The Nature of His Game
Ladies and gentlemen, I am interrupting your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special televised broadcast. Please don't bother to change the channel; I've preempted all networks and their affiliates and all independent, local access and public broadcasting stations as well as all cable networks, pay-per-view channels and streaming services.
I'm sure you are all wondering what type of program I'm about to present. Don't worry; it's not an infomercial for a new diet and exercise plan, nor is it a late-breaking news bulletin informing you of some dire catastrophe. There's been no hurricane along the Gulf Coast, earthquake in South America or tsunami striking some far-off Pacific island; so just sit back and relax because for the next several minutes I would like to talk to you.
Ever since the days of Jack Parr, Steve Allen and Johnny Carson, I have had a penchant for television talk shows. Even so, I'm frankly amazed at how popular they have become in the past few decades. Today millions of viewers tune in to watch teenage hookers getting makeovers on Jenny Jones, the results of paternity tests taken on Montel Williams or defiant juvenile delinquents being carted off to boot camp on Maury. And who could resist watching a transsexual, African-American Santa Claus go up against a white, male right-wing politico or seeing the Jewish Defense League duking it out with the Ku Klux Klan on The Jerry Springer Show?
Just look at the incredible number and diversity of people who have hosted their own talk shows over the years. We've had Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, David Letterman, Donny and Marie Osmond, Rosanne Barr, Oprah Winfrey, David Frost, Rosie O'Donnell, Ricki Lake, Conan O'Brien, Arsenio Hall, Sally Jessy Raphael, Ru Paul, Dennis Miller—and the list just keeps on growing exponentially. And what a motley crew of guests they've hosted: entertainers, athletes, authors, psychics, neo-Nazis, movie critics, artists, modern-day pagans and witches, activists, social misfits and sexual deviants of every conceivable kind. I ask you: where else can you see priests, politicians, prophets and prostitutes all on one stage at the same time? And as morning, midday, primetime and late-night talk shows vie for ratings, the guests become even more controversial and outlandish. I have to admit I find man's idea of culture and entertainment a bit odd, to say the least. Only humans would consider the uncouth behavior of ignorant, foul-mouthed, unwashed trailer trash entertaining.
And I'd be willing to bet you think you've seen it all—right? I've got news for you: you ain't seen nothing yet!
To quote the great Mick Jagger: "Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long, long year." But, sorry, Mick, I've stolen no one's soul or faith.
Have you guessed my name?
I've been known by so many down through the millennia: Satan, the Devil, the Prince of Darkness, the Evil One, the Dark One, the Beast, the Serpent, Baphomet, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Old Scratch and Old Nick, but you can just call me Lucifer. Yes, you all know my name, but according to the Rolling Stones, "what's puzzling you is the nature of my game."
Somehow, I seriously doubt that. Your "inquiring minds" rarely delve deeper than the desire to know whether Michael Jackson molested little boys during his sleepovers at his Neverland Ranch; whether the auto body Romeo, Joey Buttafucco, was banging his seventeen-year-old Juliet, Amy Fisher, before she shot his wife; who actually murdered little beauty pageant winner JonBenet Ramsey; if football hero O.J. Simpson was actually guilty of murder; or if Brad Pitt will eventually leave Angelina Jolie and return to the arms of Jennifer Anniston. You don't want to know about the existence of good and evil, of heaven and hell. You're not even too curious about death. You'd rather watch male strippers reveal their innermost secrets to their Roller Derby lovers on Jerry Springer.
The sad truth is that to you humans, ignorance is not only bliss; it's also your sanctuary. You think that if you just ignore the truth, maybe it will go away. Guess again! It's always there, waiting for you. Sure, one part of your mind is willing to admit that no one lives forever, that being creatures of flesh and blood you're all destined to "shuffle off the mortal coil," as William Shakespeare so eloquently phrased it. Yet at the same time, none of you thinks it's going to happen to you—at least not for a while anyway. No matter how old or sick you are, your own death remains something just beyond the horizon, and like Scarlett O'Hara, you won't worry about it today. You'd sooner worry about it tomorrow.
Well, folks out there in TV land, I'm going to let you all in on a little secret. Whether you're young or old, in good health or ill—or somewhere in between—death is with you all the time. Even as you're sitting out there in your La-Z-Boy recliner watching this broadcast on your fifty-five-inch Sony flat-screen television, that bag of Lay's potato chips, that bottle of Heineken beer and the TV remote control are not the only things within your reach. The Grim Reaper sits right beside you, with your one-way ticket to the hereafter in his back pocket. You see, metaphorically, each human life, from the very first moment of birth, is an hourglass, and the sand is continually running out.
I know there are many of you out there who don't believe in heaven or hell. Before Columbus's voyage, people believed that the Earth was flat, but their belief didn't make it so, just as your failure to believe in heaven and hell won't make them go away. Your disbelief and skepticism won't save you from your ultimate fate. As any lawyer will tell you, ignorance of the law is no defense.
Knowing the human race as well as I do, I'm sure most of you viewers don't really believe I am who I say I am. You're probably thinking this program is actually a clever pilot for a daring new show—perhaps a situation comedy that goes one step further than South Park. Let me assure you nonbelievers right now: I'm the genuine article. I'm not going to appear regularly on Comedy Central, Syfy or even HBO. This is a one-night-only broadcast, people, so please pay attention.
I must apologize for rambling on about talk shows and your strange fascination for scandal and gossip. But now, without any further ado, let me get right to the heart of the matter.
Here's tonight's million-dollar question: why am I speaking to you now when for thousands of years I've remained silent? No, you don't need to phone a friend for the answer. This isn't a quiz show where you can save your ass by using a lifeline. I'll tell you the answer.
I keep a pretty good eye on things up here on Earth, and recently I've noticed that you've become obsessed with something called "political correctness." According to this rule of behavior, a secretary must be called an administrative assistant, mailmen are mail carriers or postal workers and policemen are law enforcement or peace officers. People aren't handicapped; they're physically challenged or special. They're not deaf; they're hearing impaired. They're not homosexual; they have an alternate lifestyle that they share with a life partner. And apparently, Negroes, Indians and Eskimos have vanished from the surface of the Earth and have been replaced by native this and native that.
You've already changed Little Black Sambo to Little Boy Sambo. What's next? Little Person Sambo? Or better yet, Vertically Challenged Person Sambo? Or perhaps the name "Sambo" itself is now considered an ethnic slur. In that case, you should rename the book Vertically Challenged Person of an Indiscriminate Race and Sex.
I remember in the 1960s, George Carlin came up with seven words that couldn't be said on television—just seven words in the entire English language. Congratulations, friends! You've managed to add to that list considerably.
But what I fail to understand is that even now, when you're all so concerned with not offending anyone, nobody gives a damn about offending ME! I don't mean to whine or bask in self-pity, but, ladies and gentlemen, I am without a doubt the most maligned, misunderstood being since the beginning of time! I've been accused by most of you of being nothing more than a petty little trader bartering for your souls and always looking to cheat you by not keeping my end of the bargain.
Come on, people. Let's be honest. If I had the power to give you wealth, fame, beauty or life-everlasting, do you really think I'd have to go and seek you out one by one? Hell, no! You'd flock to me by the millions. You'd raise me up on a pedestal and worship at my feet. But no. Mankind has always feared and reviled me. And why? Because when Christianity came along, I was cast as the whipping boy. I was personally held responsible for your sins. Greed, hate, jealousy, envy, lust—I've been blamed for them all.
Just look into your history books at the witch-hunts, the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. What exactly were they? Men who deemed themselves holy and righteous were trying to fight the powers of darkness and defend the kingdom of God against me. Yet they were the ones who tortured and murdered their innocent victims. When man enslaved his fellow man, was I the one who applied the chains? When the Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, did my finger press the button? Or when the Nazis exterminated six million people in the camps, was it my will being done? No.
What I really want to know is when are you humans finally going to stop blaming me for your own transgressions? I don't make you lie, steal, cheat or murder. You do it of your own free will. Each and every one of you are responsible for your own actions. Neither God nor I try to influence you. We are merely the guardians of the portals to your hereafter. God is the keeper of the gates of heaven; I see to the gates of hell. Does that make us responsible for good and evil? Absolutely not! Do the doormen at the Waldorf Astoria or the Ritz-Carlton tempt you to commit larceny, adultery or homicide? Are they interested in either preserving or destroying your mortal souls? No, they just open the door and let you inside. I guess that's basically what God and I are: nothing more than glorified doormen.
Of course, I must admit, God has always gotten the better end of that deal. You members of the human race love him. You praise his name, you write hymns extolling your love for him and his kingdom and you build great cathedrals in his honor. You regard him as your Heavenly Father and pray to him for help and guidance.
I hate to break it to you, folks, but he's just as powerless as I am. When you die, if your good deeds outweigh your sins, he'll be there to greet you, to let you into his kingdom where you'll spend the rest of eternity. But he can't help you while you're down here on earth. He can't cure you if you contract AIDS or develop cancer, he can't help you get that promotion and raise in salary you so desperately want and he can't make anyone fall in love with you or see to it that you pick the winning numbers in the Powerball lottery. I'm afraid you're all on your own down here, people—that is, except for your constant companion, the Grim Reaper.
So, before I return you to your regularly scheduled programming, I implore you to stop thinking of me as the bad guy. I'm not out to try to corrupt you or to tempt you. I don't get a commission on the number of souls that are damned to hell. Quite frankly, I'd just as soon you all go to heaven. It's far too crowded down here as it is.
In closing, let me quote Mr. Jagger once again, "Have some courtesy; have some sympathy and some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse." But even if you don't, I promise not to lay your soul to waste.
"Sympathy for the Devil" © Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
I think we all know the nature of your game, Salem.
