Give us Billy!

I'd like to make a small suggestion to President Obama and the inauguration planning committees: give us a blessing from Reverend Billy!

Say what you want about Reverend Billy or his message, but he's undeniably among the very best preachers in the world, maybe ever. This is preachcraft par excellance.

Don't believe me?

Watch this (OMG PLEASE WATCH THIS!):



Who is this guy?

The short version is that Bill Talen has taken on the role of anti-consumerism activist through using the image and techniques of a dime-store televangelist - the effect of using gospel music to sing about the hollow crap that surrounds us leaves a haunting sense of dread about what we've become, both materially and spiritually.

See What Would Jesus Buy, and as you watch the crunch of cars outside suburban shopping miles, with Christmas lights in the background, you hear Reverend Billy appealing with anyone who Has Ears To Hear to spend more time with their loved ones, and less time trolling malls or in cars. His mantra cuts me:

Shop less, give more.

He's blogging now, frequently, at revbilly.com - and it's just the stuff we need to be hearing now, as the Shopocalypse is upon us:

But now Americans are suddenly wise to Santa. We are rejecting this notion that Christmas comes from the FedEx jet, or Santa’s sleigh – from the outside. Our images of happiness are becoming self-made again, coming from within our loving relationships. Our dreams, memories and our imaginations are still independent from the grasping control of the marketing departments. This is the delightful and surprising world that is opened to us at the Stop Shopping church when we look at our email each morning. People report that they themselves are a fountain of dances, of paintings and song. They are making new memory fill-in games, promises of future journeys – we even hear of whole plays, dark comic musicals! In a word, we are awarding each other new experiences. This kind of gift is concocted from the funny adjustments that family members make over time to each other – those eccentric private arrangements that only we have, that no company could possibly mass produce.

Change-a-lujah, Barack! Give us Billy!