|
 Warning: The following rant is rather unfocused. Give me a few more months; I’ll get better at this, I swear. I don’t want to get all super-liberal for two posts in a row — eh, the previous one really wasn’t, I was just making the cheap joke — but let’s look at this attempt to get all advertisers to stop buying airtime on The Book of Daniel.
Some backstory on the show: As far as I can tell, The Book of Daniel was a Friday night show on NBC, which means it’s destined for failure. And it would have just gone to Friday Night TV heaven with Family Matters and Step by Step after a few weeks without any fanfare, but then the Christian right jumped on it.
The show is, by all accounts, offensive to conservative Christians. Frankly, though, the idea of a priest with his life so out of control he doesn’t see the housekeeper smoking pot seems pretty funny to me. (Why haven’t I watched this show yet? Oh, right, it’s a Friday night show on NBC.) And, okay, the priest’s family is out of control, etc., etc. Conservative groups — and I’ll pick on the American Family Association because that’s who’s sending letters to companies who advertised on the premier — have every right to protest and to send letters and tell advertisers they won’t buy their products if they continue to advertise on the show.
(On a side note, the only company not to pull their ads from the show — at least not yet — is Burlington Coat Factory. The ads that have been pulled is quite a crew: Mazda, H&R Block, Just for Men, Gold Bond Medicated Powder and Icy Hot. So we can rest easy knowing conservative Christians with jet black hair — none of whom have muscle aches or rashes — will be able to drive Mazdas to the mall to get their taxes done.)
I think it’s pretty clear that I don’t take myself seriously. Look, my previous post was entirely dedicated to calling the No. 3 ranking senator in the country a douchebag; there’s really no way I could. But I can see Rick Santorum taking himself seriously when he’s talking about the war, even if the idea of the media losing the war for us is a bit far-fetched.
I understand the sad fact that the advertisers are going to listen to letter campaigns because they’re in the business of being as bland as possible to sell products. But, seriously, how do groups like the AFA really take themselves seriously? Read the petition. They’re angry that one of the writers of the show is a gay man. Oh, my stars! A gay man in the entertainment industry! Call the advertisers, we have to stop it!
It’s not necessarily this show, though. On their website, the main group of articles is under this header:
And they believe this shit. And think there’s some sort of secret homosexual agenda all of us in the media are trying to shove down their throats so we can perpetrate the end of the human race. What. The. Fuck. They — and I’m generalizing here, but I’m allowed to because they do it so much — actually don’t see the slightest bit of irony, hypocrisy or unintentional humor in hating a show because (in part) a gay man writes it or coming up with a term called the “homosexual agenda.”
The downside of all this is that when Daniel gets cancelled, since it’s a Friday night show on NBC — even with the extra ratings the controversy has surely brought it — this group will, again, without any sense of irony, claim 100% responsibility. It’s enough to make your head explode… wait, too late.
Burlington Coat Factory, not backin’ down, huh? Man, if only I needed a new cheap down coat, I’d be at the Gallery fighting the good fight. Er, maybe not.
Burlington Coat Factory stands by ‘Daniel’ ads [Camden Courier-Post]
|
• Congratulations to the Inquirer for doing a story about New Yorkers moving to Philadelphia and 
