David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Impious Thoughts with Eddie Izzard
Eddie Izzard has taken a break from standup comedy to star in FX’s “The Riches,” a new drama about a family of con artists who assume the identity of an upscale couple killed en route to a new community. But he says he’ll resume his show (he plays the Coronet on La Cienega) when he wraps production next month.
Though he was suffering from a stomach bug, Izzard agreed to sit for an interview on the set of “The Riches” before being whisked off to the hospital for some antibiotics. He spoke about a routine he’s been developing on creationism.
“Which, somehow, everyone happily agreed to change the word creationism into ‘intelligent design,’” Izzard says. “But if it was intelligent, there’d be some f@$&ing logic going on. It seems to be sporadic, confused progression, and that doesn’t seem to have a brain behind working everything out. Because with intelligent design, you wouldn’t have any earthquakes. No earthquakes – they’re not very intelligent.
“You spent all this time creating all these animals, and then you blow them all away 65 million years ago? Why’d you make the big ones? Why’d you make the big, stupid ones? This is not intelligent design – this, at best, is trial and error. And that sounds like a human being to me.
“I’m interested in this, how this world came about. When you say someone created things in seven days, that is, essentially, what we call ‘magic.’ So I’m afraid I don’t go with it.”
From there, conversation shifted to the recent Discovery Channel special, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.”
Though he hadn’t seen the film, Izzard said, “I do find that fascinating. There’s this online book that I downloaded – ‘The Jesus Dynasty,’ I think it’s called? So I started looking into that.
“I do think he was around. Like Gandhi, he went out against an entrenched military dictatorship, said his piece, got more involved, people thought it very refreshing. He would’ve been married – that’s the thing with Jewish rabbis, you would’ve had to’ve been married and have a family and things in order to advise people, which is where the Catholic church has gone so way wrong. I do think the truth is out there.”
And from there, he started riffing on the subject.
“There’s a huge fact that I haven’t had doubly corroborated, which is that the Greek word for ‘young woman’ and the Greek word for ‘virgin’ are the same word. So Mary was either a virgin – and that’s really quite amazing and magical – or she was a young woman who had a baby, and, well, one or two of those have happened along the way. The fact that no one’s pounding on the difference between those two – that one fact, that one fact, everything that comes out of that – and also, it takes away from the guy.
If the guy’s magical, then what’s the big deal? He was up on the cross and suffering – well, f@%& it, he was magical. He knew he was going to live forever and have a whole religion based on him. Or, he was a real guy up there – and, dear God, what a hellish time he had up there, to put down some truth and say we should try to get along with each other. I much more believe in this bloke.
“Mary had a kid, and then had a bunch of kids with Joseph. I find that interesting, because if you’re magical and you’re a virgin – why’d you have all the other kids? Wouldn’t that be a little impure as a holy vessel?
“But we can’t work out the death of Kennedy; how are we going to work out this?”