Wednesday, May 04, 2005

GETTING SPUN

It's happened twice in the last five days. I was interviewed by journalists for Daily Variety on Friday, and The New York Times yesterday. The interviews were basically same-old same old stuff about Christians in Hollywood, and specifically the change in the market since The Passion of the Christ.

But in both interviews a funny thing happened. About half way through lots of half-hearted questions about why Christians won't like Revelations and whether Christians will take a contract out on Tom Hanks for starring in The Da Vinci Code, both journalists slipped in the query, "So, who did you vote for in the last election? You're a Bush voter, aren't you?"

I said to the Daily Variety guy, "You aren't trying to narrowly define me so you can dismiss me, are you?" When it happened yesterday with the Times I got a little more annoyed. "Did you ask the Hollywood pagans you are interviewing for this story that question?" Both journalists demurred in extravagant terms. They were just "collecting context" for their pieces. But then, the Times guy came back insistently, "Would you characterize yourself as right or left of center?"

I liked both the journalists, and they liked me. The Variety guy asked me if he and I could have coffee someday soon, just to talk about a whole lot of things. The Times guy said, "This has been a fun interview. You're not a regular Christian, are you?" I said to him, "Why, because you like me, and that doesn't fit with your prejudice about my people?" He said to me, "You don't sound like some other Christians I have interviewed." I couldn't resist coming back with, "That's because we are a diverse people, not chained by politically correct dogma."

I know I am slow on the uptake here, but I can't stop marveling about the pervasive anti-Christian bigotry that continues to mess with the MSM's attempts to cover the whole red-state, Passion-watching, Terri Schiavo crusading, spiritual revival moment that is arm wrestling the culture of death in the marketplace of ideas. These reporters NEED for us Christians to be the people they need us to be: basically sub-human intolerant simpletons who can be dismissed, and part of that is that we are knee-jerk GOP voters.

I told the Variety guy off-the-record, "I voted against John Kerry in the last election because he is a champion of the culture of death. But, believe me, if the GOP ever dropped it's stated preference for the sanctity of human life, me and my friends at church would drop the Republicans so fast their heads wouldn't stop spinning for a decade." To the Times writer I said, "Here's my principle: we don't get to kill people, and we can't change human nature with laws. Does that make me right or left?"

Anyway, after two hours of interviewing, I'll probably have one-eighth of a sentence in one or both publications sometime this week. If somebody sees something, let me know so I can link.

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