Does God have a sense of humor?
: The LA Times writes that the so-called Parents Television Council released a “study” purporting to show that TV and heathen Hollywood are hostile to religion.
I talked to the reporter and said: First, Brent Bozell’s group does not speak for America. Second, so what if there are shows with negative views of religion? There’s no rule against that. That’s what we call free speech. Those points were quoted in the article. I also said that it is ludicrous to think that entertainment should be created by quota; writers do not and cannot sit down and say that they have to have something nice to say about religion (or whatever your cause is) today; it’s their job to entertain, not to preach the PTC gospel.
I’m glad the LA Times reporter, Lynne Smith, took the time to call two critics of the PTC to get another perspective. Others did not. And so, once again, media is swallowing the PTC’s nonstory without questioning it. Thus, an impression is created that, first, TV is anti-religion and, second, that there’s some movement out there determined to do something about it.
Even PTC’s own numbers don’t tell the story they want to tell: Of references to religion they found, “22.1 percent were positive, 24.4 percent negative.” I wouldn’t call that a heathen conspiracy. And what PTC calls negative is often laughable.
Let’s look at what the PTC thinks are negative references to religion on TV. The real finding of this study is that the PTC has no sense of humor or irony:
On the 31st American Music Awards, November 16, host Jimmy Kimmel gives his audience a brief list of rules, which concludes,
