faith in a box and an anti-american upbringing
Mood:  a-ok

opening note: yesterday, got eight pages of the clubhouse blues rewrite out of the first four pages of the original version

and, now to interrupt the season of lists...

the parents television council released the results of a study they called faith in a box. 2,385 hours of primetime shows, with 2,344 treatments of religion, were analyzed. and, negative treatment was the winner, yay

specifically:

"nbc was the decisive leader in broadcasting negative depictions of faith and religion. nbc programming had 9.5 negative treatments for every positive treatment of faith. fox followed with 2.4 negative depictions for each one that was positive. wb and abc tied with 1.2 negative for each positive, followed by upn with 1 negative for every 1.1 positive, cbs with 1 negative for every 2 positive and pax which did not have a single negative depiction."

582 of the "treatments" were references to faith and those tended to be positive. hell, even that originally great character grace on jack & bobby had a speech about faith that religious organizations like the ptc would love (nevermind that it was silly and didn't fit the character established previously, not that i'm still complaining about that show which i subsequently dropped). "less common, and more likely to be shown in a negative light, are more specific elements of religion, such as a particular church and its teachings, devout laity, and the clergy."

"the treatment of religion in an institutional or doctrinal context (such as a reference to a church service, a particular denomination, or to Scripture) was strikingly negative." I'm sure the Simpsons made it on that list, since most times they go to church it's played for a laugh or an annoyance

here's a finding that bugged me: "negative depictions of clergy were more than twice as frequent as positive depictions - 36.2 percent negative compared to 14.6 percent positive." it didn't bug me that clergy were referenced negatively, of course. i'm all for that. the thing is, 36 percent negative plus 14 percent positive doesn't come anywhere close to 100 percent. apparently, 50 percent was indifferent. couldn't we throw indifference into negative, just to make the results sound... better? isn't indifference worse than a blatantly negative reference? or, if it isn't, can't we take another look at that indifferent half and get some new criteria to find results before we fucking publish? i mean, come on. only half the damn representations bother to put a value judgement (in the opinion of the ptc, anyway) on clergy, and that's worth publishing?

how about, we get a new study focused on just that 14 percent positive and why it still exists. i mean, sure, a big part of this country is religious folks, and supposedly some 90 percent of us believe in god (80 in the resurrection of christ, by the way). but, shouldn't writers (the folks putting together the content of all these shows) be smarter than average? and, shouldn't that make them less likely to be religous. afterall, we all know intelligence and religion are not analogous, right?

right? we DO all know that? you religious people haven't actually convinced yourselves that you're smart and that's why you believe in magical beings in the sky that look out for you when you do stupid and dangerous things. it's not your genius that makes you see god in every tree and in every child and in every pile of shit, is it?

permit me a roll of the eyes and a sad, sad sigh

"these findings lend credibility to the idea that hollywood accepts spirituality, but shies away from endorsing, or even tolerating, organized religion," concluded bozell, the president of the ptc. see, spirituality doesn't have to be religous. someone should explain that to him, and to all the rest of the religious people

then, we'll get started on the "spiritual" people and indoctrinating them into atheism

except that might be illegal soon, just like teaching anything "anti-american" to our children could be, nevermind the definition of the term. an 11-year old who lives near washington dc was accused of being anti-american. an official complaint about some things he said in school made its way to the county sheriff and the boy and his parents were questioned. had the parents been teaching him anti-american things? were they anti-american? what did they think of 9-11? did they associate with foreigners who didn't like america? stuff like that

the kid opposes the military and refused a veteran's day assignment (writing a letter to a marine), saying something about how all marines could die, for all he cares. and, this got him investigated for potentially being anti-american and a danger to his fellow classmates and his fellow man, cause you know after the terrorist attack on columbine high school, we can't be too careful. and, with christianity under attack by television, we must assume that this kid isn't getting some good christianity ingrained in him how we want and that with his anti-american parents, he's certainly a danger to us all. hell, why isn't he in camp x-ray already? i mean, a complaint was filed. damn the evidence. damn the investigation. let's just send him away with saddam and peterson and mcveigh... oh wait, last one's already dead

last one was a christian, as well, as far as i've seen. wonder if that makes any sense, a christian doing violent things? a christian wanting people to die? that's crazy talk. it's only the dark-skinned followers of allah who kill people. it's only the enemies of the united states that kill people. it's only the cohorts of emmanuel goldstein... saddam hussein... osama bin laden... that kill people. only al qaeda and whoever else we fell like bombing