Bee Boy — Tue, 12/11/07 12:37pm

Uh-oh. I have a sinking feeling I'm being mocked. Worse, I'm entirely complicit, due to the picture I paint of a letter-wielding hermit wackjob with posts like the one above.

On the other hand, this site basically takes the form of a long, bumbling letter to America, celebrating its successes (30 Rock, The Incredibles, The World Series of Pop Culture) and lamenting its miserable failures (Bush, Leno, Grey's Anatomy). And I'd be nuts to argue the wording doesn't occasionally get pretty strong.

Interestingly, while my feelings about religion, Catholicism, and Bill Donohue are deeply felt, my post was actually focused on journalism. I've given up railing against Fox News (I shudder to even imagine how they covered this story, if this was CNN's take), but I remember CNN's former integrity and stories like their sloppy, uncritical Golden Compass coverage underline how far they've fallen.

And, since we're talking about journalism... NewsBusters.org? Who's the wackjob now? With their willful misinterpretation of box-office per-screen averages and their use of "feature story" to mean "movie review," NewsBusters is more interested in assisting Donohue's spin campaign than it is with busting news. And a spin campaign it is. I don't doubt The Golden Compass performed worse than expected, and I don't doubt the Catholic League boycott helped out with that, but $25.8M is damn close to $30M in the high-stakes world of predicted opening weekend takes. What about the fact that it doesn't look like a very good movie? When I first saw the trailer, I was rolling my eyes even before Nicole Kidman showed up on the screen. To me, it looked exactly like the Chronicles of Narnia movie (by celebrated über-Christian C.S. Lewis): boring. Maybe audiences are tired of being told that they want to see rich, epic fantasy films about warrior children and ho-hum CG talking animals every holiday season. Maybe they're waiting for a warm, funny family-values movie like the "culture of life" approach to teen pregnancy in this week's Juno.

But good for Donohue if he feels vindicated – that's what Christ was all about, bending people to your will. It doesn't lend any support to Pullman's theme of religious institutions as dogmatic, oppressive thought police. No, sir.

To me, this gets to the heart of what threatens Bill Donohue or James Dobson about the His Dark Materials books (which I admit I haven't read; our family were Narnia people – chew on that for a minute!). According to Pullman, the books promote open-mindedness, and challenge dogmatism rather than faith or belief. Faith and belief belong to each person individually, but dogmatism and subjection are Donohue's stock in trade. I like the "best-selling Christian fantasy novelist" in Entertainment Weekly's actual feature story ("What's God Got To Do With It?"), who says, "My God is big enough to defend himself against Philip Pullman. As a Christian, I think his story brings up great points of debate." Exactly. Precisely. See, America? But an honest, reasonable debate is what the Catholic League or the ironically-titled Focus on the Family abhor. Because an honest debate would only reveal that nobody needs them.

It's impossible to attack faith or beliefs as a concept. As an atheist, I have beliefs – it'd be silly to say that everyone with beliefs is wrong. For that matter, I have faith. None of us knows the ultimate answer to the mysteries of the universe; it requires a leap of faith to assert that there's absolutely no possibility that a supernatural creator is a part of it. In today's world, you'd be pretty nuts to wail against the supernatural creator either, because practically everybody believes in one or another. And not just because their parents told them to, either: the history of civilization shows us that something in us is hard-wired to look for a higher power. The Maya never heard of the Greeks, and yet they both independently arrived at a series of myths that told of gods and goddesses who directed the natural world. They needed a way to explain things that were beyond their ability to explain, and that continues today. We know more about our universe, and so our myths no longer include a guy riding a fiery chariot across the sky – we know there's a sun. But there's still plenty we don't know, and it's comforting to think of some entity, somewhere, who does know and who's in charge. What people like Pullman and I argue against is that there should be any book or person who has the authority to tell you what that higher power thinks or wants. Whatever you get from God (or whomever), whether it's comfort or direction or a sense of morality, that's for you. Share it with your friends and loved ones; discuss it to understand it better. But once someone starts telling you that if you believe in God you have to boycott this movie or vote for that candidate or protest this other abortion clinic, I think you should become suspicious. (How appropriate that today's Wayback Machine should feature this article.)

This is why the church scenes in Junebug always sock me in the gut, even though I know God is pretend. The scenes aren't about God; they're about people who look to their church for community, comfort, and fellowship. It's something simple and pure, and nobody is bringing up abortion or homosexuality – they're just singing and enjoying each other. Maybe some of them believe that gays are second-class citizens or every rapist has an inalienable right to become a father, but maybe some of them don't. They're individual people with individual views. They're not dangerous, not until someone decides to lump them together into a political "base" and wield them against Hollywood or Democratic legislators. Some cynical bastard who thinks that because they hold their beliefs dear, he should be able to leverage those beliefs to turn people into pawns. The very practice of this is decidedly un-Christian, but that's overlooked because some set of "core beliefs" (as defined by the cynical bastard) are "under attack." Something that is beautiful, individual, and passive becomes contorted into a public, aggressive campaign. Usually to apply pressure to accomplish some unrelated political goal, which is why I can blame Bush for this just like everything else that has ever gone wrong ever.

So, America, in short: when someone like Bill Donohue is so angry about a movie or a book or a TV show, think critically about his argument. Ask yourself why he's so threatened by it. Or, if you're not going to ask these questions, wouldn't you like it if at least CNN did?

Bee Boy — Tue, 12/11/07 2:51pm

No but if you're willing to start wearing it around as a sandwich board, I'd be glad to get some prices together...

Bee Boy — Tue, 12/11/07 3:38pm

He he. No misunderstanding. (Except me, briefly, shaking my head and wondering how you could be reading NewsBusters.org regularly – they actually had a link on the page "debunking" the vulnerability of polar bears to warm temperatures: "Hey, they're heartier than we thought. Let's give this global warming thing a go!") I loved "Cajun style" – I figured if I launched into my whole thing without at least doffing my tinfoil hat, it would seem like I were actually on the defensive.

You'd probably enjoy Sicko, because you're able to grin and bear Moore's antics and focus on the actual matter at hand, which is that insurance companies are godawful and going universal would give us a way to eliminate them, or at least put them in a corner with very strict limits on how they can fuck us. Which is an important message for every American – especially those who already have health insurance. (It turns out an alarmingly small number of people are apparently able to accomplish said grinning, bearing, and focusing. Too bad; not that Moore doesn't shoulder some blame himself.)