Comic juggles entertainment, patriotic cause

By Jerry Fink

Thursday, July 24, 2008 | 2 a.m.

YouTube turned comedian Chris Bliss back into a juggler.

Bliss, who performs this weekend at South Point, started his career juggling to music. After making a name for himself as a technically perfect juggler, he put the balls away and concentrated on his stand-up comedy for the next 20 years.

He opened tours for musicians such as Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton and Julio Iglesias.

Then came a 4 1/2-minute video of him juggling on YouTube, and millions of people saw his three-ball orchestration of the Beatles medley “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.”

His viral Internet success forced him to tweak his act, which he now closes with juggling.

Bliss received tens of thousands of e-mails, many of them with heartwarming stories attached.

“It’s because of the peace of the music,” he says from Atlanta. “Some of the stories are very uplifting and really very interesting. A flurry of e-mails from parents of autistic children. Then a flurry of marriage proposals. Circles of friends pass the video around. I even received some e-mails from an African refugee camp.”

But what he most wants to talk about is the Bill of Rights Monument Project. His dream is to put a monument to the Bill of Rights in every state.

“The Bill of Rights gave a boost to the concept of human rights,” Bliss says. “That’s how important a document it is. It’s a gift to the human race — and that’s not a hyperbole. You look at the document and you can see how those who created it tried to set up a system based around these principles. They recognized the importance of justice in the preservation of freedom, of the need to put restrictions on government. They came up with these principles and put them in 492 words.”

The monuments would be a testament to what we value most in this country, he says, and should be common ground for Democrats and Republicans.

“These days conservatives think liberals want a nanny state and don’t believe in individual freedom,” Bliss says. “And liberals think conservatives want a police state and don’t believe in individual freedom. The truth is both sides could settle on the Bill of Rights Monument.”

Bliss comes by his interest in the Bill of Rights from his father, an attorney with a law firm in Washington, D.C.

“While I was goofing around, he carefully planned out the steps that were going to lead me into his law firm. I didn’t realize that till my second year of college,” Bliss says. “I thought, ‘Holy cow! I’m on my way into my dad’s law firm.’ I hadn’t been paying attention.

“The real reason I became a juggler was so that I would not be a lawyer.”

But now he’s using juggling and comedy to draw attention to the principles that are a foundation of our legal system.

In the three years since he began his personal crusade, one monument has been put in place — in Montezuma, Iowa, population 1,400.

A bigger monument is on the horizon — the Texas Legislature has approved and the governor has signed a proposal for a $2 million, privately funded project on state land.

“We’re in discussion for site approval for what will be a national destination Bill of Rights monument,” Bliss says.

Once the site and design have been approved, Bliss will step up fundraising efforts.

“The more I got into it the more I realized this makes a perfect circle for me,” Bliss says. “It puts all my skills on display. And I even juggle at the end of my fundraisers. I’m not stupid. I know that shiny objects will get those checkbooks out.”