Poll #1121760
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Do the media (specifically Fox News, but all of them) report too much on "missing persons"?

My friends know my dislike of the "local news", but recently I have been getting more and more irritated with the media's (specifically Fox News') fixation on missing people stories. Firstly, I say this because they don't report on all missing people, just those whom they think will make a good tabloid story. They love a dead pregnant girl. These are people, not stories, and making a story that should be local/regional into a national story in order to get your ratings up is annoying, especially for people like me who don't care about the missing people stories inasmuch as all you can do is look at the person and report them if you find them walking around somewhere.

And this is coming from just reading the Fox website day after day. I don't even watch their channel, which I can only imagine is constantly streaming this garbage. "Rumors...witnesses say...psychologists theorize". And the sad thing is that this obviously works to get ratings up. WHO IS FASCINATED BY THIS? WE NEED TO GET YOU A REALITY CHECK!

Secondly, there are more important things going on in the world. As I mentioned to blogger-friend Julia Gorin the other day, our news media is virtually silent on Bush's visit to Israel in order to establish a "Palestinian state". For those of you just tuning in: "Palestinian state" is another way of saying "dead Jews".

There's also a war going on somewhere in the Middle East, a rising eastern power who is not quite friendly toward American ideals, a huge looming economic disaster coming and millions of children being slaughtered world-wide, both born and unborn.

But wait! This just in: Britney's a bad parent! *ooooooo!* I wonder why she's a bad parent, American Culture! It must be the drinking!

**Before people ask, I'm not against the media reporting missing people. If you think that that's what I'm against, you need to re-read. I am against the national media reporting a local/regional story for the sole purpose of exploiting the victims. If a missing person story goes national, so be it. But it should be a news item, not a front page headline or a constant stream on television unless the circumstances call for it. Hint: "NOTHING'S HAPPENED BUT WE'RE GOING TO KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT!" is not the right kind of circumstance."**

Added to my "6 Things I like about the Catholic Church" list (though, admittingly, this is not really about the Catholic Church but rather one person) is this occurrence in Massachusetts where a Catholic pastor (do Catholics have pastors???) banned the Harry Potter series from his school. While he stated the second most obvious reason—that the books might promote witchcraft to the students—I feel that, perhaps, there is one more reason that such books should be banned from a Christian school: that the books contain witchcraft.

Before I had the revelation of holiness, I had no problem with the series, though to be honest I could never read the books because I found them unbelievably boring. I also saw the first (and maybe second) movie, but I didn't find it particularly amazing.

A lot of people don't think that the books encourage witchcraft in young children, which I think is the silliest thing I have ever heard. Question: what is the difference between a child "casting" a spell while they are playing with friends and casting a spell to actually try to produce a result? Do parents think that children will not—even if only playing—imitate Harry Potter and his group of friends? Hello! Kids imitate the movies they watch and the books they read.

The Bible speaks against witchcraft very forcibly. Why people don't have a problem with subjecting their children to books or movies where witchcraft is not condemned but rather the source of the entertainment is beyond me. It's one thing to read a book (like...the Bible) where witchcraft is seen and noted but yet condemned, but Harry Potter is nothing of the sort. At least with the Chronicles of Narnia people can at least be understandably delusional about the very, very direct magic by claiming it "represents" something and that it must be good because it was written by C.S. Lewis, but with Harry Potter there is no hidden spiritual message. I have even read of churches having programs (a curious amount of which are led by women, by the way) that actually promote a "Harry Potter curriculum". Firstly, I believe that such programs were created as a reaction to the few churches who actually speak out against Harry Potter. "What? You are calling a popular culture fad wicked? We're going to prove you WRONG!" Also, where does one stop? Do these churches want to promote a curriculum based on the hidden spiritual messages in The People Vs. Larry Flint or Lolita? I have a feeling they don't. (Well, maybe the Episcopals.)

I believe that many people who profess Christ scoff at those who condemn the Harry Potter books because you just can't stop with that series. If you take a stand against Harry Potter, you have to take a stand against anything remotely similar, which basically includes every single cultural child-story created. And we American Christians seems to have a problem with stepping away from the culture. Instead of simply not watching something, we create a "Sunday School" class in order to spiritualize it, while ridiculing those "radical legalists" who simply state that we shouldn't be watching it. What children's movies do evangelicals as a whole (or even a small percentage!) generally shy away from? I'll await that answer from my readers, but in the meantime I'll tell you the answer: none. Do we really think that this is because our godless culture puts on really family-appropriate children's entertainment, or maybe could it be a spiritual condition?

Harry Potter contains blatant witchcraft. God hates witchcraft. Is it really worth it to risk plaguing our children with conflicting messages so we can have our worldly entertainment?