January 14, 2006

Sensitivity

Our local NBC outlet pulled The Book of Daniel because, they said, our town “is a particularly religiously sensitive city.” Well, it’s true. We do have a couple of major religious publishing houses and a church on practically every other corner, usually opposite a bank or a liquor store, occasionally, but carefully, at the mandated distance from a topless bar on down the street.

The station said they got a lot of complaints and not just the canned kind, but real “quality” comments of substance. Actually, they said, none came from Episcopalians or from the bishop’s office. No surprise. I’m puzzled, however, why the Lions Club apparently has remained silent.

I watched the whole two hours of the pilot. It made me wonder if the script had not come from the DSM-IV, the owner’s Baedeker used by shrinks so they don’t get lost keeping track of what’s currently the vogue in mental dysfunction. On the other hand, that’s life, and there’s no sense being in denial about it. 

It should be well-known that we Episcopalians are members of no organized religion and that we put a lot more stock by forgiveness than permission (cf grace and merit), so why should anybody be surprised with Daniel. I’ve been a priest for fifty years or so and have run across most of the human behavior that shows up in the program, just not always in the same place and time.

I suppose I ought to complain about censorship and freedom and all that, but then I’ve got to keep in mind my town’s reputation for religious sensitivity. Besides, my main problem with the program  (picky-picky)  was mostly that at one point the priest had his chasuble on backwards and that the bishop was wearing her mitre, if on the right head, still at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Our town’s religious vocabulary, however, might not pick up on things like that. 

On the other hand, if somebody had started unbuckling their Bible belt, it would have been a different matter altogether.

No Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.