Expected content of children’s television now that the
“wardrobe malfunction” decision has been overturned.
Last week, the Third U.S. Circuit Court overturned the FCC’s $550,000 fine against CBS for Janet Jackson’s scandalous nipple show. We aren’t qualified to properly understand just how horrible this development is. We must turn to the fundies, who will tell us just how damaged we were by seeing said nipple. OneNewsNow has generously come to our aid with this proclamation of gloom: “FCC Feeling Muzzled by Courts”:
Penny Nance, special advisor to Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin, says the Third U.S. Circuit Court’s ruling yesterday was stunning on many levels, considering that the Super Bowl striptease incident in question spawned millions of complaints from parents and concerned citizens all over the country.
Oh, where to start? (1) It’s distressing that the FCC is run by a fundie whose primary mission in life is to fine a broadcast network for the accidental (and very brief) exposure of a non-sexual body part. (2) It wasn’t a striptease. (3) I doubt there were “millions” of complaints. But even if there were, it’s a meaningless number. 99% came directly from the Parents Television Council. They hardly represent the country as a whole.
Nance argues that it represents further legal efforts to severely hamper the FCC’s mission of protecting decency on the broadcast airwaves. She explains that the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled against the federal agency’s fining of TV broadcast networks for airing of “fleeting profanities” during awards shows in 2002 and 2003.
This is why you need the courts — to rein in an out-of-control government.
The best part of this article, though, comes from the comments! Let’s take a look, shall we?
The real problem is not that it was just a half-second episode or that it was not bleeped out. The real problem is that it is just a way to open the door for more of the same for a longer time period the next time. Ever heard the old saying “Give an inch and they will take a mile” Just like the homosexual agenda, there was a time when no one would “come out of the closet” but little by little they did and look at the mess we have now involving that issue. As for me: let morality rule.
Janet Jackson’s nipple: Marching in lockstep with the homosexual agenda!
Go FCC and do your job well! There was no need for the nudity regardless of the length of time and for the perverts that say get over it or that didn’t hurt anyone - pay for your sick porno crap because decent people don’t care for it on our television. We were not watching one of your porno channels, we are not accustomed to such trash.
Then don’t look at this, you’ll go blind:
A few of the comments supported the court’s decision. I’m surprised that OneNewsNow didn’t delete them:
Score: Victorian censors: 0
First Amendment: 2
Hurray for freedom.
and…
If your precious darlings were caused permanent harm by a 2 second flash of a woman’s anatomy, I suggest you spend more time being a parent and less time reading internet websites. Your priorities are as screwed up as the FCC’s.
also…
It was less than half a second folks!!! If that’s going to damage a child’s mind there is something wrong with the child.
I don’t think the fundies really are worried about the child. It’s the adults who are so scared of the nipple. To them, I say: Don’t look at this next picture. Don’t imagine your hand slowly caressing it. Don’t think of your tongue sliding deliciously around its perky firmness.
The headline over at fundie “news” site OneNewsNow is:
Teen’s Mother Forces Her to Have an Abortion
The story is pretty much encapsulated in the headline. A 16-year-old girl wanted to have the baby. Her mother pressured her to get an abortion, which is ultimately what happened. OneNewsNow is wailing and moaning like this is the worst thing ever.
Apparently the fundies don’t like it when somebody else tells them what they can or can’t do with their own bodies.
One of my pet peeves is people who think that aliens built the pyramids. Frankly, as a member of the human race, I’m quite insulted. We’re an amazingly ingenious lot. If there’s a problem to solve, we generally get around to figuring it out.
Vaccines? We invented those. Rocketships and submarines? We made those too. Radio, television, and satellites? We solved all of those. Ziplock bags? That was us too.
Even in the ancient world, we were masters of our domain (so to speak). Agriculture? We did that! Irrigation? Humans! Domestication of livestock? Nailed it! Gods and religion? Another human invention. (That last one probably should have stayed in the workshop a little longer, though.)
That’s why it’s so insulting to have some uneducated twat try to deny us one of our greatest achievements: The construction of massive pyramids with little more than levers, wheels, and inclined planes.
The pyramids really weren’t that difficult to build, from an engineering perspective. Sure, there were definitely a few tough problems that had to be solved. There are several pyramids in Egypt that show the earlier attempts. They weren’t so good. But the engineers learned. Once the problems were solved, it was just a matter of implementation. And that is the true marvel of the ancient world.
Managing a project on that scale with the huge workforce and supply problems they had would have been impossible if not for that other human invention: Bureaucracy. Yes, that’s one thing the Egyptians had (made possible by another invention: Writing). Contrary to popular belief, bureaucracy doesn’t guarantee inefficiency. It’s often impossible to get things done without it.
But There ARE Real Limits
I was thinking about this pyramid situation just last week. You see, there are real limits in the universe. As far as we know, you can’t go faster than light. You can’t get any colder than zero Kelvin. And you can’t convince a creationist that he’s wrong.
My recent article, “Reality Denialism and the Limits of Belief“, grew out of this situation. I realized that the reason some people think that humans couldn’t have built the pyramids is because those people have a misconception of what life was like back then. They don’t appreciate how sophisticated Egyptian society already was, and they don’t appreciate just how much work you can do without power tools. That makes a human construction of the pyramids beyond the technical limit of belief for the human-made-pyramid deniers. Since they can’t conceive of any way humans could have done it, the only other explanation that makes sense is aliens. Aliens always have advanced technology with flashing lights and cool whirring sounds. Surely, somebody who has flashing lights and cool whirring sounds can build anything.
But as I said, there are universal limits. I was confronted with this when I had to fix my iPod. You may recall my earlier article about how God works in mysterious ways, such as through iPod repair. The little Toshiba hard drive I ordered arrived last week. I knew, of course, that the thing had to be smaller than the iPod, in order to fit inside of it:
As you can see, the hard drive is a bit narrower and shorter than the iPod.
OK. So far, so good. But check out this side view:
Side view, showing relative sizes. (A) iPod;
(B) hard drive; (C) two quarters (for scale)
Are you freakin’ kidding me?! That’s a god-damned hard drive, and it’s barely the thickness of a couple of quarters! I just assumed that the thing would be almost as thick as the iPod. Sure, there has to be room for the logic board, but they can make those fairly thin. In fact, the hard drive goes between two layers of foam, which they use for shock absorption. So the inside of your iPod is so spacious that they have room for the logic board, the battery, the hard drive, and two freakin’ layers of foam!
I don’t think you comprehend what’s going on here. The significance of what I’m saying. The ramifications for human society.
Do you have any idea how big a gigabyte is? Sure, it’s a billion bytes. But do you comprehend just how big a billion is?
One billion seconds ago was the year 1976 CE. (There were still liberals in America!)
One billion minutes ago was the year 106 CE. (John McCain wasn’t even born!)
One billion hours ago was the year 112,147 BCE. (Humans were living in caves!)
One billion days ago was the year 2,737,718 BCE. (Humans didn’t even exist!)
So a gigabyte is huge. And there’s thirty of them in that tiny drive!
Some things go beyond the credible.
I don’t care how ingenious we are. We can’t be that good.
This hard drive has to be alien technology. That’s the only possible explanation.
For being people who supposedly have the universe all figured out, Christians sure can be a narrow-minded, petty lot given to deplorable excesses of bitching and moaning. … Apparently the comfort of an eternal life spent in blind worship to a tyrannical universal overseer is insufficient to squelch one’s urge to be an asshole in the here and now. Go figure.
The latest Carnival of the Godless is up over at Sean the Blogonaut. Go check it out.
The article most worth reading is “In God We Trust” by The Chaplain at An Apostate’s Chapel. It’s about that supposedly harmless phrase “In God we trust” on our money. “It’s just ceremonial deism!” “It’s virtually meaningless!” Kiss my ass, Christians! It isn’t meaningless, and it’s more than ceremonial. The Chaplain demonstrates this by deconstructing a Christian pamphlet.
There are a few crackpots out there who think we never went to the moon. I have identified two factors at play here. I call them the Technical Limit of Belief (TLB) and the Social Limit of Belief (SLB). When you cross both lines, you have a reality denier.
Getting to the moon was a tremendous technical hurdle. Some people think we weren’t up to the task. It’s beyond their comprehension that we humans were actually clever enough to surmount the massive scientific and engineering challenges. That’s the Technical Limit of Belief that their minds can’t cross.
You also have to remember that the moon landings were right around (slightly before, actually) the time of Watergate.
For you young saplings out there, you probably can’t comprehend just how demoralized the country was at that point. That also coincided with our humiliating defeat in Iraq Vietnam (sorry, I sometimes type the wrong synonym). Inflation was raging. There was an Arab oil embargo, so you couldn’t buy gas. Being an American at that point just didn’t have the same uplifting feeling that it did at the end of WWII or the 1950s. People had had all of the optimism and hope beaten out of them. In that climate, being able to do something amazing like going to the freakin’ moon!! might have seemed out of place when measured against all of the other failures that were the Nixon era.
It was very easy to believe in a government conspiracy. After all, Watergate was a real conspiracy, and it was a big one. Nothing was as it seemed back then. You couldn’t trust the government, so believing the government when it said we went to the moon was beyond the Social Limit of Belief for some people.
When you cross somebody’s TLB and SLB, you create a denier of reality.
Global Warming
But what about deniers of other realities? I’m guessing that in every case, you’ll find both a TLB and an SLB at work. Interestingly, as I look at some of these cases, it’s the Social Limit of Belief that’s driving the denialism, and they’re merely using their Technical Limit of Belief as the excuse.
Take global warming for example. There are at least two types of deniers here, with a fair amount of overlap. In one camp are the economic and political conservatives. They like things to remain the same, because they’ve benefitted financially or politically. If society changes its behavior to fight global warming, their gravy train is threatened. They have a stake in global warming not being true. That stake is their SLB. Also, it is mostly liberals who are campaigning for aggressive measures against global warming. This also puts off conservatives, so that’s a second SLB for them. I was in the audience when staunch libertarian Penn Jillette said that he doubted global warming because Al Gore claimed it was real. Penn announced to the world what his SLB is.
Another camp is the religious and social conservatives. I’ve been having difficulty figuring out why these people insist that global warming isn’t real. The only explanation I have is that if the liberals say it’s true, then it must be false! I think by conceding global warming, they will have to go along with the liberal programs to combat it. They can’t let the liberals have that power. They might use it to push their other agendas as well. So for these people, giving in to the liberals is their SLB.
For both camps, then, the TLB is a mere afterthought. The social ramifications of global warming being real are too awful to contemplate, so the science must be wrong. It has to be. They can’t cross that SLB, so they paint a TLB line on the ground and refuse to cross it.
Evolution
The evolution deniers are all in one camp. They’re religious ultra-conservatives. They believe that the Bible is true. They don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t fit that blueprint. They pretend that this is a Christian country founded upon the Ten Commandments. They pretend that morality is externally defined by a deity and handed down from on high. Living in a world where those things aren’t true is way too scary for them. That is their Social Limit of Belief. In order to make the SLB hold up, they decide that the science must be wrong. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you show them or how much you try to educate them. They cannot allow that information into their brain. They cannot cross that TLB, because that would make their SLB, and their whole safe worldview, collapse.
Woo Hoo!
What about believers of “woo”, or all of the crazy anti-science things like astrology, homeopathy, dowsing, ESP, etc.? There’s probably a variety of explanations here.
For some, poor scientific knowledge and critical thinking skills mean that their Technical Limit of Belief is very close indeed.
Other people make decisions intuitively or emotionally, and don’t consider the logical side of things so much. There is nothing wrong with this! That’s just the way their brains are wired. But the result is that their TLB will be fairly close. It’s not so much a limit of belief so much as a place they just don’t visit often.
On the social side of things, consider medical scams (such as anything that uses the word “detoxification”!). Some people have had bad experiences with real medicine. As a result, they’ll say things such as “doctors don’t know anything” or “everything is controlled by the drug companies”. They don’t like the medical establishment and refuse to go there. That’s their SLB.
Or for another example, think of the paranormal. Ghosts, angels, “spirit guides”, etc. are appealing to many folks. They like the idea of a world that has those things in it. You can’t debunk a ghost photograph to those people. They want ghostly realms to be real, so crossing into the skeptical realm isn’t a place they’re willing to go. That is their SLB.
Conclusion
I suspect that if we explore this idea further, we’ll find that in every case of reality denialism, there are both Technical and Social Limits of Belief. One might weigh heavier than the other, and in some cases one is just there as a convenient rationalization for the other, but I think that you will always find both.
If you want to combat a particular reality denialism, you need to identify both the Technical Limit of Belief and the Social Limit of Belief that are at play. Find out which is dominant and focus your tactics against that one. If both are equally responsible for the belief, then you need to have tactics to fight both.
(Attention: If you are reading via an RSS reader, you will need to visit my web site to be able to play the MP3s. Make sure you have a recent Flash plug-in for your browser.)
Every bold pioneer and every true innovator is quickly followed by a screaming horde of cheap knockoffs. For every Xerox PARC, there’s a Microsoft. For every Charles Darwin, there’s a Michael Egnor. For every Osiris or Dionysus, there’s a Jesus. And for every Alvin and the Chipmunks, there’s Charlie the Hamster.
Newer readers to this blog may not be familiar with Charlie, the beloved hamster for Christ. If you are not yet acquainted with this rapturous rodent, I strongly urge you to read my original article where I first encountered him. You really should check out that article! It has always been one of my favorites. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Back by Popular Demand, Charlie the Hamster!
Now that you’ve had a chance to “enjoy” Charlie’s work, let’s find out a bit more about him.
In the year since I wrote the original article, I’ve come across Charlie several more times on the web. The absolute best site about this forgotten Christian Soldier is the site Charlie The Hamster Evangelistic Ministry. It masquerades as a real ministry, but it’s clearly just a loving tribute to this hokey Alvin wannabe. From the site:
Charlie is a Christ-loving, bible-believing hamster whom God has blessed abundantly with the gift of music and song.
It’s a gift and a curse. OK, it’s just a curse.
Charlie the Hamster records are, to the ears, what Jack T. Chick tracts are to the eyes: funny, innocuous witnessing tools with an unexpectedly powerful soul-saving impact.
This is why I think this is a tribute site, having a little fun with its subject. I doubt that even Christians think Chick tracts are funny and innocuous.
While Charlie the Hamster’s songs are easily mocked and often ridiculed by smug “sophisticates” and self-impressed “hepcats,”…
Guilty as charged!
…anyone who approaches the material with child-like innocence will reap eternal rewards.
Kids are pretty sophisticated these days. I don’t think anybody finds Charlie the Hamster “rewarding”.
The Missiles of Roctober
Charlie the Hamster is the brain-fart of Floyd Robinson, a D-list country musician. One of the sites I found that tells a tiny bit about Robinson and Charlie is Roctober, a giant page that catalogs all human knowledge about Alvin and the Chipmunks and every predecessor, successor, clone, rip-off, and knockoff. Here’s what they have to say:
It seems that Floyd Robinson combined his love of country music, The Chipmunks, and Jesus Christ to make Charlie The Hamster. Charlie is less mischievous than Alvin but still jokes around. Floyd is less angry than David, he patiently chides Charlie. Charlie and Floyd seem fairly likable. They often sing together, occasionally letting Charlie’s lil’ cousins Huey and Stanley join in. Here’s some banter from the intro to “Think Jesus”: “Charlie, what do you like to think of most?” “Candy! Ice cream! Popcorn!” “Let me put it this way, Charlie: WHO do you like to think of most?” “That’s easy! Jesus!” Full band (guitar, bass, drums, organ) backs them up on these songs and the two instrumentals feature some good picking and strumming, Jew’s harp, and hiccuping. The front cover of the “Sunday School” LP shows Charlie and his lil’ cousins in their Sunday best in front of church. One cousin has a slingshot in his back pocket! The back cover has a photo of a grinning pompadoured Floyd posing with his guitar.
The hamster on the left has obviously been asking some simple questions, such as “Aside from the Bible telling us it’s the word of God, how do we know that it is?” and “How could Noah have fit two of every animal on Earth into the ark?”.
Now let’s get to the part that you’ve all been waiting for: More Charlie! I’ve been scouring the internet for the last few days. I’ve managed to bag a dozen or so songs, so you have lots more of this to look forward to over the next few months!
This month, we’ll listen to the first two songs from Charlie the Hamster Teaches Bible Stories. I believe this is his second album. It was inflicted upon the public published in 1974. Here’s “It’s Fun To Live For Jesus”:
It’s Fun To Live For Jesus
Oh, I’m glad I live in a Christian nation
Where I can live my salvation
‘Cause I know, yes I know
that Jesus love me so
So I live my life for Him alone
‘Cause His love for me every day is shown
And I know, yes I know
That Jesus loves me so
Oh, it’s fun to live for Jesus
Hooray, hooray
Every time I can, I’ll take my stand, I’ll live my life for Jesus
Every day, I’ll say, I live my life for Jesus
‘Cause I know, that it’s so, I live my life for Jesus
The melody provides the essential clue. The constitution of the Confederate States of America was god-based. Charlie’s a reb!
Charlie Duke
The second song on the album is “Sunday School”:
Sunday School
Sunday school, Sunday school, how I love Sunday school
Yes, I do
I study and learn, I play and have fun
Yes, I do
I learn about things that are good and true
And learn about things that I should not do
Sunday school, Sunday school, how I love Sunday school
Yes, I do
It brings such joy to girls and to boys
Yes, it’s true
All the week long, I just sing this song
How I love Sunday School
(repeat all)
I must not have attended Charlie’s Sunday school. The only joy I remember from Sunday school was the time they gave us cardboard cube banks. We were supposed to do chores to earn money to put into the bank, then bring them back the next week and donate the money to the church. That didn’t seem like such a good deal to me, so immediately after class, my brother and I used the banks as soccer balls. That was fun. The matronly Sunday school teacher had a look of pure horror and failure on her face, but she didn’t say anything. I guess she knew at that point what it would take me several more years to figure out: I didn’t belong there.
But apparently Charlie does. Or at least he thinks he does. Sorry, Charlie! God doesn’t want souls with good taste. God wants souls that taste good! And to him, only human souls taste good!
Yes, in addition to the regular lie that Charlie is being told (i.e., “God exists”), they’ve also neglected to tell him that animals don’t have souls! Charlie’s not going anywhere when he dies, except into a shoebox that Floyd will bury in the backyard.
Back by Unpopular Demand, Squirrely!
I know this violates the Geneva Convention, but George Bush pulled us out of that. I am reposting here that horrible cut from All Ears, the Radio Shack CB radio album. Yes, I give to you: Squirrely!
(Warning! Those of you who are still pissed off about my little “It’s a Small World” prank a few posts back should definitely not play this song! You have been warned!)
The reason I’ve reposted this is because I stumbled across some information about it. Who would have thought that anybody knew anything about this vile turd? But on that same Roctober page that tells us about Charlie, I found a description of three albums starring “Shirley, Squirrely, and Melvin” in 1981 and 1982. Roctober tells us:
And so without missing a beat this trio debuted featuring a couple of Blues Brothers type boy-squirrels (Melvin played sax and guitar, Squirrely picked up percussion and laid some guitar licks in as well) and a hot diva frontwoman with a huge tail.
OK, but those albums were five and six years after the Radio Shack album. Well, just read a little farther up the page, and you’ll see the story of “Hey Shirley (This Is Squirrely)”:
Apparently two-thirds of Shirley, Squirrely & Melvin had a prehistory. Before Excelsior Records resurrected them as the successors to the departed Chipmunks, they made an icky-cute country & western novelty single cashing in on the CB radio craze. For a group of rodents (in this case, squirrels), they have a lot of vocal range. While Squirrely gets his mack on with Shirley, there’s probably about umpteen different voices breaking in on the line (including a proper British accent and a stuttering Porky Pig knockoff). And you can tell each and every one apart. Can’t do that with the Chipmunks (especially after the Chipettes moved in). The other side is the instrumental backing track. Radio Shack carried a comp LP featuring this track to help advertise the various CB radios they sold at the time.
