Posted on 10/04/2007 4:19:09 PM PDT by wagglebee
When's the last time your local Christian youth group stoned somebody to death?
Hollywood likes to claim their programming simply reflects reality, but the latest episode of Cold Case was an exercise in bigoted, Christophobic fantasy.
In the September 30 episode of the CBS forensics show, the devoutly religious teens in an abstinence club turn out to be sexually active hypocrites who murder one of their own members - by stoning her, as the Bible teaches - to keep their sins secret. Their youth pastor encourages one girl to describe her impure dreams to him, and masturbates while listening.
In a ham-handed attempt to influence this fall's Congressional debate on abstinence education programs, the show also depicts abstinence-only education as useless, if not actively harmful.
The episode centers on the unsolved 1998 murder of Carrie Swett, a promiscuous 15-year-old girl. New clues lead the detectives in the Philadelphia homicide unit to reopen the case.
Shortly before her death Carrie joins Hearts Wait, an abstinence club whose members are not actually abstinent. The biggest hypocrite of all is Tina, the president and most outspoken Christian in the club. By portraying the group's leader so unsympathetically, CBS uses the same device employed in the anti-Christian Mandy Moore movie Saved.
One couple in the group, Laurie and Manny, are said to "pretend they were Mary and Joseph" but are actually having sex. Another young man, Phil, is terrified he might be a homosexual.
Worst of all is the portrayal of Nathan, the youth pastor overseeing the club. When Tina tells him about impure dreams she's having about him, he encourages her to "confess" them - to him. Nathan encourages her to turn her back to make it easier for her to talk, but viewers learn (as does Carrie) that he does this so he can pleasure himself.
Tina describes a purity ring ceremony in which she went to Nathan's office alone, after hours, and took the vow to remain pure in front of only him and God. This description injects a furtive, sinister aspect to a movement that is anything but.
Carrie's mother ominously tells detectives that "someone or something was making her change," implying that Carrie was hanging out with a bad crowd before she was murdered. The next scene shows Carrie telling her mother, just before she leaves to meet with Tina, that she wants new, modest clothes because she doesn't want to appear sexy any more.
When Carrie finds out about Tina and the youth pastor and encourages her to stop meeting alone with him, Tina replied with "you're just some slut with a whore for a mother," portraying Christians as judgmental and downright rude. Carrie also promotes a little Hollywood morality, telling Phil, Laurie and Manny there isn't anything wrong with their feelings or actions.
The "good Christian" kids respond by calling her "dirty," "whore," "slut" and "b****" before literally stoning her to death. Tina justifies the murder by paraphrasing the King James Version of Deuteronomy 22:21: "the whore should be stoned so thou shalt put evil away among you."
Apparently Hollywood is taking note that Congress is currently debating abstinence funding. Weighing in on public policy, CBS takes some gratuitous slaps at abstinence-only education. The opening scene features a high school "health" teacher telling her class "Now if school policy allowed me to do so, I would tell you how these methods of birth control can be used and what they do. But I cannot. I would be fired."
In another scene, Laurie (a product of abstinence-only education) asks Carrie how to tell whether she's pregnant. The dialogue implies that abstinence programs leave teenagers ignorant of all things sexual.
Just another night of prime time "entertainment" programming, courtesy of CBS. Welcome to the fall TV season.
List how many times in history that has occurred.
It’s a rare day in which I watch something on SeeBS.
What, that a mass medium has starved to death for want of an audience? I don't know, prior to this century, how many mass media WERE there? On the other hand, history is rife with examples of a product that died because it no longer served its consumer. Don't see many buggy whip manufacturers these days.
Sadly, I saw the preview for this show. I knew then and there it would mock Christians. I didn’t watch it, and judging by this article, I’m glad I didn’t. I hardly ever watch tv because it seems there is nothing but filth on anymore. About 5 or 6 years ago, I could watch sitcoms on tv. I might not agree with everything that went on in the sitcom, but they weren’t so bad that I couldn’t enjoy them. Now even the sitcoms are full of so much filth, I can’t enjoy them. I’m sure most people my age enjoy this stuff, but I don’t.
Sad thing is, I’ve seen FReepers with attitudes towards Christians that aren’t much different. They’d think this was reality TV.
Please don’t feed us this acquiescence, compromise, and surrender crap. That is what RINO's and too many other "go along to get along folks" have been doing for far to many years. This country finds itself so deep into socialism/communism it is going to take one hell of an effort to get us out, if we can. This is still a free country and we should not have to "throw our tv's into the septic tank" and allow liberal hog manure to dictate our lives. Oh yeah, JMHO.
It’s comforting to see that Mary Mapes and Dan Rather have found employment - anything to drag down the “bad people” on the conservative side.
Has there ever,ever been real world case like this fantasy story?
Never. We would have heard about it all over the MSM. They slam abstinence program every chance they get.
It will be a while before CBS has another faith-based series. According to multiple reports, CBS honcho Les Moonves cancelled Joan of Arcadia and greenlit The Ghost Whisperer because "Ghosts skew younger than God" -- in other words, a ghost show would garner a younger demographic than a God show.
I watch sports on CBS, but that’s it.
"HAVE to"???? What makes it a free country is that you CAN!!!! Abandon the TV airwaves to the hogs; what kind of loss is that? In my opinion, fighting for decent TV is kind of like battling over who gets first dibs on the cesspool. It's an "honor" I'll gladly surrender.
Wow, that show sounds so realistic. I’m sure that scenario happens all the time—just haven’t heard about it in the news yet.
Increasingly as I view the popular culture here, from television to movies to dress, language and the popularized youth morality, I fell I have outlived my time and no longer belong here.
You're not alone.
Seems to me that when the masses get a hold of this, and begin to voice their agitation with the network, that CBS will simply pull the plug, a la the Madonna concert and the Reagan hit piece.
They’ll have spent a pile of money on production and promotion. They’ll annoy even more Christians, thus alienating them and engendering even more ill will.
CBS is like the dog with the electronic collar that simply loves to touch the boundaries of the invisible fence. The difference being that a dog has more common sense.
“HAVE to”???? What makes it a free country is that you CAN!!!! Abandon the TV airwaves to the hogs; what kind of loss is that? In my opinion, fighting for decent TV is kind of like battling over who gets first dibs on the cesspool. It’s an “honor” I’ll gladly surrender.*****************
Will it also be your “honor” to surrender your gun rights (Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2007...Introduced in House), your toy gun rights (Mpls. City Council bans toy guns)
and your smoking rights (Pawlenty officially makes Minnesota smoke free.)
because you have a choice not to smoke or possess firearms?
There are enough battles to pick and choose. Wasting my time spraying perfume around the outhouse is counterproductive.
If you want to, go for it. When you finally clean up TV, you'll have won a victory over the vast wasteland.
Looking at this from the reverse, what CBS via this show seems to be saying is that this is how life really is and should be, promiscuous sex, priests and pastors, etc. masturbating while listening to confessions, dreaming impure dreams, being homosexual, hanging out with a bad crowd, wearing sexy clothes, and that it should all be considered just fine and normal.
And in Hollywood, it is. To them this IS normal, so any “movement” such as the abstinence one, is the enemy, as no one can be allowed to call the Hollywood lifestyle “deviant”. Might make them feel guilty or have to develop a sense of morality, which just can’t be. So the abstinence movement must go. And, in typical Hollywood fashion, the best way to do this is to portray the abstinence movement as just as evil and vile and disgusting as the way so many in Hollywood themselves are. Another way of saying moral equivalence. Why, those nasty abstinence people are really, deep down inside, just the same as us and are just covering it up. We must expose them for what they really are. And get rid of them. They are trying to make us look as bad as we are. Sick puppies, those libs. As per Savage, liberalism is a mental disorder.
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