Tales from DC: The Best Quote Ever

My boss said something yesterday that I have promised to pester him with for his entire life. Thus I need to share it in this hallowed space.

Wait. That wasn't enough buildup. This is quite possibly the greatest quote I have ever heard my boss give in front of a student. If tomorrow, peace rained over all the earth, this quote would possibly still be the best news of the week. In the midst of a talk about Christian fundamentalism, he dropped this douzey.

"The Scofield Reference Bible is the Kama Sutra of Fundamentalism."

When he said it, I stopped him with a general "What??!"

He looked at me straight faced "It's REAL important."

GopherLink! Star Wars III: Backstroke of the West! Some misleading Chinese captions here.

GopherLink! Jon Stewart the most trusted man in America? Read the New York Times piece Read more here.

RandoMusing: Last night, I watched Blades of Glory. Only a fool would assume that the title insinuated a mix between a Wesley Snipes vampire movie and a civil war epic...but I think it would have been a better movie. Figure skating?

I did continue to hold out hope that the South would rise again in the middle of a competition. Or that vampires would come out of their hiding places in the skating rink. Alas. See the Ninja interview here.

Hollywood Still Trying to Get Religion

It's hard to forget the wild Christian rage of 2004.

We had a double-dose of Jesus in pop-culture that year: The Passion of the Christ released by famous sometimes-glorious-sometimes-fallen star Mel Gibson, and the hip-gnostic fiction book Da Vinci Code. Suddenly, Christianity was on the news, on magazine covers.

Also in November of that year, evangelicals turned out in record numbers to re-elect President George W. Bush. They voted for him in such a dramatic percentage that it literally turned the tide of the election.

I picture the executives in Hollywood scratching their head after the success folks had marketing to what I'll call the God Crowd--perhaps final realizing that more than half of America actually believes that stuff. Since then, there have been marked attempts to tap the God Crowd. Not always just to make more money, but at times, perhaps  to be fair-and-balanced.

As a student of this sort of this, I try to keep up with it. Here are some notable recent attempts:

- The Television Show "Greek" on ABC Family--The key is the depiction of the character Dale, who has no problem evangelizing Greek fraternities and then telling his Greek roommate, "I'm saving your peeps from eternal damnation." There are times when Dale is made to fit a very unfair stereotype (besides being an evangelical, he has a confederate flag, plays in a Christian band, and is depicted as a pretty big nerd). But there is an episode in particular where the main character has no one else to go to and Dale opens his arms to him.

ABC Family appears to be trying to make attempts to reach the God Crowd with this show. Since ABC Family is a subsidiary of Disney, you can guess which of Dale's personal beliefs they make fun of: his beliefs about homosexuality, pre-marital sex, drinking, etc. Disney of course is well known for a more "Christianity as Americana" belief system (read Mark Pinsky's wonderful book "The Gospel According to Disney", if you want to get a sense of Disney's God Talk).


- The Television Show "Bones" on FOX-- I've become used to the crime drama formula: religious = crazy. If a priest shows up on a crime drama, 10 to 1 it's because he killed, raped, or abetted one of the above. But the stone cold FBI agent Seeley Booth in "Bones" is a devout Roman Catholic. Several episodes have ended with him sitting in a Church, processing the episode's new crazy occurrence. Not only that, but his faith is depicted in a positive way. His partner, the all-science, all the time Temperance Brennan, actually is the one who comes across as narrow-minded when she attempts to attack him for his faith.

Oh and by the way, the gratuitous episode with the priest as a suspect? For once, the priest didn't do it.


-"Henry Poole is Here" --Released this  weekend, this Luke Wilson redemptive movie tells the story of a man who has a miraculous Jesus stain appear in his house. It begins to shake up the neighborhood and perhaps his own faith. This is definitely an attempt at the God Crowd but has a distinct chance of coming across as too preachy. Check out a review here.

-"Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian"-- Another blockbuster Walden Media Narnia movie. This one seems like a given after the success of the "Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." In this case, all the writers really had to do in order to please the God Crowd was be true to the book. They mostly succeeded, although they felt the need to add some steamy moments between Susan and Caspian as well as some extra battles that weren't really in the book. In all fairness, this was probably the hardest in the series to make into a movie because it deals less action, and deals more narrative on the big questions of faith.

-The Television Show "Secret Life of an American Teenager" on ABC Family-- Centered around the story of a 15-year-old who gets pregnant, the story is loaded with God talk. One of the two main families is evangelical. Two of the main characters attend Church together and at times try to invite other characters to events. Grace is the key character to watch in this show and she's depicted far more fairly than Dale in "Greek." She makes decisions we don't all agree with but comes across as generally caring and loving as well. This has been at the top of the iTunes "most downloaded" list ever since released as well. It will be interesting to see how this show progresses.

The National Enquirer and the future of journalism

When the story broke last week that Sen. John Edwards admitted an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, the effects were more far-reaching than just his own political career. This case study proved once and for all that traditional media had lost their hold over other forms of media.

From the start, the Edwards scandal has belonged entirely to the alternative and new media. The tabloid National Enquirer has done all the significant reporting on it -- reporting that turns out to be largely correct -- and bloggers and online commentators have refused to let the story sputter into oblivion.

There was a time when tabloids could run stories about illegitimate children, naughty affairs, etc. and we would all just giggle and flip through them while waiting at a grocery checkout counter. But what happens when they report the news that a biased media is unwilling to report? I have speculated that in an age where blossoming reporters don't want to simply report, they want to opine, we're returning to the pre-penny press days where media was largely funded by political parties. To get the truth you had to read several newspapers. Are we looking at a future age where people will need to read a New York Post, New York Daily News...and the National Enquirer?

You know it's bad when only the tabloid paper is willing to look pass their own bias to report on something worthy of report.
I rarely find myself siding with Bill O'Reilly, but I think he had a legitimate point when he said last Monday: "I do know it were Mitt Romney instead of John Edwards, this would be on the front page of the New York Times."

Howard Kurtz, at the Washington Post, disagrees with me:

I don't think the party favoritism charge holds up. Yes, the media went hard after two Republican senators, Larry Craig (who pleaded guilty in that bathroom incident) and David Vitter (who admitted calling an escort service). But they also pounced on New York's Democratic then-governor, Eliot Spitzer (whose taste in prostitutes was revealed by the New York Times), and, famously, Bill Clinton (whose Monica Lewinsky mess was disclosed by The Post and hotly pursued by Newsweek).

The Elizabeth Edwards factor cannot be underestimated. The enormous public sympathy for a woman who campaigned for her husband, even as she battled an incurable form of cancer, extended to many of the reporters who followed and interviewed her on the trail. The emotional high point of the Edwards campaign came last year, when he and Elizabeth held a news conference to announce that her cancer had returned, but that he would not leave the race.

But as Tim Rutten at the Los Angeles Times noted, there were reasons to look past our sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards:

First, it was less than unlikely that Elizabeth Edwards was unaware of the allegations. (She says now she knew of the affair in 2006.) Second, Edwards' name has surfaced as a possible running mate for Barack Obama and as a possible attorney general or Supreme Court nominee -- posts in which character and candor matter. Finally, throughout his political career, Edwards has made his marriage a centerpiece of his campaigns.

Rutten goes on to describe Edwards' campaign reporters as "sheep...who meekly accepted Edwards' categorical dismissal of the Enquirer's allegations." There I disagree with Rutten. Several sources have told me they knew about the story but were disuaded by editors. It's easy to forget that reporters are people too. They have bills to pay, mouths to feed and bosses to answer to if they want to do the manage the first two.

Question raised: Does this place America in a position where the only news source willing to go after a sensitive story is the organization that usually handles Britney Spear's latest outburst of crazy?

Another Five Things I've Learned About DC

Two months in D.C. and still alive. After reflecting on a previous post, "Five Things I've Learned About DC," I found myself wishing there were things I'd included. Some point soon, I'm sure to run out of things to learn. But for now, here are five more lessons from D.C.

(5) Visiting the monuments is like going to war- On my first attempt to bring family to see the touristy sights like the Capitol building, the White House, etc. I realized why I don't go by myself. A mad house isn't a fair way to describe it because everyone else is trying to get out of a mad house. But here, everyone wants to stay and take pictures, but you're the lone soul trying to escape. Plan to duck, stop and hide to avoid getting in the way of pictures. On one side of you are smiling folks, waiting for a camera shutter and on the other side are people with cameras. Both will kill you if you get in between them. Safest bet to get through the gauntlet? I vote for a Jack Bauer-esque shoulder roll.


(4) Churches are pretty polarized- Do you like extremely progressive churches? You're in luck. Do you like extremely conservative churches? You're also in luck. Are you one of the 30-40 percent of Americans in the middle? You're in trouble. All those divisions you read about in the paper are here. Presbyterian PCA Churches vs. Presbyterian USA Churches. American Baptist Churches vs. Southern Baptist Churches. Heck we've even got an African-American Catholic Church in town.

(3) The 42 bus only goes to cool places- There's really not a whole lot more to say about it. I've ridden many buses, but every time I get on the 42 bus, I end up in places often considered "hip." Adam's Morgan, DuPont Circle, Mt. Pleasant--all of them are pretty cool. Word to the wise: those transfers you get on the bus are only for other buses. If you try to use them in the metro, people will laugh at you.


(2) Customer service is non-existent- Needless to say, customer service issues are everywhere, but I can honestly say, I've never noticed it more than here in D.C. (And I've heard people say that it's worse in New York City. Yes, you're right: the seventh circle of hell is worse than the sixth.) At local coffee shop in Mt. Pleasant, I ordered some breakfast pastries. Twenty minutes passed. Folks came and went with coffee and pastries. Eventually, I went to the counter and asked about it. "Oh, we must have given it away." There was no "sorry" or "we'll get another one." That was the end of the story. When I did ask if I could get another to replace it, the lady sighed and looked at the ceiling to make sure I realized that I was really putting her out. If I was more of a jerk, I would have reminded her that I'd already paid her for the pastry, I just wanted the pleasure of eating it.

(1) Even the homeless have blogs- I've known that DC was a blog-happy community, but I never knew how blog-happy. Anyone who walks the route from Union Station to Capitol Hill probably knows Peter Bis. He's one of the biggest celebrities of Capitol Hill--his home is the street corner in front of the Congressional Exxon gas station on Massachusetts Ave. Pete shouts out good mornings to folks going to work and on Thursdays at 5 p.m., he reminds commuters "one more day." In my conversation with him, he shared that the CIA was after him for an operation he bungled 10 years ago. In that same conversation, he encouraged me to check out his blog. Please feel free to check it out as long as you remember that the viewpoints expressed there are not necessarily those of WJC or of the CCCU. It gave me some fascinating reading and led me to information about the "reptile-enhanced capabilities" of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Chief Justice John Roberts.