Saturday, November 15, 2008

This is my first post, my first attempt at a blog. Given that I run a communications agency, it may seem odd that I've avoided this, but to be honest, I'm generally exhausted by new technologies. There are often moments in my life where I rue the day I first heard the word internet and the first time I penned my first email. I long for a good hard-back book and the news stands that used to mark the corners of my neighborhood. I even wish sometimes that it took a week or longer to receive a letter. In the last 4 years, I have had to learn about social networks and podcasts, regular blogs and micro-blogs, RSS Feeds and mobile uploads. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Mashable, Flickr - the list goes on. I've often been quoted as saying that I wish I could retreat to an island where there are no wires, cables or towers.

Because of what I do for a living, I reluctantly entered into the social networking world, created a micro-blog that I regularly Pownce and Ping, and find myself using the @ key more than I care to mention.

So why the blog?

.....in a phrase, "remember, remember, the 5th of November!"

Four years ago, the culture credited the Religious Right with putting George W. Bush back in office. Following this election, I've seen articles and polls and all sorts of blog posts out there giving the credit to various groups for the Obama win. As a participant in the ways and means of the media, I know for certain where the credit lies for the election of the most radical, anti-life President this country has ever seen. It's in my own playground - news and entertainment.

I watched in disgust as the members of my own industry glibly reported the election results as they began coming in. Obama had won. THEY had won.

I won't get into this first post by citing all the ways news producers and hosts as well as some of our most beloved actors and actresses culled public opinion to win this election because that will become the regular banter of this blog - the distortion of truth in the popular culture to deceive gullible, vulnerable and ignorant people.

In my favorite scene from the film The Passion of The Christ, Pontius Pilate and his wife Claudia have an exchange of words. It follows Pilate's own encounter with Christ in which Jesus tells Pilate that he came into the world to bear witness to the truth and that all who are the side of truth, listen to His voice. Pilate responded to Christ with these telling words, "Quid est Veritas?" or "What is truth?" When he ponders this question later with Claudia, he asks her further, "Do you hear it, recognize it when its spoken?" She replies, "Yes, don't you?" Pilate's reply, "How? Can you tell me?" And then Claudia's sad conclusion, "If you will not hear the truth, no one can tell you."

Unfortunately, this is the sad state of our culture today. So many of our journalists and entertainers have lost the ability (or never had it) to hear the truth, to recognize it when its spoken, that their reporting and presentations of people and events are often baseless, full of error and distorted. Given the results of the most recent election, it is now time for those of us in the media and entertainment industries to rise up and give Pilate the answer he's been waiting for.

1 comment:

MrsLoveyHowell said...

What a splendid first entry.
You are a very thoughtful girl, and if your mission is to offer a counter to the deception within your own field,
you have fulfilled it!
The exchange between Pilate and Christ gives one pause to ponder the very state of one's soul. Like invisible ink, or other secret coding methods, only those "in the know," hear His Voice. "My sheep know My Voice" He once said.
"Many are called few are chosen," maybe the "unchosen" truly do not hear Him at all.
Maybe it is no longer simply a matter of being ignored, but truly a deafness altogether.

Claudia was right.

I wonder how THAT marriage turned out?