Would-be book burner hot-dogging

Book burnings are for wienies

Oh, to be a narcissist book burner holding the world under your thumb. Such was the case of a Florida pastor who decided that since his sermons weren’t flocking them in, perhaps a book-burning would.

Historically, book burning began around 213 B.C. when China’s emperor took offense at the country’s current literature, art, pens, ink, petunias – you name it, this guy had it tagged for the pyre.

The act then goose-stepped its way through Nazi Germany and rumbled across America in the 1950s, making a recent pit stop at Pastor Terry Jones’ humble church in Gainesville, Fla.

Jones claimed that Islam’s holy book, the Koran/Quran/Qur’an (three spellings, one book) is a hotbed of hatred and violence. He decided to burn the book based on a purported edict he received from God and rakishly planned the event for Sept. 11 – a day that still stings the minds and hearts of Americans.

Book burnings are all about censorship and control and book burners insist they not only know all, see all, and hear all but will force their all on others.

Unfortunately, Jones neglected to consider the season because, as book burners of yore discovered, this type of burnt force can get a might toasty when that which is deemed wrong and/or unholy meets a fiery torch on warm summer nights. That’s why such deeds are best done on cold, blustery autumn evenings.

And while it’s true these bonfires of insanity are knee-deep in dictatorship, history has yet to record the most significant upshot of these nefarious infernos.

You see, there were those who dared to be defiant and that defiance fueled a determination to make good use of the massive firestorm spitting and sputtering before them. One by one they pulled out packages of wienies and began roasting the tasty tubes over the hot flames.

Now, that’s what I call using your wienie.

Speaking of wienie, the aforementioned Terry Jones, pastor of the 50-member Dove World Church in Gainesville, Fla., (51 if you count the flamingo) is now the most recent ‘almost’ member of the book burning buffoons.

Almost? Let’s say, his plans didn’t materialize as he envisioned.

I suspect, while Jones was successfully milking his cause from a free-flowing media udder, he took a look at Florida’s sultry weather and realized a horrendous boo-boo was in the works, the same boo-boo book-burning bozos learned long ago – a warm day plus an inferno equals hell on earth and no God-hearing, gun totin’ pastor wants that.

The event was abruptly canceled. Reports of the sudden change in plans sped across the Internet faster than Tammy Faye Bakker’s dripping mascara.

In an attempt to save face, Jones stammered out something about a meeting with a Florida imam who promised the controversial Islamic center, slated for construction two blocks from ground zero in New York City, would be stopped. This promise, Jones claimed, was the reason the towering book-ferno was canceled.

That evening, the imam stated he made no such promise.

On Sept. 11, a red-faced Jones flew to the Big Apple to consult the imam in charge of building the Islamic center. He hinted he would fan the flames of a book burning brouhaha in New York if the imam didn’t kowtow to demands.

Regrettably, New York was unseasonably warm and a book burning would’ve made it hotter than Hades…or Gainesville, for that matter. Some narcissists never learn.

Meanwhile, back at the Dove World Church, the only member of Jones’ congregation, a long-legged gal with pinkish feathers, maintained a closed beak to reporters. Jones left New York with no kowtow. The pastor’s fleeting fame is heading back into obscurity.

Personally, I think God told Jones to ‘read a book’ but Jones heard ‘burn a book’ and the egotistical wheels of misinterpretation were set in motion. People and pastors tend to hear what they want to hear, particularly when God speaks to them.

At last report, Pastor Jones would possibly/maybe/perhaps not burn the Koran/Quran/Qur’an – for now, anyway. It’s a good bet come late fall, Jones will pick the coldest autumn day Florida can crank out and declare God told him to hold a Koran/Quran/Qur’an book burning.

Someone better not forget the wienies.