Speech isn't 'free' in Hollywood...

It'll cost you a great deal. Your career, your identity, or at the very least, some serious time and money spent in high profile therapy with an approved tinsel town shrink.

Just ask Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, and the latest heinous offender, Isaiah Washington (from Greys Anatomy). Mel hates Jews, Michael Richards hates blacks, and Isaiah Washington hates homosexuals.

That is, if we buy into the notion that drunken slurs are tantamount to wholesale hatred. Or that an awful, angry, and really weird tirade on stage is tantamount to wholesale hatred. Or a comment calling someone a bad name in a heated discussion is tantamount to wholesale hatred. Is it? Should we all have our lives destroyed because of such indiscretions in speech, thought, or even philosophy? Really? Who, then, could stand? Only those with a savvy PR team and plenty of cash for 'diversity training'.

Wait a minute. Did I say 'indiscretion'? You must admit it is a bit funny to see the moral outrage of Hollywood. And the question is valid: is what these guys did or said wrong? If so, who says? By what standard? Whose arbitrary morality is standing judge in Hollywood? Now listen, before you scream bloody hate crime, I really do believe wholeheartedly that what Mel said was wrong. But I judge such things by the fixed moral standards of Scripture. I didn't read the latest Gallup findings on whether or not Jew hating is a cultural no no. There is a good biblical word for what Mel, Michael, and Isaiah did: sin. It isn't all that hard to see it for what it is. But, if we refuse to see it, we'll pay Dr. Phil the going rate to root out the real cause of our indescretions. The Scriptures call us to account to God, and one another, for our speech and actions. And these three guys should be held accountable. The Scriptures call us to confess, repent, and seek forgiveness. These men should apologize. They should write letters of contrition. Their careers as public 'personalities' should rightfully suffer for their pathetic public behavior. Thankfully, the moral standard that I operate under, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, call us all to love and forgiveness, they tell us that 'mercy triumphs over judgment'. But, sadly, while there are many standing on the moral high ground of Hollywood in these circumstances, few will wallow in the valleys of forgiveness.

Does anyone else see the fly in the ointment here?

I really must ask: where are our first Ammendment freedom fighters backing up Isaiah? Where is George 'good night and good luck' Clooney? It fascinates me that now at The Laugh Factory (the comedy club where Michael Richards apparently lost his mind) you can say anything - anything, no matter how sick, twisted, and vile - you could possibly think to say. Except the 'N' word. If you can't see some irony in that, I'm afraid you've been drinking the P.C. Kool-Aid by the gallon jug. If that isn't an example of the pressure and power of the Hollywood thought police, I don't know what is. We have decided that there is now a word that shall never be uttered, no matter the intent, no matter the circumstances. It should disturb us when license is everywhere exercised to the most perverse degree, yet the stong arm of the media elite bears down with furious anger at its own whim. We should not be afraid of a drunken anti-semite (if we should call someone an anti-semite on that basis), an angry comedian with a personality disorder, or a slighted TV personality. We should be afraid of the creeping tyranny represented in the latest 'moral outrage' we hear from our distinguished Hollywood purveyors of truth and virtue.

Racism is ugly. It is an offense against God who made all men. It is a sin against men made in the image of God and bearing dignity. Prejudice against Jewish people and black people is wrong , treating a homosexual with contempt and mockery is wrong, and should be opposed and fought in the arena of free speech and free ideas.

It should not be fought with PR stunts to boost ratings and destroy a career. Or maybe it should. But that is the glory of a free society. How pathetic that such battles are fought with compulsory 'anger management' courses, 'diversity training' (lest Alec Baldwin, Ted Turner, and so many other Hollywood darlings suffer under such tyranny for their constant hateful remarks about Christians) or whatever other therapeutic reprogramming is being offered over at the counseling center. In this free republic we all have the freedom to despise what someone might say or believe, but we should fight with our lives their right to say or believe it.

Or, we might just pop in a sensitivity training DVD and bully each other into submission.

And we'll all pretend that it actually works. We'll all pretend that we're getting somewhere.

"Why is this on your blog, Pastor Erik?" you might ask. Good question. Because this has significant implications for Christians, churches, and anyone anywhere who believes there is to be an open and honest discussion of ideas. Let's remember that it is now a 'hate crime' in parts of the world to speak of homosexuality as sin. Christian student groups are being banned from campus' across our nation because of their biblical commitments. When the speech, ideas, philosophies, or convictions of one (however misguided, wrong, or 'emotionally' or 'socially' hurtful we think them to be) are censored in such a fashion, we are all susceptible.

'Tolerance', the buzzword in a pluralistic society, lest we forget, is a Christian and distinctly biblical virtue. Tolerance, in the Christian sense is not the forcing of all to forego conviction and live in a constant state of blind neutrality save in the narrow space of one's 'private' world. It is the belief, and even the cornerstone of a free society, that another has a right to convictions, beliefs, and cultural practices apart from your own as long as they are embraced lawfully and peacefully. It is rooted in the biblical ethic that God is the judge of all men and will indeed bring all to account. Therefore, we dare not act as God over the conscience and convictions of another, but rather love them and live in peace with them. This biblical 'tolerance' is being replaced by the loss, or at the very least, severe limitation of public discourse on the issues and ideas that matter most. And in their place are the secular boundaries of a 'private' and 'public' morality, set by the cultural power brokers, the arbiters of correct speech, ideas, and action. And the arena of 'free speech' is filled instead with all things trivial and banal at their best, and perverse and destructive at their worst.

Speech is never really 'free'. It will always cost you. And it seems to be taking its toll on an increasingly godless America.

Moral Outrage...Ain't It Great? Part 2

[Hey! Read part 1 first!]

Hollywood's grip on our hearts and minds is stronger than ever. Our present obsession with opinion polls is best understood in terms of the lasting influence of Hollywood's values and iconic patterns of behavior. From such polls the President's "numbers" are determined and become the lead on the evening news. They become the final indicator of whether our leaders are doing well or ill. Our once proud Republic has become an immediate democracy of the lowest common denominator. The morality of the war in Iraq is determined by the most recent survey of the voters. Is the war popular? And though the notion of a "popular war" is in itself a tad unnerving we are asked this nightly. If you ask a question enough times it will soon cease to be a question.

Our nation would understand its present paradigm of shared values better if only we acknowledged the reality of Hollywood's heavy hand. Public opinion was once the primary concern of studio publicists and was judged at premiers and sneak previews where audience reactions could be observed before a movie's final cut. Came the 40's and 50's and Mr. Nielsen's ratings ruled the media with an iron fist. With the 60's we had test groups and blatant manipulation of those subliminal forces that drive the mass subconscious. The end result? Life has come to imitate art, and public opinion polls are bigger news than the very events, issues and people about whom the public dare venture its opinions.

To understand the reactions of the media to current events track the reported trends of public opinion. Rating points are the highest concern of the network moguls and the denizens of the airwaves. Since their careers are made or broken on the rack of public opinion should it not follow that public opinion, or what they determine to be public opinion is the most important issue of any topic at any time for the entire nation? The media cares a great deal about what we think. What we say goes. So they say. And what they say we say is, to them, what we say, whether we say it or not. The media, like all quantum observers, is inevitably sucked into its own vortex. They truly believe what they say is what we say. This is the only truth in their morally vacant universe. It's all so immediate and visceral! It's no longer a matter of term limitations. Who needs terms at all? What are the overnights? What are the ratings? As in Hollywood so now in all the world, you are only as good as your last show. The dog is fully and finally wagged. The media portrait of the real world has become the real world. Reconstituted and regenerated nightly, the news begins to feed upon itself. There is no ultimate conspiracy. We have met the enemy and he is us. We neatly deceive ourselves coming and going.

Another prime example of iconic Hollywood patterns of behavior shaping our public opinion is found in the late phenomenon of burgeoning moral outrage on the small screen, in print, and over the radio airwaves. Such outrage is anchored in the age old penchant of Hollywood to overindulge itself in endless paroxysms of self congratulation. Consider the long red carpet parades of Emmys, Tonys, Oscars, Golden Globes, et. al. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Why haven't plumbers and electricians feasted and toasted themselves with similar awards? "Now for the best work in septic tank removals, may I have the envelope please?" Perhaps it is coming. How we love to watch the stars clutching their glittering prizes and confessing undying admiration for the hard work and sheer creative genius found in their industry. In Hollywood whenever the cameras are rolling, whenever the public is listening, whenever you take the stage you must self-promote. Every occasion is the right time to put your best foot forward. And when are the audiences most riveted to talk shows and news updates? In times of tragedy and moral outrage of course. Remember Ed Murrow's righteous stare-down of Joe McCarthy? Dan Rather's defiance of Nixon? How Arthur Godfrey wept at FDR's funeral? What theater! What ratings! What next?

The Hollywood Gospel of self promotion rules the air waves. It can be seen most overtly when yet another book is cranked out by the ghost writers of the talking heads and sold on the internet sites of the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Al Franken. But what is sauce for the media goose in not sauce for political ganders. Heaven forefend should the president of Pakistan hawk his book from the presidential podium at a White House Press conference. "How dare he write when Ben Laden is still at large?" The audiences evidently agree being pleased by the spectacle of moral indignation.

And there we have it. Moral outrage on TV is nothing more than implicit self promotion. It is as staged and deliberate as a WWF fist fight. When the talking heads show moral outrage it is, in reality, a clever display of an acceptable holier than thou attitude. "Certainly," they are saying at all times, "we are a caring and concerned lot." They slyly suggest this with the raising of an eye brow that invites their audience to register complete agreement. "Obviously I am full of compassion and am tender hearted toward all victims of every moral indignity." So says the demeanor of ever Anchor man from Tom Brokaw to Ron Burgundy. They imply it all by restrained looks of anguish and concern. "How dare Mr. Bush vacation when Katrina raged? Weren't all the network newsmen there in mufti like beginners on an Outward Bound trail? Didn't they look deeply and visibly moved by human suffering?" Of course they did. They are the news!

Who does Tom Cruise think he is anyway? First he attacks a depressed Brooke Shields and then jumps up and down on Oprah's couch. Wasn't the New York times fittingly offended? How dare a Virginia senatorial candidate call a young Asian American of Indian origin "McKaka," whatever that means? Don't you appreciate my sense of fair play in denouncing all this? For shame on the drunken anti-Semitic outbursts of Mel Gibson! Oh, the inhumanity of Nancy Grace's harsh questioning of a suicidal, in not homicidal mother. How disgusting that Anna Nichol Smith should sell the last photos of her son for $600,000.00! "Roll that clip of her in her bikini one more time! Atrocious! More film at 11." How can the California voters put up with the anti-woman rhetoric of Arnold? So the multiple-wived Larry King asks Jerry Springer. How disgusting that a young Floridian teacher should seduce a student. It was worth it for NBC to pay her a six figure inducement just to expose this great moral evil. Wasn't it?

How powerful is this collective media moral outrage? For the first time in history it was the pope who was driven to Canossa, placed in Coventry by the media's concern that he dare criticize the Prophet's cry of "death to the infidel." In this day of political correctness the pope was faulted for failing to reckon with the more subtle nuances of Jihad. "Of precisely what kind of death was Mohammed speaking?," some deeply reflective Barbie Doll clones asked. "Who among us, after all, is really an infidel?" speculate well established pundits of the airwaves. "Don't we, all of us, worship a god of our own design in our own way? Be he called Jehovah, or Allah or ... Nielsen?" Our televised examples of probity and wit, the concerned media, called for greater papal restraint. The pope should tread the tired pathway of public opinion, the true and only via Dolorosa, with the same balance and correctness he sees on TV. He should look to the stars, pun intended, for divine guidance. This he did and the media that was the messenger became the embodiment of the message. Should someone shoot the messenger, all the better for future programming. Stay tuned.

Hooray for Hollywood! Back to you Chet. Good night and good luck.

- Mike Braun

Moral Outrage...Ain't It Great? Part 1

[I will be posting two great pieces from the pen of Rev. Dad (Mike Braun). Enjoy the witty, inspired, and sometimes blessedly biting social commentary.]

Hollywood has left an indelible imprint on the great cultural dialogue that is western civilization. With the arrival of the global village the adjective western has gone the way of the masculine pronoun, as has perhaps civilization in any objective sense of the word. Our poets and artists, our politicians and masters of industry may no longer be amazed at the work of God or man in our world but they will insist on being amused by the seductive lure of entertainment endemic to the electronic media. The lust of the voyeur seems to be the only common bond between the disparate fragments of our dying culture. The pages of the New York Times prove this as does the nightly evening news. There is no business but show business. Like Chance the gardener in Kosinski's "Being There," the only thing that unites is that we all like to watch.

Hollywood Babylon may have passed away with the last of the great motion picture studios but its theatrical ghost lives on, a veritable deius ex machina of the modern news industry. What began with the flickering of the nickelodeon and the hissing of early crystal radio sets still haunts the present plasma screened, high-density, TV sound bitten news-show generated from the world's newsrooms from Tokyo to Bonn, Paris to London, L.A. to Hong Kong.

Hollywood has pimped the ride of our modern culture. To remain a well informed electorate we blink blankly at the dizzying graphics on Fox News, the chiseled good looks of the odd correspondent, the shapely calf of a mini-skirted anchorette, or the gentle, seductive smile of Katie Couric. (Dude, she probably would go to the prom with you if you asked her.) The frozen cadaverous head of Edward R. Murrow is gone for good, fading into the haze of his half-smoked cigarettes. Were the images of H.V. Kaltenburn or Gabriel Heater to flash on our screens now they would be met with a collective eeew!, as our thumbs instantly descended upon tightly held clickers. Beauty may only be skin deep but without it there's only radio. If Samuel Goldwyn didn't say that, he meant to.

Under the influence of Hollywood's pervasive spirit our very language is being reformed. Conservative and Liberal have become passé. Being over used they lack any discernable product recognition. Thoughts about God and moral conduct have been expunged from the airwaves as too divisive save perhaps for the marginal offerings of an occasional 700 club or a rant from the ever present, rarely coherent Bill Maher. Words like moderate or extremist abound in their place, far more marketable and subject to more malleable interpretations. Not as informative, they are certainly less disturbing. The only inherently qualitative term allowed today is the pejorative use of right or far right or extreme right wing. Everyone else is a moderate as God intended. One wonders as to the composition of a paradigm in which the murder of a nun was performed by extremists. Would it have been moderate to merely beat the hell out of the dear sister and place her in intensive care?

As our flat earth continues to be leveled, the only significant difference between Russ Limbaugh and Al Franken is the sizable number of rating points for the former vis-a-vís a growing negative index of the latter. At least Limbaugh has the wisdom to remain hidden behind his microphone. All other distinctions between our talking heads have nothing to do with informing the larger audience. The only question that remains: do they have audience appeal? (Dare we say 'sex appeal?')

These extant realities are gifts from the long dead studio heads of Hollywood's golden age. The star system lives though Clark Gable is long gone. We no longer envy Gary Grant but secretly covet Matt Lauer's new hairdo. Bette Davis has mercifully passed and Garbo left alone but there is always Starr Jones and Rosie O'Donnell. Are they failed entertainers who found refuge in talk formats? Hardly! News and social commentary are their form of entertainment, their shtick. Do you really think Jon Stewart would leave Comedy Central and go back to being Steve Martin's second, or third banana in movies like "Mixed Nuts?"

The stars that left the heavens of Paramount's logo and moved to the hills "out over the ocean," as Dave Loggins sang, are now co-hosts, anchors and guest commentators all over the cable and network channels. The names and faces may be ever changing, but not to protect the innocent, simply to move the merchandise. Movies are not half as much fun as the newsrooms any way. Why pretend to live in a make believe world when you can pretend to be part of the real one?

- Mike Braun

Little Miss Sunshine- a review from Big Poppa

Alright, I haven't seen this movie. But if there is one thing we can all trust from my Dad- Pastor Mike, whom I affectionately refer to above as 'Big Poppa' (and I'm sure I'll be scolded for such a disrespectful moniker later), it is his impeccable taste in fine cinema. I hope that I will find time to go check out this flick soon, in between visiting the sick and poor and evangelizing the masses.


“Little Miss Sunshine” is a must see. Dad, a failed motivational speaker (Greg Kinnear), his once-divorced now in-her-second-marriage wife (Toni Collette), along with her brother (Steve Carell) a gay college professor of Proust living with them under a strict suicide watch, and her Nietsche-loving teenage son, scowling in his self-imposed vow of silence, share a journey in their old VW bus. Joining them is Kinnear’s crusty heroin snorting father (Allan Arkin) recently banished from his assisted living community. They must drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Redondo Beach, California because their daughter, the youngest pilgrim in this modern Canterbury Tale, a chubby 7 year old runner up in a local contest, had, at the last minute, been called upon to compete in the 7 to 10 year old “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant. The sojourn ends with a dance routine previously choreographed by Grandpa in secret in their Albuquerque basement. It is the final step in a decent into hell that becomes a true metamorphosis for each one of the family. The routine says more than all the recent media hype surrounding poor little JonBenet Ramsey ever could to our jaded world. This film is conceptually so funny that you smile from start to finish without the help of a single heavy handed one liner. Its “Napoleon Dynamite” with a much sharper point. It speaks more to the human condition than any film I’ve seen this year or last. Sadly the “F word” is sprinkled liberally throughout the dialogue. But you know, some times, in some circumstances, can anything else be said really?

Uh, wow. What are you waiting for? Go check it out.

And please, don't use the f-word. Especially at church.