Christian Conservative Pearl-Clutchers Get JCPenney To Pull SNL Ads In Light Of ‘Djesus Uncrossed’ Sketch
I am a christian, and I find this very funny, I get the joke. Jesus did turn the other cheek, but what if he did not. I am not appalled, and if your a christian and have a problem with it, change the channel. Personally, I think Jesus might find it funny, because him being human, I am sure he thought about it more than once.  He just did not carry it out.  Good work SNL, very entertaining. 


by Andrew Kirell | 3:54 pm, March 8th, 2013

The perpetually-outraged folks over at American Family Association (home to eternally gay-bashing radio host Bryan Fischer) have successfully pressured Sears and JCPenney into pulling their ads from Saturday Night Live in the wake of last month’s controversial “Djesus Uncrossed” sketch.

The “anti-Christian” sketch re-imagined Oscar-winning Django Unchained, replacing the title character with Jesus Christ going on a bloody revenge fantasy, gunning down the enemies who persecuted him. “He’s risen from the dead, and he’s preaching anything but forgiveness,” said the voiceover.

As I’ve written before, it was actually a pretty funny reappropriation of the Tarantino-esque “oppressed person takes out incredibly bloody revenge” (a la Django and Inglourious Basterds). Todd Starnes, et al, said: “People need to understand something: Jesus wants to be your lord and savior, he doesn’t want to blow you to kingdom come.”

See… umm.. that’s actually the point of the joke.

Despite how prudish and annoying these people who have no ability to change the channel are, I am a firm believer in the power of the consumer and the market. And so one can’t help but respect the two companies’ wishes to please their customer base above all, however silly the whole “controversy” may be.

Watch “Djesus Uncrossed” below and decide just how outraged you are:

For the humorless: Everyone knows the story of Jesus turning the other cheek to his persecutors. And so there’s something called humor… and irony… which form the basis of what’s called a “joke.” In this case, the joke is that the man who turned the other cheek instead goes guns a-blazin’.

Then again, it’s a moot point to try and explain a joke to the type of people who find anything and everything an affront to Christianity if it’s not depicted in the way, say, someone like Starnes would prefer.