A Slight Delay

Okay, it’s rant time. At least once a month, I get email from someone who’s so frantic about something, they had to tell all 3,427 people in their address book, and they want everyone to know that it’s imperative that they warn everyone they know, immediately-by smoke signal, if necessary-about some impending threat or other. Some of them have even followed up with phone calls to make sure that I got the email, and seem genuinely surprised that I deleted it without forwarding it.

This month’s suspect is a lovely missive about how Madeline Murray O’Hare [sic] is trying to get religious broadcasting banned from the airwaves. There’s a petition, we’re told, circulated by James Dobson (that part may well be true; he’s turned indignation into a cottage industry). And CBS even yanked “Touched By An Angel” off the air for repeatedly using the word God! The bastards!

Okay, now let’s break this down rationally: I’m impressed, first of all, that Ms. O’Hair is trying to get much of anything banned anywhere these days. The famed atheist activist, y’see, was kidnapped and murdered in 1995. And “TBAA” was pulled in 2003, having had a healthy nine-year run. Say what you want about CBS, but I don’t think it took them that long to notice. Oh, and the House bill featured so prominently in the email? They’re only 33 years late, the bill having been introduced and failing to pass in 1975.

I know that people are generally well-intentioned. They see something about a computer virus that gives your laptop herpes when you check your email, and they want to make sure that you’re “protected.” All well and good. Except that I haven’t gotten a scaregram yet that actually had what’s elsewhere called “actionable intelligence.” Instead, it reads like it came from Fox News Channel, and is about as accurate. (more…)