What Jesus Looked Like

[ Compulsory listening ]

I was thrilled this morning to discover in my emailbox a message from none other than Eric Trump, the tallest of the Trumps, and the ones whose looks would have doomed him to failure in the business world if he weren’t the second son of the most brilliant businessman in the history of commerce. Eric wanted to make me aware of the new voguishness of toppling or defacing statues of Jesus H. Christ, and hoped I might be able to contribute a few bucks to the campaign to re-elect his father, who — unbeknownst to the Fake News media, spends most of the time he’s supposedly watching Fox News reading the Bible, and being inspired by it.

Will the real Jesus please stand up?

For millennia, folks (I’m doing my Barack Obama imitation!) have been wondering both aloud and silently if JHC had flowing auburn hair, a tiny sniffer and sensuous lips, and alabaster skin, as a succession of Renaissance and later painters have traditionally depicted him. In 2003, shortly after I repatriated to the United Kingdom, the BBC produced a program in which anthropologists, forensic scientists (whatever they are!), and top makeup artists from the worlds of stage, screen, and transvestism examined much, much data and decided that, being a Middle Eastern Jew right around the time of his own birth, Jesus probably looked a lot more like Izzy Schnorkelbaum, Brooklyn’s most feared hummus wholesaler in the 1950s and 1960s. Inevitably, a number of BBC executives were subsequently dragged screaming from their fashionable Mayfair apartments and burned at the stake for apostasy in St. James’s Park.

Marcus Welby, MD

Now Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Her Majesty the Queen’s personal spiritual advisor, reveals that three of the least attractive statues surrounding the Canterbury Cathedral cricket pitch will be removed to try to keep the Church of England on Black Lives Matter’s good side. Seemingly imitating President Trump, His Grace told BBC and other reporters, “Some names will have to change. I mean, the church, goodness me, you know, you just go around Canterbury Cathedral, there’s monuments everywhere, or Westminster Abbey, and we’re looking at all that, and some will have to come down. But yes, there can be forgiveness, I hope and pray as we come together, but only if there’s justice.”

[I’ve made up a fair amount of this essay, but the above quote is genuine.]

As I believe everyone should, I try to set aside half an hour each week to talk to God. In our most recent chat, I asked what She thinks of these goings-on. She laughed that lovely, melodic laugh of hers and replied, “Well, I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together can probably surmise that, being a Middle Eastern Jew 2020 years ago, he [being God, God doesn’t have to capitalize her son’s pronouns] certainly didn’t have flowing auburn hair, a tiny Michael Jackson-ish sniffer, and alabaster skin. But he was much hotter than the BBC asked its viewers to believe, and a very nice boy in the bargain, devoted to the needy and downtrodden and so on."