Free Republic

NBC is promoting the network's mid-season replacement series "The Book of Daniel" with language that implies it is a serious drama about Christian people and Christian faith. The main character is Daniel Webster, a drug-addicted Episcopal priest whose wife depends heavily on her mid-day martinis. Webster regularly sees and talks with a very unconventional white-robed, bearded Jesus. The Webster family is rounded out by a 23-year-old homosexual Republican son, a 16-year-old daughter who is a drug dealer, and a 16-year-old adopted son who is having sex with the bishop's daughter. At the office, his lesbian secretary is sleeping with his...

CBS Shame: Network Helps BTK Killer By Debbie Schlussel Tonight's CBS TV Movie is a two-hour Lifetime-style waste of time on the BTK killer. Besides being the usual brain-addled damsel-in-distress "movie of the week" crap, this movie is exactly what the BTK killer wanted. BTK wanted fame--even wrote notes to police and the press asking what he needed to do to get noticed, to get more publicity. He craved this notoriety, and tortured and murdered ten innocent women to attain it. By doing this two-hour movie, CBS is playing right into his hands--rewarding this cretin on network prime-time. And making...

You might think that bad language has increased on primetime television. But Barbara Kaye knows it for a fact. Over the past dozen years Kaye, an associate professor in the University of Tennessee's School of Journalism and Electronic Media, and colleague Barry Sapolsky, a Florida State University professor, have chronicled the ebbs and flows of bad and profane words on primetime network television. Their latest article, "Offensive Language in Prime Time Television: Four Years After Television Age and Content Ratings" was published in December in The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. "Profanity increased between 1997 and 2001 to a...