From:    Greg Dabbs                               Kill 
To:      All                                      Msg #200, 06-Sep-93 09:42pm
Subject: Rob Sherman's article

     I will forwarn you all that this will take about 5 posts, so get out
your screen traps or whatever you all use to save Fido posts. I didn't get
the whole thing on here and will have the rest of the interview later this
weekend. Anyways here is the soon to be infamous Rob Sherman meets devious
reporter slam-fest.

Greg Dabbs
****************************************************************** 

All words within the parenthesis are my own comments. hehehe


Taken from the August 8th issue of the Chicago Tribune
Magazine...

Cover of the magazine has a nice photo of Rob Sherman in a
suit... the cover's title is "A Lonely Voice...The Mission
of atheist (sic) Rob Sherman."  At the bottom of the cover
says" PLUS: Art in the flesh--colorful, creative tattoos."
(Guess they had nothing better that week other than to bash
Atheists and promote Skin art :-)
(Anyways, onto the show...)
title is entitled "Against All Gods - Rob Sherman's quest
too keep church and state seperate" Author is Dennis (let's
bash this Atheist) Rodkin. Length is h5 pages.
By Dennis Rodkin  " On a spring day seven years ago, 
33-year-old office-supplies dealer named Rob Sherman was
driving through Zion, a quiet lake front town near the
Wisconsin border, and caught a glimpse of its municipal
water tower. Paintaed on the tower was a cross. Sherman, who in his spare
time was rnning the Northern Illinois chapter
of American Atheists Inc., was surprised to find an overtly
religious symbol decorating public property. It looked to
him like a blatant snub of the constitutional (sic)
principle of separation of church and state.         When he 
got home to Buffalo Grove, Sherman made a round of phone
calls that led him to the Zion city attorney, who said
Sherman could bring up the question during the open-mike
segment of a city council meeting the next night.         
But Sherman didn'tu want to go alone. "I phone some newpapers and TV
stations," hesays. "I hoped I'd get a paragraph on
page 37 some-where. Little did I know that the next night I
would be the lead story on the 10 o'clock news."          On 
a slow news day, April 1, 1986, a star was born.


                     ********   page # 2





The little media storm that Sherman managed to kick up
launched the Rob Sherman Show, his long-running multimedia
atheist onslaught. ( Here is where I gotta say SPARE ME THIS
CRAP). Since its debut at the Zion City Hall, the show has
traveled to Rolling Meadows, Wauconda, Arlington Heights,
Hickory Hills and a dozen other spots. This summer, it has
featured episode in in South Barrington, Chicago and
Evergreen Park.                In June, Sherman made a rare
appearance outside his usual territory when he orchestrated
a small rally on the steps of the capitol in Little Rock,
Ark., condemning a part of the Arkansas state constitution
that forbids  atheists from testifying in court or holding
state office.         Back on home turf later that month,
he coached the atheist contestant in a no-holds-barred, two
person debate on the question of God's existence.  With the
event taking place at Willow Creek Church, a mammoth
Christian facility in South Barrington, the believers had a
definite home-court advantage, and the atheists never had a
prayer. Sherman is now juggling three separate
cross-spurning campaigns. In the first, which he hatched in
mid-May, he is urging Mayor Richard Daley to staunch the
flow of free Chicago water to Churches.
         The second bears his familiar imprinIt:  When
southwestern suburban Evergreen Park flew banners
celebating its centennial in June, word reached Sherman
that the banners carried the village seal, which depicts,
among other things, a cross.  Sherman is now trying to use
the weight of legal precedent--- precedent his own earlier
cases established--- to get the town's seral changed        The third campaign
is typically quixotic, wih
Sherman bearing down on National Football League
admisirators in an affort to block the league's traditional
support of United Way's/Crusade of Mercy, which funds the
Boy Scouts, whose membership requirements include a belief
in gods.
         In seven years, Sherman has transformed himself
from an unknown, peddling office supplies in the Chicago
suburbs, into the Midwest's best-known atheist activist and
a lightning rod on the tangled question of separation of
Church and State.  As the national spokesperson for American
Atheists, Inc., he has created for himself a bully pulpit
that, although it doesn't pay very well, when it pays at
all, sanctions Sherman's consuming itch to push his
conviction that atheists belong to the only minority against
which the government allows and even encourages
discrimination.    
         And by diligently cultivating press coverage of his
appearances at municipal meetings, Sherman has made himself
a media star.  He has his own cable TV gig and used to have
on on radio too, but the real Rob Sherman Show tis a
traveling roadshow that he sets up at village board
meeting, public forums and anti-Sherman events, on big time
TV talk shows fronted by Oprah, Larry and Phil; and in
countless interviews with reporters.  Where Sherman goes,
microphones follow.
         "There are literally hundreds of cases of
state-church visolations all over the country" says Madeline Murray O'air,
the plaintiff in the landmark, 1963 case
against the Baltimore public schools that resulted in the
end of prayer in schools.  O'Hair runs American Atheists and
its parent group, the Society of Separationsists, with two
of her children in Austin, Tex.  "We need to hammer away at
them and that takes persistence," she says. "The legislators 
know, the media know, they all know that you shouldn't have
these crosses and creches at City Hall.  But Rob has the
stamina to keep pushing at it and pushing at it."     
         One of Sherman's former foes sees him differently 
"He does it all to see his name in the papers," says Howard Everline, a
devout Christian who was the mayor of Zion when
Sherman first started griping about crosses on the town's
water towers in 1986. "Because he's an atheist, his life
is empty, and he's trying to fill it up with the limelight.
he's looking for glamor and excitement, just like what one
old bat got for getting prayer out of public schools."  
       Both sides ae right.
  ( Well this is as far as I've gotten for this weekend.
This thing turned out to be a bit longer than I expected.
Please SAVE this portion rand I will put up the other 2-3
pages in a week or so.)