Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks the Internet!

If the internet isn't careful, Chuck Norris might just have to give it a roundhouse kick to the face. And then where would we all be?

I've been hearing a lot of really funny un-facts about Chuck Norris lately, things like:

When Chuck Norris sends does his taxes he sends in blank forms with a picture of himself crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has never had to pay taxes...ever

There are about a million more, everything to Chuck roundhouse kicking his wife to curing blindness and then roundhouse kicking the formerly blind man.

I even got into the fun and made up some of my own like:

Chuck Norris was once shot in the abdomen by a 10-gauge round at point blank range while drinking a glass of water. The slug fell to the floor and Chuck finished drinking without spilling a drop. He was disappointed, however because his lawyers refused to let him use video footage of the incident to advertise the "Total Gym" exercise machine like he had intended. "Results not typical" just didn't seem to cover it.

So, I'm thinking to myself "what prompted all of this anti-Chuck sentiment all of a sudden?" When I was a kid, I held him in awe because he was into martial arts (collectively known as "Karate" to most of the 80's generation). Sure, his movies were cheesy, but we didn't know that back then, all we knew was that he could kick a guy in the head while spinning around (we also didn't know what a "roundhouse" kick was). He used machine guns, rode motorcycles, set off explosions, was part of an elite military force - basically every American boy's dream job. It didn't really matter that the acting was awful, it was the setting that inspired us, our imagination could do the rest, thank you very much. (Chuck's movies were kind of like Knight Rider in that respect - I could care less what the show was about as long as I got to see that car do something cool every episode. Man, I wished I could drive a car with "super-pursuit mode"!)

Anyway, I still did't get what the sudden emergence of this anti-Chuck movement is all about. This isn't just confined to the Internet - it's being put on TV as well.



Don't get me wrong, this is really funny stuff, but I decided to see if there was a new Delta Force movie in the works or something that acted as a catalyst for this. So I went to Chuck's website, and found something that I think answers the question. Or at least starts to.

For a Christian, making a public declaration of your faith is pretty much like painting a target on yourself. This isn't really true of any other religious pursuasion, at least not in America. There is an irrational public animosity against Christianity in the US that does not extend to other religions. Christian religious symbols and artifacts are the target of pretty much every single court case that has sought to enforce the so-called "separation of church and state" (a badly misinterpreted rule that was never intended to be used to bludgeon Christianity in public places like so many ignorant people believe today.) The irony is that this does not come as a surprise to Christians: 1 2 3 4 5.

Now, none of the so-called "Chuck Norris Facts" I have encountered have directly attacked Chuck's faith, but instead have tried to discredit him in every other conceivable way, effectively attacking what Christians refer to his "witness", trying, in essence to limit his ability to share his faith by making him look like a fake.

Chuck, himself, has demonstrated his faith and turned the other cheek, and I for one have a great deal of respect for that. Here is an exerpt from his official website:

I'm aware of the made up declarations about me that have recently begun to appear on the Internet and in emails as "Chuck Norris facts." I've seen some of them. Some are funny. Some are pretty far out. Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's quite surprising. I do know that boys will be boys, and I neither take offense nor take these things too seriously. Who knows, maybe these made up one-liners will prompt young people to seek out the real facts as found in my recent autobiographical book, "Against All Odds?" They may even be interested enough to check out my novels set in the Old West, "The Justice Riders," released this month. I'm very proud of these literary efforts.

~ Chuck Norris

I'm not saying that everyone who makes up Chuck Norris "Facts" is bashing Christianity, but isn't it interesting how much trouble people seem to be going to to make fun of him? Maybe it's all in good fun, maybe it's not. But I learned an important lesson - if you're going to make fun of something, make sure you know what you're making fun of. I, for one, will not be making up any more Chuck "facts", but I will say that the Internet deserves a roundhouse kick in the face if doesn't back off:-P