Pat Robertson isn’t far behind:
In order to prepare for the imminent Second Coming—which Robertson believes will occur on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem according to biblical prophecy—he acquired METV (Middle East Television), a station then based in southern Lebanon that could broadcast into Israel. Straub was given marching orders to be ready to televise Christ’s return. CBN executives drew up a detailed plan to broadcast the event to every nation and in all languages. Straub wrote: “We even discussed how Jesus’ radiance might be too bright for the cameras and how we would have to make adjustments for that problem. Can you imagine telling Jesus, ‘Hey, Lord, please tone down your luminosity; we’re having a problem with contrast. You’re causing the picture to flare.’”
Well, perhaps they could do a second take.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
Thanks for the link, Doug.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Unfortunately cable news and many extreme blog media these days is predicated on “we the people” suspending all critical thinking with biased partisan panels of commentators, cleverly perpetuating their opinions as fact (without themselves performing any credible research into the issues). This phenomenon is accelerated by increasing profit-based pressures on news organizations to decrease staff and present the news in shorter time intervals. Then you have what appears to be a concerted effort by Rupert Murdock to directly influence the 2008 presidential election. The venom being hurled against Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and re-enforced by supposedly professional journalists emanate solely from those carefully created clips of the most controversial remarks made by the pastor Wright over a thirty-six year career.
Have any of these commentators viewed any of the sermons they are passing judgments on in their entirety that, or are we the public to continue to suffer from the consequences of this dishonest journalism?
Those in the media who had access to these sermons (i.e. Christmas day 2007 - the Hillary comment), which BTW can be acquired from Trinity Church of Christ (http://www.tucc.org/home.htm) had the opportunity to view them in their entirety. I remember that Christmas day service, via the Internet from NJ and when the FOX manufactured controversy arose I decided to review those sermons. I recently pulled down from Trinity’s web site to review the sermon entitled “The Message, The Messiah and The Manger,” which was about the ceremonial act of Christmas gift giving being linked to the gift of Jesus Christ, through a story of Rev. Wrights growing up in a bi-cultural family environment. What I find most appalling about the FOX clip is had it included the twenty seconds prior to the Hillary snippet, it would have been interpreted in an entirely different context. Failing to review the whole sermon is bad enough, but after viewing it and then having the gall to create an unrepresentative caricature of the Rev. Wright is an insult to everything good and descent.
Since Barack Obama has represented those clips as being unrepresentative of Rev. Wright, it would seem logical the rest of the media would desire to verify FOX News concocted claim and make a professional attempt to understand who the pastor, the congregation and black churches at large are? Recordings of these services go back many years. Fairness and simple decency demand the other news media outlets, which are more representative of “fair and balanced” (unlike FOX News) present to “we the people” that research and more importantly encourage “we the people” to perform some of our own research and critical thinking instead of continuing to be spoon-fed like immature secondary school students – and we wonder why America continues to sink on all the global academic achievement lists.
If the other media outlets do not verify the substance and context of those clips, then they become complicit in a cover-up that will only exacerbate racial relationships in a much larger way then we realize; while allowing the false assertion that Barack Obama made race an issue to continue and a preoccupied America continue to sink into irrelevancy while the rest of the world passes by.
You can find Trinity sermons at http://www.youtube.com/trinitychgo and http://www.youtube.com/ronptech. Use your own brain and stop re-enforcing and further enabling the guilt and inferiority complexes of too many of these so called “pundants.” A mind is a terrible thing to waste.