The Book of Hypocrisy

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7985.shtml

The Book of Hypocrisy
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jan 12, 2006, 10:42

The oh-so-self-righteous religious right wing has
their sensible panties in a bunch again – this time
over an irreverent NBC television series called The
Book of Daniel.

In their usual spirit of trying to force their archaic
values on the rest of us, these Bible-thumping whack
jobs are petitioning NBC affiliates to drop the show,
threatening advertisers with boycotts and demanding
Congress step in and, essentially, censor the network
for daring take a jaundiced look at religion and
everyday life.

The protests, of course, started long before any of
these nutcases had actually seen an episode of the
show. They object, loudly, about the show’s premise –
a pain-killer addicted Episcopalian minister with an
alcoholic wife, a gay son (who is, God-forbid, a
Republican), a drug-dealing daughter, a horny adopted
son who is sleeping with the Bishop’s daughter and a
lesbian secretary who’s sleeping with his
sister-in-law.

Granted, that’s a lot of dysfunction for one family
but what the hell, the show is only an hour long and
the screenwriter just didn’t have time to spread all
this fun and frivolity around to others in the
neighborhood.

To make matters, when the Rev. Daniel Webster is
zoning out on pain pills, he talks with Jesus about is
problems, at least when Christ is not reminding him
that he’s tailgating or stressing out.

As expected, the homophobic American Family
Association is urging its bigoted, repressive
membership to protest the show and boycott all
advertisers. So far, six NBC affiliates have refused
to carry future episodes of the series. In Little
Rock, Arkansas, KARK-TV dropped the show but the local
Warner Brothers affiliate, WD-42, picked it up. So all
these God-fearing, love thy neighbor Christians
started sending nasty emails and making threats by
phone so the station had to hire extra security.

The threatened ad boycott is also limiting the number
of companies willing to take a chance. NBC sold only
about half its ad time for the two-hour premiere of
the series last week.

This kind of hypocritical crap is all too typical of
the right-wing demagogues who represent a minority of
Americans but still manage to control our government
and culture today. These two-faced clowns who decry a
series that shows a minister talking to Christ are the
same ones who rally around an insane President who
claims to talk to God and orders Americans to fight
and die in wars he proclaims are “God’s will.”

These same hypocrites who decry abortion as killing
but think nothing of bombing right-to-life clinics and
killing innocents to further their cause.

In Roanoke, Virginia, WSLS Channel 10 opened a phone
bank to take calls from listeners during the premiere
of the Book of Daniel last week. This is the same
Channel 10 that, every morning, airs an hour of phony
religious crap call Pat Robertson’s 700 Club – yes,
the same Pat Robertson who said Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon’s stroke was the will of God and told a
town it deserved to be destroyed by hurricanes and
floods from God because the voters ousted a school
board that promoting the teaching of so-called
“intelligent design.”

Channel 10’s anchors seemed shocked after the show
aired Friday night to report that public reaction to
The Book of Daniel ran about 50/50 support/oppose.
They were hoping for a huge public outcry to give them
a reason to can the show and the viewers turned out to
be more enlightened than the station’s management.

In Lexington, KY, another place where the Bible-belt
tries to keep a stranglehold on the populace, WLEX TV
got about 700 phone calls and emails before the show
aired demanding it be pulled. Then the show ran and
the protests stopped.

"I haven't heard anything since the show aired," WLEX
president and general manager Timothy Gilbert said
this week.

“The biggest outcries about the show are that the
depiction is of a minister's family, showing ministers
with worldly problems, and showing a sweet-faced Jesus
with a sense of humor about life on earth,” says TV
critic Bill Warren of the CBS affiliate in El Paso,
TX. “We should all be so lucky.”

We aren’t so lucky. Such things are lost causes with
religious fruitcakes. To them, God cannot possibly
have a sense of humor and reality can never, ever, be
allowed to intrude into their secular world where all
people are white, all sex is missionary position
routines practiced only for the procreation of
children between heterosexuals married to each other
and any thought of humanity is forbidden fruit.

And, if that’s their idea of heaven, they can have it.
I’d rather party with the horny guy down South.