s Theory than of complying with the stout Christian’s stern commandment. The very next day, the kid failed.
The Ordained felt he had no choice. He took the kid to the men’s room, pulled down the boys pants, sat him on the porcelain and did God’s will.
“All I did,” he said righteously, indignantly in an interview at the Daily Mountain Eagle, “was put a little of it on my finger and rub it on the tip of his nose.” He didn’t seem puzzled that it didn’t work. It was, like, I guess an…experiment.
We three were sitting in publisher Shelton Prince’s office. I was conducting the interview and asked pointed questions about the child’s reactions.
“Well, yes he was embarrassed,” the minister answered. “That was the point.”
Then, to my second question. “Well, yes, the boy cried. Who wouldn’t?”
And then: “What? No! I was not surprised that God didn’t strike me down!”
He said he was humbly sorry. He had only done as he thought best and no he had no medical degrees but that God is the Great Physician but no God didn’t specifically tell him to rub feces on the kid’s nose but that He didn’t tell him not to and He’d approve. He said God had forgiven him as everyone should.
The Anointed was sure, also, we wouldn’t publish something that would embarrass the kid and himself as he was a superb Christian and that all knew this. He smiled, stood, shook our hands in blessed farewell.
I assured him the matter would be given prayerful consideration and ran the story next day, front page, second story from top, not too big a headline but in bold type. It hit the streets at 1 pm. The honest minister of music hit our front door, literally, at 1.05. He cracked the glass.
He was, he said, upset and indicated that God was too. Yada yada. Lawyers, yada yada yada. But, he said righteous as hell, God had spoken to him that morning while he was in the shower and advised him to forgive me and Prince.
I asked him if God were a man or woman. And was the voice, like, thunderous? Or a still, small voice in the night? It turns out the point was moot. God Had spoken to his heart. Yes, he was sure it was God and not a demon and he thought Prince and I probably were possessed by demons on a regular basis and were assured, without doubt, of Hellfire. I wondered what in hell happened to the forgiveness. He stomped out, cracking a little more glass in the front door.
Shelton Prince was a man among men. He could forgive. He forbade me having the Minister of Music cited for breaking and entering.
“Sumbitch is strong,” he said, hearing the glass cracking again and reaching into the left lower drawer of his desk. He sort of chuckled.
“Now if he’d claimed we were often possessed by spirits….” he said, pouring two shots of 12-year-old scotch.
The Holy Man left town the next week, Praise God, and I think he left the state. I wish Ex-Judge Roy Moore would follow his example, but not to Washington, DC. Can you say Amen?
Coprolite is fossilized dinosaur dung. Ex-Judge Moore is rubbing our noses in it.
(Next week: The Alabama Press Association Rides Again, and Rides Well!)
Skip Tucker was editor of the Daily Mountain Eagle in Jasper, then communications secretary for gubernatorial folks like George McMillan, Charlie Graddick and Jim Folsom. He ran Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse for in Montgomery for 15 years. He has published one novel, Pale Blue Light, a spy thriller set in The Civil War. He’s now a regular contributor for the Alabama Daily News at www.ALDailyNews.com.