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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
MTV was considered edgy when it went on air in 1981. Music TV helped make the music video industry, and advanced Hip Hop, rap, and highly sexualized video content. In the years hence MTV has shown fewer music videos and more so-called reality programs, racy, and trumped up programs about who’s sexier than whom and who’s sleeping with whom. Lately, programs have crossed the line into outright vulgarity.
Now comes “Skins,” a program imported from the UK featuring “actors,” which is to say underage youth with no experience, in wall-to-wall questionable, immoral, and illicit behavior. Stealing, drunkenness, lying to parents, drugs, sexual encounters, nudity, orgiastic innuendo, all get airtime.
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But the problem is it’s illegal to portray naked pictures of children. It’s called Kiddie Pornography.
People are reacting nationally—which is somewhat encouraging in the sense that there’s enough moral reservoir left within the culture to lead people to object. Strangely, or maybe predictably, MTV executives so far claim to be surprised or clueless.
Surely it isn’t much of a stretch to argue that programming child pornography, however “hip,” is unadvisable, wrong, immoral, and likely illegal. Yet here we are.
It shouldn’t surprise us. American culture has been jettisoning moral absolutes, the idea of right and wrong, since the 1960s. But in doing so our culture, i.e. us, leaves itself open to an anything goes, do what’s right in your own eyes society.
In particular we’ve tried to have our cake and eat it too in terms of sexuality. We want total freedom but no physical or emotional consequences. We want to preserve quaint ideas like marriage when we finally have children, but even that concept is being challenge.
Culturally we’ve argued, reflected and encouraged by Hollywood, for embracing the idea that consenting adults without the benefit of marriage can sexually do whatever they want whenever they want with whomever they want. Let it all hang out.
After a time even this isn’t enough so we get “Skins” on MTV. We get a program exposing and exploring teenage sexuality and calling it normal. We get Kiddie Porn.
MTV and others will make the argument “If you don’t like it don’t watch it. Censorship is wrong.” But this libertine statement is at bottom narcissistic and self-indulgent, wanting the protection of society but accepting no responsibility for reinforcing, building, or contributing to the social good.
Years ago the United States Supreme Court used the phrase “no redeeming social value” in reference to pornography. This phrase describes “Skins.” It has nothing to offer but debauchery.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
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Media Explanations For Tragedy
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
Last weekend, Tucson was the scene of tragedy, 6 people killed in senseless violence, including a nine year old child born on 9/11, along with 14 people seriously wounded, including Rep. Grabrielle Giffords.
I sincerely hope Congresswoman Giffords and the others make it. Truly it is a sad and sorry situation.
Watching cable news report and try to interpret tragedy is interesting and instructive. News anchors interview psychologists and professors but rarely pastors, the one exception being Billy Graham when he was younger and healthier than he is today at 92. To do so would, in journalists' minds, violate modern conceptions of the proper place of religion in public life, which is to say keep it private and personal and not really public in any meaningful way.
Journalists, therefore, search for secularized vocabulary to describe essentially religious or moral circumstances. They talk about "his demons," as in “he’s wrestled with his demons since childhood.” This is the go-to phrase media have developed in the past twenty years to describe sin or wrong moral choices, without actually admitting that there are moral choices.
Instead of personal or spiritual or moral explanations, journalists typically look for social explanations for tragedy. For example, it's the political rhetoric of the Right (which should be tuned up and toned down) or it’s the economy or unemployment.
Certainly inflamed or mean-spirited or hateful rhetoric can influence people. So do economic downturns. But to say this is to admit that any and all environmental circumstances of life influence people. Yet not everyone responds to social difficulty by becoming a killer. And to say social conditions influence people is not the same as saying such conditions are deterministic, meaning people are programmed to respond in a certain way and cannot do otherwise. No, people make choices.
Beyond this, journalists talk about mental instability, which certainly exists and may ultimately be the primary explanation behind Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner. Examining mental issues is a legitimate discussion. But not every person who suffers from mental illness becomes a killer. In fact, the overwhelming majority of mentally ill people do not resort to violence.
Perhaps the real reasons for tragedy lie deeper within hearts not taught moral accountability, nor instilled with hope. The culture in which we live celebrates detachment from moral restraint. Many kids grow up thinking they aren’t really responsible for their attitudes and behaviors. Remember? It’s the economy or parents or the environment or poverty or something, anything, other than them or us or me.
Kids grow up in a culture of abundance, whether or not they experience it, together with a sense of entitlement that makes them forever unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Even those who have are taught to want more in a consumer-driven culture.
Maybe more worrisome is our culture’s dying sense of hope, a declining belief that things can or will be better tomorrow. The Greatest Generation believed this. Nearly all American generations before it believed this. But today hope is in short supply.
Hope is a religious or spiritual concept. If human beings have no hope something withers within them. Loss of hope brings in its wake angst, anomie, and alienation.
Social explanations may be helpful in understanding something about tragedy, but social factors are never enough. Sin and evil are rooted in the hearts of humankind. Journalists, if they really want to get to the bottom of tragedy, should open media to spiritual insight. American culture, if it wants to reduce the number of tragedies like Tucson, needs to rediscover a Sovereign God who lives, loves, holds accountable, forgives, and offers a better tomorrow.
To argue tragedy is rooted in sin, evil, and personal moral choice is not to pronounce doom and gloom as much as to pronounce hope. Because for moral failure, there’s a remedy in Christ who personifies hope.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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What’s gotten into CNN is anybody’s guess. CNN’s new soon-to-air program, “Parker-Spitzer,” features in tandem conservative journalist Kathleen Parker and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Yes, that Spitzer, the one who in 2008 resigned his position in disgrace in the wake of news stories regaling us about his visits to a prostitute, what he paid her, and possibly how he transported her across state lines for sex.
This is the Eliot Spitzer who opted out in order to avoid answering for a boatload of allegations of immoral and illegal behavior. And this is the man who opted out with his poor wife standing beside him in obvious emotional distress.
Another question might be what in the world is Kathleen Parker thinking? She’s a respected conservative columnist who, until now, was admired for her rational approach to politics and decision-making. Why she would stoop to this kind of gimmickry is perplexing. Having recently won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary she doesn’t need this program either to be heard or to be successful.
I’m not opposed to giving Spitzer a so-called second chance. But I haven’t read or heard any testimonials claiming he’s sorry, repentant, changed his ways, or is a better man for his self-generated ordeal. He didn’t make a “mistake,” as some claim. He made a serious error in moral judgment, repeatedly. Now, all we get is a man whose naughtiness has increased his celebrity factor. This seems to be what CNN is banking on more than on any claim of special journalistic or political chops.
Maybe CNN thinks tainted celebrity translates to ratings increases. But I doubt it. CNN isn’t traversing bold new ground. It’s jumping the shark.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
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I’m weary of the coarse, crass, and crude levels to which much of our entertainment culture has stooped. It’s been a forty-year dive during my lifetime and doesn’t seem to have reached its depth.
Latest evidence, for me at least, is the new Investigation Discovery channel program, originally airing August 25, called “Who the [BLEEP] Did I Marry?” It didn’t encourage me to learn the program weighed-in with early Nielsen success, meaning millions of people watched it.
The show features marriages gone bad, really bad, when a spouse eventually discovers some horrible skeleton in his or her mate’s closet. In other words, a spouse has been living a lie. The titillating nature of the show focuses upon betrayal.
The program is investigatory in the tradition of crime and justice shows, and I suppose there may be some positive contribution in all this for someone somewhere. But beyond the uncouth name of the show what bothers me most is that this feels more like voyeurism than humanitarianism.
I’d say the same for most—not all—of the so-called “reality shows” popularized in the past 10 years. These scripted-“unscripted” shows provide viewers with a steady stream of unrealistic-“reality,” much of it celebrating rude, crude, and lewd behavior. They focus on people apparently desperate for money or their fifteen minutes of fame and the raunchier, more vulgar, over-sexed, or profane they can be the greater the viewership.
Reality programs create wanna-be celebrities, actually non-celebrities, what some call “nonebrities,” meaning "a pointless media figure who would love to rise up high enough to scrape on to the bottom end of the D-list.” Sounds harsh but the debased dialogue in a lot of these programs suggests the term is, sadly, not far off the mark.
To name a few such programs: E!’s “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” MTV’s “A Shot At Love With Tia Tequila,” featuring 16 straight male and 16 lesbian female contestants working to earn the ostensibly bi-sexual Tequila’s attention, E!’s “Kendra,” HBO’s “Hung,” featuring pimps and a male prostitute, Oxygen’s “The Bad Girls Club,” the various “Real Housewives” shows, and many more.
Of course entertainment flaks always say, “Don’t watch if you don’t like it.” And to a certain extent they’re correct. If people don’t watch it puts pressure on advertisers and producers and, sometimes, push a program off the air.
But there’s also the scores of commercials marketing these programs that all of us have to endure even if we don’t watch. And there’s the fact that producers of such programs sometimes air them no matter their financial results because the producers, directors, actors, et al involved in the show get professional accolades from industry peers for “pushing the envelope.” They’re given kudos for achieving a brave new entertainment world—which in essence means doing whatever they want, recorded in HD.
You really don’t have to be a prude to be weary of in-your-face dumbed-down culture. It just gets old, especially when you consider how much of the nobility of human culture is out there, available but neglected in mass entertainment.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
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When Robert N. Bellah entitled his 1985 bestseller on American society Habits of the Heart the phrase entered the cultural lexicon of everyday conversation. We talk about "habits of the heart" in church, school, business, you name it. It's such a useful phrase, which is why I'm commandeering it now.
After more than fifteen years, this program today will be the last continuously aired “Making a Difference” program on WCSG. I say “continuously aired” because WCSG may hereafter periodically air “Making a Difference,” but this is the last one in sequence. So I’m using this space to tell you, our listeners, that one habit of my heart will always be good memories of the longtime opportunity God gave me to think with you about how biblical principles work in the marketplace.
Over the years I’ve heard from many listeners, some who disagreed or sought a clarification, but most who affirmed some thought I’d shared. I’ve received notes, letters, and phone calls—and I’ve answered scores of emails—from listeners representing the kaleidoscope of Christendom—men, women, and teenagers who moved me with their passion for truth. I’ve met countless listeners in churches, grocery stores, and multiple other places throughout West Michigan. They unfailingly made kind comments and I joked about them discovering I had a face made for radio.
I’m not bragging but grateful when I say that nothing I’ve done has produced more regular and positive feedback than “Making a Difference.” For some reason, this program struck a chord. I greatly appreciate this, for your comments encouraged me to keep writing and, now, to attempt to syndicate “Making a Difference” nationally. (More on this coming soon.)
So, dear WCSG listeners, thank you. May you always strive to make a difference by applying Christian values in everyday life. You will always be one of the habits of my heart.
© Dr. Rex M. Rogers - All Rights Reserved, 2008
Originally recorded June 19, 2008 as #551 on “Making a Difference."
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Cornerstone University Radio completed its annual four-day Sharathon this week surpassing our funding goal for the first time since 9-11 with more than 5500 people making pledges:
Year Goal Pledges
2005 $1.1M $909K
2006 $1.250M $1.254M per final total announced on air
WaYfm and WCSG were nominated by Radio and Records magazine (the #1 trade publication for mainstream and Christian radio) for "Christian Radio Station of the Year" for small and medium markets respectively. These are our first such nominations, though WCSG has been recognized as the "Focus on the Family Radio Station of the Year."
WaYfm was awarded "Christian Music Station of the Year" by Radio and Records for markets 101+. This award is determined by label executives and other stations. Congratulations to Station Manager Rich Anderson, Program Director Michael Couchman, and the entire WaYfm staff.
Mission Network News produced a broadcast called the "MNN International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church" which was aired on nearly 500 radio stations in the USA, Australia, South Africa and Belize. Organizations like Back to the Bible, Asia Access, Open Doors and Sat 7 were brought together by MNN, along with Discovery House Music, with featured speaker, Johan Candalin, Executive Director the World Evangelical Alliance, to focus on a time of prayer from all over the world. This is the fifth such broadcast carrying the Cornerstone University name with it. The broadcast is widely respected by mission agencies and broadcasters alike.
Please join me in thanking the Cornerstone University Radio staff and our radio listener-supporters, and please also join me in praising God for these blessings.
© Rex M. Rogers - All Rights Reserved, 2006
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/rexmrogers.