Friday, December 24, 2010

Networks: Merry Anti-Christmas

The Culture & Media Institute has released a story called "Christmas Without Christ" that chronicles TV networks' aversion to mention of religious aspects of Christmas. Reportedly, "just seven stories out of 527 (1.3 percent) mentioned the deity in two years of network evening news coverage." The easy explanation for this may be that secular Jews are prevalent in TV broadcasting, and the thought that Christmas has religious meaning for Christian gentiles may never occur to them, or they may simply not think of a religious Christmas as being newsworthy for a general audience.

But let's try to figure out what the percentage of stories that mention religious Christmas things should be.

Even among religious types, non-religious aspects of Christmas are important: things like food, decorations, lights, travel, relatives, santa, and most of all for little kids: PRESENTS. Nevertheless, churches across the nation stage yearly nativity plays, and various churches have their respective Christmas traditions such as midnight Mass, carols, advent wreathes, and in more historic times, processions. It is obvious that more than 1.3% of Americans include God as part of their Christmas traditions.

If only 1.3% of stories even mention God, many of these may be brief references, so the actual amount of time spent on God or religious Christmas elements may be even more minuscule. Regardless, it seems the networks are not concerned with drawing religious Christians to their viewership.

Monday, December 13, 2010

It's Been That Kind of Year

The Vikings team seems to have caved in this year too.


Many Vikings fans direct their discontent toward now-fired coach Brad "Chilly" Childress. But for Favre fans, being totally mad at Childress may be somewhat hypocritical since Childress is ultimately the reason Favre came to Minnesota both purposefully and incidentally. Childress purposefully lobbied for Brett to come to Minnesota, and he also incidentally hired Favre's buddy & former QB coach Darrelle Bevell as offensive coordinator in 2006, who subsequently in 2009 attracted Brett to Minnesota.

But obviously there are reasons to be mad at Childress, not the least of which is the Randy Moss firing.

As for Brett, this may be his worst nightmare of a year ever, it being marred with injuries and scandal. The injuries make him look physically weak on the field, and the scandal with the Jets employee sort of makes him seem morally weak.

In all honesty, however, the Jets are also culpable for needlessly exposing the players to scantily-clad women.

On Women

As to where women belong in football, they have traditionally been relegated to cheerleader. Yet, increasingly, they can be seen serving as sideline & lockerroom reporters. They fail at both because:
1. They don't have the game experience to be able to ask relevant questions (such as would former players Tony Siragusa or Eric Dickerson).
2. Players don't like women looking at them when they're naked in the locker room. That idiot NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should have stood up for Clinton Portis when he took flak for complaining of a Feminine lockerroom presence.
3. Nothing would be lost by not having female reporters from an affirmative action standpoint because, on the net, cute female reporters dominate broadcasting. Nothing would be lost from an entertainment standpoint because nobody watches football to see attracive female reporters but rather to see big hits, great runs, prolific catches, and victory for a favorite team.