Jerry Lewis quote of the day, "God goofed"

It was on his Labor Day Telethon 25 years ago, Jerry was still doing the show around the clock in those days. Wearing a tux with the tie undone and the brylcream soaked hair. The show had been on already for 12 hours--it was the wee hours of the morning and Jerry was in one of his percodan (before he dried out)inspired moods aided by lack of sleep. Also and perhaps most importantly the tote board was slightly behind the previous year. It was right after showing a tape of a dystrophic child that Jerry went into his tirade which ended with his saying, "God Goofed."

"How can you look at any child in a wheel chair or struggling on a ventilator and come away with 'oh, it's god's will'? God goofed it's as simple as that. God goofed."

An hour or so later the producer told the funnyman that they were losing "love stations" the affiliates which carried the telethon in many bible belt states and the reason was his "god goofed" comment and that unless he publically apologized it could hemmorage.

After the presentation of a half million dollar check on behalf of the International Brotherhood of Firefighters, Lewis looks the camera in the eye and says, "I've been told that certain comments that I made an hour or so ago offended many people. For that I sincerly apologize. But I still think God Goofed."

And we KNOW that many people in the Bible Belt are so divorced from reality that they voted for an addle-minded, coke-head/alcoholic deserter for preseident. Twice.

To me, the idea of "It's God's will" is a lot more offensive than "God goofed"--the first idea just kind of implies God's a nasty bastard who likes to screw with people. The second only implies we should try to do something to fix the problem. The way he responded, is priceless--apologizing without backing down. I admire that.

but I admire Lewis for sticking to his beliefs. Both fail to recognize the randomness associated with life processes. MD is a terrible disease, but it represents the random failures inherent to DNA recombinations as well as evolution in action. Some of these recombinations will result in 'improvements,' - others in dead ends. I can't picture 'God' rolling the dice; DNA recombinations takes care of that itself.