We hold this truth to be self-evident: that a bird who can do a chainsaw may say whatever he likes.
THE AMENDMENT, AS WRITTEN
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
OPENING STATEMENT
Click.
That was a camera. I did that. With my throat.
Click-click-click-whirr.
That was a camera with a motor drive, the kind the professionals carried before everything went into the phone. Also me. I can do the phone, too, but nobody’s impressed by the phone. Everybody’s phone does the phone.
I am a Superb Lyrebird, of the wet forests of southeastern Australia, and I’m told I go first. That’s correct. The First Amendment is about speech, and nobody on this earth has more speech than I do. I just don’t have any of my own.
For the record, my résumé. Most of what comes out of me belongs to somebody else: the whipbird, the kookaburra, the currawong, the bell miner, whom I’ll get to, and, on special occasions, a koala, which I don’t recommend. A koala sounds like a motorbike that has just been told some bad news. In 1998 one of my cousins was filmed for a television program doing a camera shutter, a car alarm and a chainsaw, in that order, unprompted, while the man narrating whispered the way people whisper in church. That cousin is the most famous journalist in Australia. He has never once checked a source.
I’m also on the ten-cent coin. I mention it only because I understand there’s a barn owl in America still lobbying for the nickel. Mate. Take a number.
ARTICLE I: ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION
There is a bird in my forest called the bell miner. It makes one sound. Tink. A little silver bell, struck once. Then again. Then again, all day, every day, for the whole of its life. The bell miners live in colonies and ring that bell together, one note, the same note, and if any other bird comes into their trees they chase it out. Every other bird. Nobody gets in who doesn’t ring the bell.
That is an establishment of religion. One bell, one note, and everybody else out of the trees.
I do the bell miner. Tink. Lovely. I also do the eastern whipbird, who sounds like a sermon about consequences, and the kookaburra, who sounds like a congregation that has heard the sermon and has some thoughts. I do them all, in the same morning, from the same log, beautifully, and I leave nobody’s bell out.
I am not a church. I’m the whole street of them on a Sunday morning with the windows open. That’s free exercise. You’re welcome.