Thursday's CBS This Morning stood out for zeroing in on the plight of Catholics in China, as it covered Pope Francis's trip to South Korea. Seth Doane noted the Pope's overflight of the communist country, and pointed out how "that's significant, because the last time a pope wanted to fly through Chinese airspace was in 1989, and Beijing refused the request." The Pope at that time, St. John Paul II, took a vocal stance against the communist regime in his native Poland.

Meanwhile, ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today touted the Pope "making history" with his trip, as he is the first pontiff to visit South Korea in 25 years. Both newscasts also hyped the temporary Popemobile – something that CBS This Morning left out of its coverage: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

Gay playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick was assigned by The New Yorker to mock the Hobby Lobby decision and those religious freaks who support it. This came naturally, since Rudnick wrote the satire “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” in which God makes Adam and Steve, along with the first lesbians, Jane and Mabel. In the script’s introduction, he writes “I believe in what human beings can do when you give them fifty bucks to guy some cheap red polyester velvet. Some people need more, something with vengeance and commandments and jihads.”

In a perfectly arrogant example of the self-congratulating secular superiority of The New Yorker and its readership, Rudnick apparently found it hilarious to merge tacky crafting with tacky religious metaphors:    

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart took a break from spouting his left-wing version of the news to interview Bill Maher, HBO’s favorite atheist talk show host. When the host of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart asked Maher if he ever felt he had affected real change in the political world, he replied that the “needle has moved” away from religion and towards legalization of drugs, two of Maher’s pet political prerogatives. 

Maher continued his anti-religious spiel claiming that America is often behind in “the case in social issues” due to its “God-fearing” people. The Real Time host bashed Hillary Clinton for saying her favorite book was The Bible, even insulting President Obama for “spouting spiritual bulls***.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio.]

On his May 16 program, liberal comedian and avowed atheist Bill Maher insulted a holy sacrament of the faith of billions of people worldwide in a disturbingly crude joke involving, essentially, sexually predatory extraterrestrial alien priests [See video below. MP3 audio here].

The occasion for the so-called joke was news that Pope Francis said that in the hypothetical situation that life existed on other planets and an extraterrestrial asked him to be baptized, he would perform the baptismal rite for the alien. “New rule: Don't scare off the aliens before they even get here,” cracked Maher on his Real Time program, adding:        

Allowing a brief prayer to be said at the beginning of a court case is akin to stoning and beheading people for not following your religion, according to liberal comedian John Fugelsang.  On MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” May 6, Fugelsang actually compared the recent Supreme Court decision in Greece v. Galloway to allow prayer in government as reminiscent to Muslim Sharia Law. Really?

Fugelsang called this case “not really about Christianity, it’s about Christian supremacy. This is about a whole different thing: establishing Christianity as the dominant religion.” The commentator went on to say, “The irony is, these are the guys that are praying for a separation of mosque and state over there, erasing the wall of church and state over here. And it’s interesting, with government in religion, Scalia law is a lot like Sharia law.” Get it? They rhyme. And Scalia is a conservative justice. And conservatives are the same as Islamic fundamentalists. Clever, clever, liberals!