Culture

SNL Censoring Skit

I watched this skit live and it was (in fact the whole episode) one of the funniest things SNL has done in a long time. (Tina Fey is great as Palin but I have never found her writing very funny. SNL has a long way to go to return to their heyday, but they are getting better.) But now it turns out that NBC took the video down! It lampooned Soros and other leading Democratic supporters. Could that be the reason? Follow the links in the blog cited below for the original video.

Update: ‘Saturday Night Live’ says bailout skit ‘didn’t meet our standards’

Update: A “Saturday Night Live” skit that skewered President Bush, Democrats, homebuyers and subprime lenders for their roles in the mortgage meltdown was removed from the program’s website because it “didn’t meet out standards,” a spokesman for the show said Tuesday. An edited version of the skit will be re-posted online soon, the spokesman said.

The skit, a parody of a C-SPAN news conference, ridiculed subprime borrowers, housing speculators and Herb and Marion Sandler, the real-life couple who built Golden West Financial into a subprime lending powerhouse and sold it to Wachovia before the subprime collapse. At one point in the skit, the Herb Sandler character says he made $24 billion off the subprime boom. Graphics then appear labeling the Sandlers as “People who should be shot.”

“Upon review, we caught certain elements in the sketch that didn’t meet our standards,” a spokesman for the program said in an e-mail message today. “We took it down and made some minor changes, and it will be back online soon.”

Conservative blogger Michele Malkin, who called the skit “hilarious, dead-on, and surprisingly honest,” reports that the Sandlers, prominent donors to liberal causes, were “seething over the skit” before it was removed from the “SNL” website.

The blog Hot Air is also chasing the disappearing video, and readers on that blog found the video last night on You Tube — although by Tuesday morning the You Tube video had been removed “due to a copywright claim by NBC Universal.” The video was still available, however, on the site snlbailout.com, which also links to media coverage of the skit and its disappearance.

The new version is up and according to “Deadline Hollywood Daily” it was edited due to possible legal action from a couple lampooned in the skit.

But anyone who actually saw that video could see this might be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Because SNL labeled Herb Sandler and his wife Marion, the real-life former owners of Oakland’s Golden West Financial (aka World Savings), as “people who should be shot” and accused them of predatory lending that brought down Wachovia Bank even though no charges have been filed. NBC told me just now they never received any legal threat from the Sandlers. [Though the couple did give an angry interview to The Associated Press about the SNL sketch.]

Instead, the network claimed: ”Upon review, we caught certain elements in the sketch that didn’t meet our standards. We took it down and made some minor changes and it will be back online soon.” Specifically, NBC said it has edited out the chyron on-screen text, “People who should be shot” that appeared beneath the Sandler’ lookalikes, as well as the “allegations of corruption” made against the couple.

Still, a funny skit. I was particularly amused by Soros being identified as “Owner” of the Democratic party.

Call me crazy! Religulously Maher

Oct 1st, 2008

by Christian Brady.

3 comments

I watched the trailer some time ago. I am not terribly impressed but I got the sense that I would be uptight if facts concerned me, since they apparently don’t trouble Maher very much. Read the NYTimes review. A few snippets below.

Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times

Bill Maher, left, and Larry Charles pose in front of a, well, you know. Their new film, “Religulous,” takes on the pieties of religion.

Cameras Roll, and Faith Hasn’t a Prayer

By JOHN LELAND

Published: September 26, 2008

TORONTO

THE director Larry Charles was talking recently about Hollywood and taboos. His new movie, “Religulous,” which stars the HBO host Bill Maher, is a sometimes funny, sometimes cheap attack on organized religion.

…

Mr. Charles and Mr. Maher carry their evangelism to a broad swath of targets: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, even Cantheism, a pot-centric belief system that is often overlooked in theological debate. Buddhism and Hinduism get a pass; interviews with Muslims are intercut with footage of warring jihadis. At the end of the movie Mr. Maher calls on “anti-religionists” to “come out of the closet and assert themselves” in the face of religious extremism. “Grow up or die,” he says.

Mr. Maher said he intended the movie as a call to action, not to convince religious people to join his camp but to stir the nonreligious to unite.

“This is a very religious country,” he said, ignoring for the moment that he was in Canada, where the movie played at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. “I would at least like them” — meaning the 16 percent of Americans who in a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life described themselves as “unaffiliated” with any religion — “to stand up and say we’re not the crazy ones. Don’t we deserve at least that? There’s 535 members of Congress. How many of them would say they’re atheist or agnostic? I believe that would be zero. Pete Stark, maybe, the congressman from California, started talking about how he may not be a believer. What other minority of 16 percent has zero representation in Congress?”

I am relieved to know that Maher and Charles are not crazy. So I guess that just leaves you and me. And the Buddhists and the Hindus because they got a pass.

One more note. As the Times author corrects Maher’s stats he notes:

And even among disbelievers, 21 percent of atheists and 55 percent of agnostics said they believed in God.

Go figure.

Go figure indeed. How can one be an atheist and believe in God? Whose crazy here?

Charlie Brown, what is the purpose of man?

Aug 16th, 2008

by Christian Brady.

No comments yet

That is the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (that I had to study and reply to before I joined the Presbyterian church as a youth).

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God,[1] and to enjoy him forever.[2]

I am sure that you all are aware of Charles Schultz’s (1922-2000) personal Christian convictions and that it seeped into his Peanuts strip from time to time. This week’s reruns have CB addressing just this question, but his answer is hardly catechetical.

It seems to me that Lucy and Linus’ responses are rather profound, given CB’s view that our purpose is “to make others happy.” If that is our sole or primary purpose then indeed somebody (everyone) isn’t doing their job. Now on the other hand, I suppose we could say that this is just “the second great command” put in new terms and I would accept that, but it is given primacy in this account. I think the order (love God first then we are able to love our neighbors, and even ourselves, properly) is rather important.

College rankings…based upon faith?

Jun 30th, 2008

by Christian Brady.

5 comments

This morning Inside Higher Ed ran a story (What Would Jesus Do (in College) ) that caught my attention. It is a great piece in that it combines two favorite topics, religion and politics. It seems that conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute has published a college guide called All-American Colleges
Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-Fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith . This book lists a large number of colleges and universities that fits within the ISI’s ideals:¹

At each of these diverse institutions, students who identify themselves as religious believers, conservatives, or old-fashioned liberals will find programs that connect in a special way with the core values of the American founding and the vibrant intellectual traditions of the West—schools and programs that are, in fact, often transformative.

The Inside Higher Ed piece examines how several institutions responded to be associated with ISI and some of the other schools on the list. What the administrators quoted struggle with is how to present their Gospel-formed social views in such a way that they are not equated with the "progressive left" and their religious commitments without being seen as the "religious right." Loren Swartzendruber, president of Eastern Mennonite University, said

“The growth of the right-wing Christian population in this country, or should I say, at least the visibility of the right-wing – which gets attached to ‘Christian’ in the minds of people – creates a disconnect for us. Because we are clearly Christian. We have no intention of giving up that identity. But we are, I think, a different kind of Christian.”

In my experience, if you hold social views that are associated with liberals then conservatives will see you as such (and perhaps even question your committment to the Gospel). If you are committed to the Gospel and, to use examples from EMU and Messiah College, have social standards that reject drunkeness and extramarital sex then liberals will see you as right-wing conservatives and attribute such political views to you as well. In other words, you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And I believe that is just what Jesus told his disciples .

The table of contents lists the schools as: Asbury College
Austin College
Belmont Abbey College
Biola University
Brooklyn College
Calvin College
Centre College
University of Chicago
Christendom College
The Citadel
University of Dallas
Deep Springs College
Eastern Mennonite University
Emory and Henry College
Eureka College
George Fox University
Gordon College
Grove City College
Hanover College
Hillsdale College
Hope College
Houghton College
The King’s College
Lee University
Messiah College
New St. Andrews College
College of the Ozarks
Pepperdine University
Princeton University
Providence College
Rhodes College
St. Anselm College
St. Bonaventure University
St. John’s College
The University of St. Thomas
St. Vincent College
Samford University
Seattle Pacific University
Shimer College
Southern Virginia University
University of the South
Southwestern University
Thomas Aquinas College
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
Union College
Virginia Military Institute
Wabash College
Wheaton College
Whitman College
Yeshiva University [↩]

Buy n Large

Jun 28th, 2008

by Christian Brady.

4 comments

I saw WALL•E with my son yesterday evening (we had a boys weekend since the girls were in NYC watching ballet with Grandmommy). I may comment further on it later, but a couple of points. WALL•E boots up to the sound of a Macintosh chime. The Apple connections are always aplenty. (BTW, in one of the first scenes as WALL•E cleans up keep your eyes peeled for a vehicle from another Pixar film.)

Buy n Large, the company responsible for polluting and evacuating earth, as well as creating all of the robots, cups, clothes, etc. that are in the movie has their own website. You could easily spend a LOT of time poking around that site. I am personally eager for WEND•E the washing bot, but the regenerative liver technology is a must-have for many, especially in Hollywood. There are many more worthwhile moments of humor on the site. For example, their small print says in part:

Any information that is submitted to Buy n Large via its website or other online properties becomes the sole property of the Buy n Large corporation and may be used in any way the Buy n Large corporation deems advantageous. This includes, but is not limited to, selling and leasing customer information.

Their “Privacy Policy ” is even better. It begins

In order to access services through our site, you must provide us with certain personal information such as your name, your Vari-Credit number and expiration date, your Vari-Credit billing address, your telephone number, your e-mail address and the name or names of the person(s) in your immediate family. We may also ask you for other personal information, such as your medical history.

All acquired customer information becomes the property of the Buy n Large corporation and can be used (but is not limited to) any venture the Buy n Large Corporation deems beneficial to it. By visiting Buy n Large (or a Buy n Large partner) the user agrees to relinquish (if requested) any personal assets that may be deemed “usable” by the Buy n Large Corporation; this includes (but is not limited to) real estate, stock holdings, user transportation, employment income and the users “soul” (either real or imagined, regardless of spiritual or religious affiliation).

By visiting the Buy n Large website you become a registered member of the Buy n Large Database. You may not unsubscribe to this database at any time.

WALL•E contains a good amount of social commentary (Al Gore is on Apple’s board, after all) about our consumption habits and treatment of the earth. It is more heavy handed than in most Pixar films. In fact, I am not sure I can remember any of their movies that had any sort of agenda. Even so, it was a very amusing and enjoyable film. The characters of WALL•E, EVE, and the Captain are excellent and fun. I think it is worth seeing in the theatre, but you will not miss much if you wait for it on DVD.

The harder question posed by a student, is it better than Kung Fu Panda? I am not sure. I think KFP was a more enjoyable experience over all. WALL•E’s story line seems somewhat thin in comparison. The animation, however, remains impeccable with Pixar. The even mix in live footage of human actors that seems completely natural in context.

My final verdict: It is not anywhere near The Incredibles or Monsters, Inc. but it is on par with Cars. I will buyt it on DVD and going back on Sunday to see it with the ladies of the house.