Why Jesus Watches Fox

(Plagiarized by the Pope: Part II)

I was in the gym recently, where there are myriad televisions almost all tuned to Fox News. I turned the one in front of my excer-bike to another channel. The conservative white male business type behind me, on the tread-mill, said "Turn that back right now!" and I apologized and turned it back. He replied something along the lines of .."If you believe in Jesus and America, you watch Fox. This is a conservative health club."

Wow, well what the hell.

It is writ that we take Jesus everywhere with us, unto depravity and unto good works. I guess that means he watches television. As I watched the Jesus approved News channel. I saw a constant live-helicopter show of a famous, damaged celebrity driving herself to the LA county lock-up. I hoped the Son of Man turned the channel and I wondered; What Would Jesus Watch on TV?

The mass of POTUS Picking Christians don’t need to ask what Jesus would watch on TV because they KNOW already. They seek a lot of answers, but how their Savior would react after watching TV with them all day is rarely one of them. The religious right of America knows that FOX News provides the talking points of Jesus. Hopefully with a few judgmental code-words against the non-believers over at MacNeil Lehrer thrown in. Let’s face it, Jesus stopped watching MASH after McLean Stevenson and Larry Linville left the show and American Christianity has been on a roll ever since.

After MASH, Jesus mostly caught a movie here and there on weekends. There was Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Alien and the Schwarzenegger stuff, followed by the cool breeze of Spielberg’s arrival. The Son of Man got most of his worldview from a few minutes of Jennings and Brokaw in the evening during the 80’s and 90s.

Now, after September 11th and with the Internet, America is defined by mass media interfaces that flood us with simplified bursts of content, news, action, advertising and art all mixed up on purpose. An incessant spray of overlapping shock events large and small raises our adrenaline. Once it is drawn out, our subconscious fear is then soothed, and rewarded by hypnotic punditry and the comfort of repeated background effects. An old friend we’ve never met allows us feel we have an involved relationship with issues and events around us. Fox news is masterful in their manipulation of these senses.

Don’t you Liberals get to righteous about this commentary though. Murdoch founded his empire to counter an American giant that specifically manipulates a community of belonging to create a conformity of ideology. National Public Radio has been centrally managed around a political leaning for decades. NPR is much less corrupted by the hundreds of millions of right wing campaign dollars that fuel the Fox, but they are in the same game.

The truth is that all of the Capt. Father Francis J. Mulcahys in Hollywood can’t heal America’s bi-partisan lust for polarizing media experiences in which other people are victims and other people are to blame.

I remember one exercise in a college drawing class. We covered a huge piece of drawing paper entirely with charcoal. Then we erased back down to create an image. The negative space exercise is an important way of looking at things. Good citizens, good Christians and even Ex-Cowboys have to erase down, chip away the crap and work, dammit, work to get a fair or balanced grip on reality from the media these days.

Young people should be taught to handle the media the same same way, and for God’s sake, let’s start by teaching Iowans.

Iowans get to pick the next President and all they can do right now, according to the early polls, is pick the guy with the shiniest gospel-gazing Life magazine pose and the best pro-corn, pro Jesus stump speech. You want to campaign with Jesus? Here’s a clue: Jesus has unwashed hair and wears sandals, and he takes every question, from every audience.

But, Does Jesus Watch Fox?

Jesus watches everything on TV and he does so with an erasure and a hammer. Jesus is lost to America, among a million glittering fragments of media, seeking to control our vote, manipulate or home life and teach us what kind of consumers to be. Jesus is a product and a slogan and a vital endorsement for every candidate. Jesus does watch FOX but he also listens to NPR. HE chisels away the forlorn chaff, and He sees Maggie Simpson fall and He hears Yo Yo Ma pull his bow across the strings and he says these are the things worth digging for, these are the things I could die for again.

Thanks for putting up with me again.