Merry Christmas from Al Qaida

Al Qaida sent this inspirational Christmas message. Via Jules Crittenden.

Redefining Racism

It's always interesting to see the way race hustlers twist the definition of racism to suit them.

To normal people, racism is hostility or hatred of another race or other races based largely on a perceived superiority of one's own race.

But to the race hustlers, this definition is too straight forward and doesn't deal with people who are racist to white people. Instead, they like to use a definition of racism that includes some reference to historical "power structures," which condones or excuses behaviors or words that would otherwise be clearly considered racist.

Why do I bring this up? I read this post by Stephen Bainbridge on a recent incident at Washington State University (via The Moderate Voice):

My friend and UCLA colleague Eugene Volokh has a typically thoughtful post on a troubling incident at Washington State University:

The College Republicans organized an anti-illegal-immigration event, featuring a "24-foot, chain-link, cyclone fence, later established as a representation of a 'Wall of Immigration.'" Professor John Streamas showed up, got into an argument with Dan Ryder, a College Republicans member, and in the process called him a "white shitbag."

The WSU's Center for Human Rights' report on the incident makes interesting reading. Streamas' attitude, in particular, is a fascinating example of the academic left's attitude towards race. As Eugene points out, Steamas claims:

that a person of color cannot be racist, by definition, because racism also defines a power differential that is not usually present when a person or color is speaking." Yeah, right. He and others are redefining the term "racism" in a way that's pretty far removed from its normal meaning -- which is racial hostility -- so as to give themselves a rhetorical break from the rules they're imposing on others. And on top of that, he's applying even his revised definition in a disingenuous way: Whatever may be "usually" so, there surely is a "power differential" between a professor of whatever race and a student of whatever race.

This "power differential" nonsense is a convenient cover for racism against white people. One has the uncomfortable feeling that had the situation been reversed, WSU would have been swift in setting punishment for the offense.

"Wal-Mart has become a political Rorschach test."

That's according to Nancy French in this article from Good Magazine.

French starts out by explaining how her kids earn money each week by doing chores, then divide up the money into three jars (God, Save, and Spend). The "spend" jar gets toted to Wal-Mart where the kids are free to buy all the junk $1.99 can afford them.

The interesting part of French's column comes when she describes Wal-Mart shoppers with (more liberal) "statement-making" shoppers.

You see, Blue Staters don't just want to buy a product, they want their product to Mean Something, whether it's African tribal art, a high-energy protein bar, or scented candles. Every product is manufactured, packaged, and marketed to feed the desire for significance.

Urban Outfitters, for example, reveals eclectic style; Williams-Sonoma illustrates a sophisticated domesticity, and IKEA (admittedly affordable, but 300 miles from my house) demonstrates the urban need for maximizing space. Everthing related to these stores exude hipness—their décor, products, and even shopping bags emit a certain je ne sais quoi which simply does not accompany translucent Wal-Mart bags with yellow happy faces on the front. Blue State shopping, you see, is more than just acquiring items. It Makes a Statement, it Reflects Personal Style, it Helps Save the Planet.

I found French's article via this post at Pandagon. With a title like Getting Right with God by Buying Cheap, Tasteless Crap, who can go wrong? Well, Amanda managed to use this article to take pointless swipes at (who else?) conservatives.

In fact, 99% of wingnuttery is based on cheap appeals to sanctimonious swipes at the “liberal elite” and cheap nostalgia for more patriarchal times. This article is a classic example, even though she wants to have it both ways—both try to guilt-trip people about not buying Wal-Mart’s cheap crap while claiming that shopping at IKEA is somehow based in some deep liberal killjoywhatthefuckever.

It's a strange indictment, considering there's nothing in French's article about guilting anybody into buying anything. In fact, that was sort of French's point: conservatives make their statements not by buying a $6 organic latte or making anyone else feel bad about buying a $6 organic latte, but by giving the money to charity where it will be used to help people.

I understand Amanda's determination to brand conservatives as sanctimonious killjoys, but it's a tough sell since religious people are happier.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

Now He Gets to Run Past the Same Scenery in Heaven

Joseph Barbera,

an innovator of animation who teamed with William Hanna to give generations of young television viewers a pantheon of beloved characters, including Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and the Flintstones, died Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95.

Anyone of a certain age has probably spent half their childhood watching Hanna-Barbera creations from Tom and Jerry to Pixie and Dixie to The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

During the 1970s, the Hanna-Barbera studios produced most of the cartoons I remember watching, including Josie and the Pussycats, Funky Phantom, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, and, into the 1980s, Smurfs.

Frankly, much of the animation from these cartoons is perfectly dreadful, especially in the H-B studio's more serious cartoon attempts like Birdman and the Galaxy Trio and The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan.

If you're feeling a bit nostalgic, check out Boomerang, the Cartoon Network channel that seems to run Hanna-Barbera cartoons 24/7. Along with favorites, you'll get to see cartoons you never heard of (or wanted to), like The New Shmoo, Jabber Jaw, and Hong Kong Phooey.

"Feminism Is the Real Pro-Life Stance"

At least, according to Amanda at Pandagon.

It always intrigues me when the pro-abortion crowd starts slinging around terms like "pro-life" because usually it means they are either outright lying or misusing the term. This time was no exception.

Amanda starts out with a report that states women and children are better off in households where women are equal decision-makers. Sounds like a "Duh!" moment to me. But I was still looking for that "pro-life" angle, the one that included the children before they are born. No mention here. But Amanda does make this strawman argument:

But the official story from conservatives is still that women’s rights and equality have to squashed [sic] to preserve the abstract quality of “life”, an abstract quality that apparently doesn’t have much to do with actual humans with lives.

I keep looking for this statement in all that material they give you when you become part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, but I still can't find it. Conservatives really want to "squash women's rights"? Really? That would certainly be news to all those women who are conservatives!

Of course, this is just the usual Amanda smokescreen for "conservatives don't want us sticking a fork in our children's heads before they're born." That's the "pro-life" stance she's really advocating.

But wait! There's more! In fact, this is where it gets good. This one was about the International Criminal Court and whether forced pregnancy is a crime against humanity. The actual posts, of course, are direct attacks against Catholicism, but here's the language from the Center for Reproductive Rights (surely they are objective, right? Right?):

At every UN international conference, even at the last one, which was held in Johannesburg in 2002, the same influential groups still try to return, although in a different way, to the issue of abortion. This was the case during the Conference, which aimed at creating the International Criminal Court. Then there was an attempt to declare the so-called ‘forced pregnancy’ a crime against humanity. If such a general formulation had been accepted, the spouse’s objection to terminate a pregnancy could have been a punishable act - crime against humanity.

Bold and highlights mine.

This is the statement Amanda makes directly following this:

God forbid that a man forcing his wife to bear a child against her will be considered a crime against humanity. I suppose from the church’s point of view, it’s silly to consider use of your own property a crime against humanity. Next we’ll be telling them that women are human.

Notice how the language changed from "a spouse's objection" to "a man forcing." It's this sort of intellectual dishonesty that mars any attempt by pro-abortion supporters to claim that they are, in fact, pro-life.

If a man objecting to his wife killing his child in utero is a "crime against humanity," why would he see her as equal? It seems to me that she becomes de facto the superior in terms of rights. But then again, to feminists, that should be the state of things and to declare this turn of events as being just as unequal as female subjugation is to worship the patriarchy.

"I'm not just shopping for food; I'm shopping for an experience."

That's what author Donna F. Savage says happens when we use buying things to gain happiness, love, and acceptance.

In this Today's Christian Woman article, Savage discusses what we are really trying to buy when we overspend at Christmas and on birthdays and how such intentions bankrupt us both literally and spiritually.

Acceptance. Love. Companionship. As women, our greatest needs are met through relationships. But those relationships require time and effort, two scarce commodities in our hurried world. Short on time and energy, we sometimes make substitutions through our purchases.

It's hard to change one's spending habits, especially long-standing ones like grabbing breakfast on the way to work or hitting the sales rack at Macy's once a month. But Savage points out that small changes in spending can help ease the squeeze in our budgets.

Most notably, Savage also recommends budgeting charity into the mix. Regularly giving to charity helps keep us aware of our fortune and makes us more appreciative and thankful for what we have.

More Jamil-Jamail

Patterico's Pontifications has this analysis of Marc Danziger's post on Jamil-Jamail Hussein. It's worth a read.

Anglican Compromises

The Anglican Church--and, specifically, the Anglican Church in America--is going through a schism that isn't easily defined, as one will note after reading a couple of posts at GetReligion.

The first post by Mollie, includes this paragraph from one of Mollie's usual sources:

Many of my sources tell me horror stories about being mishandled by reporters. Just this week I was talking to a friend of mine, a former reporter who goes to Falls Church Episcopal, one of the churches that just split from The Episcopal Church. I asked her what she thought of the media coverage of the story and she said, “Well, what do you expect? Of course they get the story wrong.” Without getting into the merits of the coverage, she said her frustration is that the story is being portrayed as about homosexuality when she considers the story to be about being in a church that confesses the Gospel correctly.

Indeed, the coverage about the split in the Episcopal church has been tied largely to only two issues: homosexuality and female priests.

But the schism is much more complex than that, if what my Episcopal friends say is correct. A better umbrella description of the problem is overarching liberalism in a church where a significant minority doesn't accept it.

In tmatt's post, he tells an old joke (from the 1980s!) that epitomizes the problem:

But if you really want to grasp some of the subtleties of what is happening, please pause for a moment and consider this joke that I first heard back in the mid-1980s, although I assume it is older than that. It’s a joke that says quite a bit about First World Anglicans on the left and the right. It’s a joke that is sure to offend folks on both sides, and this is how I heard the joke told long ago:

The year is 2010 and two graduates of the very conservative Anglo-Catholic seminary called Nashotah House are standing in the back of the Washington National Cathedral as the church’s latest presiding bishop and her lesbian partner process down the long center aisle, carrying a statue of the Buddha aloft while surrounded by a cloud of incense.

As they watch this scene unfold, one of the priests leans over and quietly tells the other: "You know, one more thing and I’m out of here."

Note that this is a joke traditionists tell on themselves, one that produces bittersweet laughter. The joke is rooted in the fact that Anglicanism is famous for its ability to compromise on almost every doctrinal issue faced in the Communion.

It is this willingness to compromise on virtually every aspect of doctrine that is causing the splintering of the Episcopal church in America.

Then again, as the joke suggests, maybe not. As a conservative bishop once told me, Episcopalians have become so skilled at compromise that they struggle when asked to face an issue on which compromise is impossible.

It goes like this: One side says that sex outside of marriage is a sin. The other says that sex outside of marriage is not a sin. The Anglican compromise? Sex outside of marriage is occasionally a sin. Here’s another: Salvation is through Jesus Christ, alone. Salvation is not found through Jesus Christ, alone. The compromise? Salvation is occasionally found through Jesus Christ, alone, which means that the right was wrong in saying that salvation is found through Jesus Christ, alone, in the first place. Or something like that. The debates, in the end, center on how fast to move toward a modernized or compromised version of the faith. The method only allows change to move in one direction — away from ancient absolutes.

It's curious that as the Anglican church has compromised its principles, it has lost large numbers of members. It is the churches that compromise less which are gaining membership.

Be that as it may, one needs to recognize that the latest split in the Episcopal church is more complicated than merely being about homosexuality.

If you want to compare the competing views of events on Sunday, all you have to do — once again — is read the accounts in The Washington Times and The Washington Post. Read the stories and then ask yourself these questions.

• Can churches remain in sacramental Communion with one another when they disagree over creedal and sacramental issues?

• Would Episcopal liberals agree or disagree that the church’s doctrines have been changed in recent decades? If it is wrong to say that the doctrines have become more “liberal,” what is the accurate word to use that is not slanted? “Modernized”?

• We have to ask the big question again: When did the fighting begin?

• Is the fighting about one issue, homosexuality?

• Will the conservatives essentially become congregationalists? Will they become members of different or even competing American networks or churches?

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

Thought Police and the Presidential Library

Those arbiters of free thought and expression at Southern Methodist University are objecting to the building of George W. Bush's presidential library on their campus, according to this article at The Raw Story.

The blog of Paul Burka, the senior executive editor of the magazine Texas Monthly, includes excerpts of a letter written to SMU's president by faculty, administrators, and staff of the university's Perkins School of Theology, worrying about siting the library at the university. In it, they say they would:

...regret to see SMU enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious: degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming, flagrant disregard for international treaties, alienation of long-term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for gay persons and their rights, a pre-emptive war based on false and misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for the global human community and for this good Earth on which our flourishing depends.

I can understand the concern that the school not be associated with scandal and corruption. Lord knows, it's had enough of that on its own:

-- Only school to ever receive the Death Penalty for multiple violations of NCAA rules.
-- Admission by William Clements to knowledge of the kickback-for-players "Ponygate" scandal.

Of course, SMU's own excesses aren't what those liberal professors are upset about.

Some faculty members are not happy generally to be associated with the library of a president who — his librarian wife notwithstanding — isn’t seen as a big fan of intellectual life...

Johnson said that there are also real problems with the message the library could send. SMU historically has had a reputation for attracting wealthy students — a reputation that the university has tried to fight in recent years by offering generous scholarship to low-income students. "I think it might be a setback in terms of trying to attract a different constituency among students," Johnson said. "Children of wealthy, leading Republicans in this state come to SMU, and then they are groomed here to become Republican leaders in all sectors of society. We shouldn’t be in the business of just replicating Republicans."

Brad Cheves, vice president for external relations at SMU, said Sunday evening that officials couldn’t comment on the faculty letter, when it hasn’t been delivered and it is unclear how many people have signed...

However, Cheves stressed that "SMU has and continues to celebrate a diversity of thought."

Yes, let's celebrate diversity...including thought. I guess we know what those elitist professors are worried about now (aside from their paychecks). They don't mind the brainwashing that goes on in Austin at the taxpayer-sponsored University of Texas where they're training up the next class of Democrat leaders in society. But don't expect these guys to defend the right of Republicans to spend their money on a private institution.

No Crow Yet

Jules Crittenden discusses reports that Jamil (Jamail?) Hussein, the cop-not a cop used by Associated Press reporters as a source for some questionable reports in Iraq, has been found.

Crittenden points out that whether Hussein is real isn't even a part of the A.P.'s problem with its readers.

Whether Jamil/Jamail Hussein exists or not, is a cop or not, speaks the truth or not, has no bearing on the AP's longstanding failure to serve its clientele and their readers in the manner they should expect. This includes, in the recent past, its unbalanced reporting on the Bush administration, its bizarre presentation of Saddam Hussein as a victim of the United States and the U.N. weapons inspectors, and its burying of key facts in the case against Bilal Hussein, terrorist-approved AP photographer and associate of al Qaeda bombmakers currently in U.S. custody. The arrogant and dismissive response to questions raised about Hussein, however, speaks volumes.

Regardless of the resolution of this Hussein business, the fundamental problem remains. It's a problem of trust. The just-the-facts, inverted-pyramid news agency, founded over 150 years ago on the novel principle of providing raw, reliable, non-partisan information to newspapers of all stripes, no longer exists.

I agree.

Discovering New Weblogs

After reading the Weblog Awards yesterday, I started looking at some of the winning websites and found some interesting ones. Currently, my favorite of those I discovered is the Moderate Voice.

While I can't say I agree with everything I read there (I am a conservative, after all), I've found articles I agree with (this post which discusses differing opinions on America's use of aid in foreign diplomacy), some I disagree with (such as this discussion about a new touchy-feely approach to foreign policy), and some that just made me think (this post discussing what we should be doing/changing about the military).

I've said frequently that I like visiting sites I disagree with, not just because I love to argue (although I do), but because it's always interesting to try to get a different perspective. The Moderate Voice seems to do a good job using a variety of sources for material, and using sources that haven't been used everywhere else. I like the emphasis from foreign policy sources and expect I'll have this one bookmarked for quite a while.

Judge's Ruling Bans California Executions as Unconstitutional

Remember when lethal injection was considered the humane way to execute criminals? I do.

Well, of course, there have always been people who disagreed with that assessment, but these are typically the same people who don't like capital punishment in the first place.

A federal judge in California (where else?) has now ruled that California's lethal injection system is unconstitutional.

Already under close scrutiny by Senior U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson for having a health care system that fails to keep inmates alive, the prison system, Fogel wrote, is failing to kill them in a humane manner. Fogel found that lethal injection may be unconstitutionally cruel as practiced by the state, indefinitely prolonging his February injunction on California executions.

I know, I know. I'm supposed to care whether or not they feel pain while they're being executed, even though Morales didn't worry about that when he viciously beat and murdered a woman in a vineyard in 1981.

But I don't care, and if that makes me unfeeling, then so be it. From the story by a San Jose CBS affiliate:

But Fogel wondered whether the combination of drugs was necessary, given that the American Veterinarian Association said it would not euthanize animals the same way California executes inmates.

I have more sympathy for animals which are being euthanized, even those being put down because they are mean and vicious. Animals lack the capacity to understand what they are doing and it is up to their owners to keep them under control.

But I find it insulting that we would hold murderers only to the same standard that we do dangerous dogs. I expect people to behave better than animals. That's why I find attempts to block capital punishment this way to be blindingly naive and completely disrespectful of humanity.

“The Episcopalian ship is in trouble”

So says the Rev. John Yates, rector of The Falls Church, one of as many as eight Episcopal churches expected to announce today that their parishioners have voted to leave the Episcopal Church.

The trouble in the Episcopal church has been brewing for about 30 years and covers a variety of issues from ordination of female bishops to gay marriage to basic church tenets like whether Jesus is the only route to salvation.

If the churches vote to secede, there could be a battle over who gets the property. Both sides claim the law is on their side.

Like a messy family fight at Christmas that has been brewing for years, no one in the Episcopal community will walk away unaffected.

“It’s a huge amount of mess,” said the Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina, who is aligned with the conservatives. “As these two sides fight, a lot of people in the middle of the Episcopal Church are exhausted and trying to hide, and you can’t. When you’re in a family and the two sides are fighting, it affects everybody.”

Star-Trib Writer Cleared

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has cleared Steve Berg, an editorial page writer, of plagiarism charges even after finding two "improper and unfortunate" instances of "nonattribution," according to editorial page editor Susan Albright.

So, stealing ideas and words twice in less than a year is the new standard at the Strib. Good to know.

Time Ducks Out

In a move sure to send up massive groans and eye-rolling from its subscribers, Time magazine has released its Person of the Year issue. The person this year? You.

The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals — citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.

"If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time's managing editor earlier this year. "But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone."

Seems like a cheesy cop-out to me.

The magazine did cite 26 "People Who Mattered," from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to Pope Benedict XVI to the troika of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

And Stengel said if the magazine had decided to go with an individual, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the likely choice. "It just felt to me a little off selecting him," Stengel said.

I don't know why Time would flinch at make Ahmadinejad Person of the Year. They didn't mind giving that distinction to Mikhail Gorbechev...twice.

I like seeing generalizations in everything, but Stengel's statement seems to exemplify the attitude of a lot of people--governmental, entertainment, or otherwise--in this country. Let's not make a hard decision. Just do something that makes people feel good.

Memories of Flu Pandemic

The Associated Press ran an interesting article on survivors of the great flu pandemic of the early 20th century.

At the height of the flu pandemic in 1918, William H. Sardo Jr. remembers the pine caskets stacked in the living room of his family's house, a funeral home in Washington, D.C.

The city had slowed to a near halt. Schools were closed. Church services were banned. The federal government limited its hours of operation. People were dying — some who took ill in the morning were dead by night.

I can't even imagine what it must have been like living through that horror, given how little the average person still understood about diseases and how little the medical community knew to do about the spread of such illnesses.

The great flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people and possibly as many as 100 million people worldwide. The flu killed more people in the 24 weeks from 1918-1919 than AIDS has killed in 24 years.

In the United States, the first reported cases surfaced at an Army camp in Kansas as World War I began winding down. The virus quickly spread among soldiers at U.S. camps and in the trenches of Europe. It paralyzed many communities as it circled the world.

In the District of Columbia, the first recorded influenza death came on Sept. 21, 1918. The victim, a 24-year-old railroad worker, had been exposed in New York four days earlier. The flu swept through the nation's capital, which had attracted thousands of soldiers and war workers. By the time the pandemic had subsided, at least 30,000 people had become ill and 3,000 had died in the city.

There's a very interesting book out called The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry. Barry's book describes how the virulent outbreak of the flu broke down civil society.

According to Barry, those still healthy were too panicked by the disease's violent symptoms (rib-cracking coughing spells, intense pain, a cyanosis of the skin so deep blue its like has never been seen since) to even look in on their ill neighbors. Some of the sick, and their children with them, simply starved to death for lack of attention.

Barry quoted one health official after he had failed to recruit a single volunteer: "Nothing seems to rouse them. Children are starving and still they hold back." Even in tight-knit rural communities, says Barry, neighbors didn't rally 'round.

Barry also says that such a flu pandemic is possible, even likely in modern times.

So, could it happen again? Barry thinks so, and he quotes the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences: "… another influenza pandemic is possibly inevitable and even overdue." The solution, he says, is for governments to immediately start making a major investment in the world's vaccine-producing infrastructure. "It will be a race," he says, "a race to the death."

Life Is What Happens While You're Busy Making Plans

I was surprised to find this post over at Huffington Post.

The author, Frank Schaeffer, got his girlfriend pregnant when he was 17. Instead of lecturing her about her "choice," he married her. They've been married for 37 years, had three children, and, from what he says, have a good life, complete with grandchildren at a time when a lot of grey-haired parents are still getting up at 2 a.m. for feedings.

Schaeffer makes an important point. Not that what he did was the smartest or easiest thing he could have done, but that pursuing college and career before having children will often leave adults without partners or progeny. And in the end, it isn't our company cars or job titles that give us the most comfort and satisfaction in life. It's those people we love.

The biggest reason I decided not to pursue a career in law was that I didn't want someone else raising my kids. Losing my mother relatively young made me realize that our existence is fleetingly short and wasting most of that time in court wasn't what I wanted to be remembered for. As I have told both family and friends, your clients won't remember when you die, nor will they visit your grave once your gone. Only your family (and if you are lucky) your closest friends will do that for you.

Schaeffer's main point is that ordering one's life so as to bar any accidents can be both sterile and unfulfilling. If his girlfriend had had that abortion at 17, maybe she'd be singing the song of "choice" at this moment and he would be a rich, corporate mogul. But somehow, I think he's happy and satisfied with the struggles and joys that came with the life he made instead.

"The Congressman Was Wearing a Tabasco Tie with a Sears Suit"

Well, no, no one actually said that. I just wrote that to try to show what it would look like if political reporting of men was similar to what women face.

I was shocked--shocked!--that I actually found a story at FAIR's website with which I agreed. This piece by Lucinda Marshall says pretty much what I said after Democrats won the House and Grandma--er, Nancy Pelosi became the Speaker-in-waiting.

Marshall points out that in a variety of articles about women in politics, we hear about their clothes before we even know who they are or why we should care.

When it comes to Patricia Mulroy, the general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, we get the description before we even know her name, "a stylish older woman with short hair and discreet gold jewelry. That would be Patricia Mulroy." Richardson repeats the clothes-first, name-second structure with the last woman featured in the article, "a young woman in white slacks and a jean jacket" named Stephanie Herseth. Only then do we find out that she is a member of the United States Congress. Not once does Richardson refer to her as Congresswoman Herseth, she's just a young woman wearing white slacks and a denim jacket.

I'm just hoping nobody writes the story telling us Pelosi is pear-shaped.

More "Duh!" News

In a story from Agape Press:

In its seventh study regarding how religion is depicted on television, the Parents Television Council (PTC) found that there is far less of it, and what is shown is more negative. A total of 2,271.5 prime time programming hours were examined in the study, "Faith in a Box 2005-2006."

A recent PTC news release revealed that the study spanned an entire year (2005-2006) and encompassed 2,271.5 hours of programming, during which 1,425 treatments of religion were found. The 1,425 number represents a 41 percent decrease from the 2,344 religious portrayals made during the 2003-2004 season. In addition, the survey found that in 2005-2006 programming content, there were more negative portrayals of religion than positive ones (35% to 34%).

This was the case, in spite of the fact that a recent Zogby/American Bible Society poll found that 84 percent of adults are not offended when references to God or the Bible are made on network TV shows. Fifty-one percent of those polled also said the networks should develop shows with positive messages that even specifically refer to God and the Bible.

Michael Medved wrote a book about 12 years ago titled Hollywood vs. America. It was about the constant negative drumbeat Hollywood sounds toward religion of any sort and Christianity and Judaism in particular. I remember Medved pointing out that if there is a priest or a minister on a whodunit, he's gonna be the guy who done it.

Since that time, I started paying attention to what I saw on television and movies concerning religion (I was still quite liberal at the time). What I personally discovered was that Medved--and other critics--were right. Hollywood is distinctly anti-religion and rarely can find anything positive to say about religious folks.

Even when there are runaway hits like The Passion of the Christ or Touched by an Angel, the movie industry (and its cohorts that create television shows) just don't "get it." One wonders why networks are so reluctant to actually produce the shows Americans say they want.

Other findings include:

* The later the hour, the more negative the treatment -- During the 8 p.m. hour, negative treatments were at 31.9%; at 9 pm, 33.9%; and during the 10 pm hour, 44.4% of all religious treatments were negative. At no time during these later hours did the positive portrayal of religion ever reach the 50% mark.

* Laypersons -- non-clerical individuals who profess religious faith -- were treated most negatively by entertainment programs -- More than half (50.8%) of all entertainment TV's portrayals of laity were negative, while only 26% were positive.

* Religious institutions also portrayed as negative -- Following closely behind the laity with 47.6% negative portrayals were religious institutions. (These include particular denominations, specific religious beliefs or direct references to Scripture). Sadly, only 18% of depictions of religious institutions were positive.

* Clergy shown in a negative light -- Nearly 70% of prime-time TV's portrayal of clergy were negative, demonstrating a clear bias against people of religious faith.

* Simple religious faith shown positively -- This was the one positive outcome of the study. More than two-thirds (69.6%) of portrayals such as individuals making a simple statement of their belief in God or a higher power, or praying, were shown as positive, with only 14.7% being negative.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

Gotta Love How She Drives the Moonbats Crazy

Michelle Malkin has accepted Eason Jordan's invitation to join his team in Baghdad searching for Jamil Hussein, the source of the Associated Press's "burned Iraqis" story from a few days ago.

Intrepid bloggers pointed out that "Captain Jamil Hussein" is not a spokesman for the police in Iraq and that several "witnesses" have since recanted their tales of burned bodies and mosque explosions.

One would think that Malkin going to Iraq would be considered a good thing. In fact, the moonbats at The Liberal Avenger just went absolutely batshit crazy at the idea.

It isn't just that they think she'll back out of it, as LA says himself. But just read some of the comments and you'll understand why no intelligent person takes lefties seriously anymore.

Devil's Advocate: That skank will figure out a way to weasel out of it.

Oaktree: Here’s hoping she confuses an IED with her IUD.

Feckless: Malkin and this administration are responsible for the deaths of over 500,000 innocent people in a war that was immoral and illegal. That is more obscene than any curse word ever invented.

PeterP: She will bomb out, citing the acute shortage of good mascara, eyeliner and lip gloss in Baghdad.

I'm still waiting for the feminists to lodge a complaint about the misogyny of these posters...