Miley Cyrus and the Moral Gag Reflex
John Stonestreet thinks that there’s a growing societal backlash against, the kind of cultural vulgarity represented by celebrities like Miley Cyrus. He gather’s quotes from various sources to make his case.
Singer Sinead O’Connor: “Nothing but harm will come in the long run from allowing yourself to be exploited…. It is absolutely NOT … an empowerment of yourself or any other young women, for you to send across the message that you are to be valued … more for your sexual appeal than your obvious talent.”
Joan Rivers: “We get it: You’re no longer Hannah Montana … but could you do it with a little more grace?”
TV critic Lee Siegel of The Wall Street Journal, no prude himself, wonders how we became so coarse, in the process draining the mystery and pleasure right out of sex.
Jonah Goldberg: “Today, there’s nothing suggestive about Miley Cyrus. Nobody watching her twerk thinks, ‘I wonder what she’s getting at?’”
Television star Rashida Jones: “This isn’t showing female sexuality; this is showing what it looks like when women sell sex,”
Stonestreet concludes:
Now, many of these new allies have little on which to base their revulsion of the new vulgarity other than their feelings. They know it’s destructive and hurtful to women, children, and families, but they don’t know why. And that’s where Christians can step in with a little gentle teaching about worldview. We might even be surprised at their response.
Discerning what is and what isn’t persecution
“In America, a reality TV star gets suspended for controversial remarks on race and homosexuality and conservative Christians claim victim and martyr status in the media. In Egypt, churches are torched by Islamic mobs and those Christians respond instead with humility and prayers for their persecutors.”
On the other hand, as this article points out, it is getting increasingly difficult for Christians to know when anti-Christian violence overseas can be accurately classified as religious persecution. Sometimes it’s more a matter of ethnic or national identity than Christian belief or practice. Voice of the Martyrs says:
On a world-wide level, you have to say Christian persecution is becoming more of a significant issue. But you have to say that the good news is that’s because there are more Christians, so there are more people to be persecuted.
First Atheist Church Splits
Stop laughing! And what did they split over? One word, the meaning and use of “atheist.” As CNN asks: “Is disbelief enough to keep a Sunday gathering together?”
The Agony of Frank Luntz
Frank Luntz, America’s best-known public-opinion guru is in a bad way. “Something is wrong. Something in his psyche has broken, and he does not know if he can recover.”
Headaches, insomnia, inner turmoil, eating badly, ill health, negativity, and on the verge of quitting everything. Indeed a couple of times he simply has done that – just given up.
Why?
It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. “They want to impose their opinions rather than express them,” is the way he describes what he saw. “And they’re picking up their leads from here in Washington.”
Luntz blames President Obama for this.
The people in his focus groups, he perceived, had absorbed the president’s message of class divisions, haves and have-nots, of redistribution. It was a message Luntz believed to be profoundly wrong, but one so powerful he had no slogans, no arguments with which to beat it back. In reelecting Obama, the people had spoken. And the people, he believed, were wrong. Having spent his career telling politicians what the people wanted to hear, Luntz now believed the people had been corrupted and were beyond saving. Obama had ruined the electorate, set them at each other’s throats, and there was no way to turn back.
There are lots of things Luntz wants to change but, “Most of all, he wishes we would stop yelling at one another.”
(WARNING: Couple of bad language issues in the Luntz article)