Apparently medieval bigotry > pseudo-democracy

I’ve been looking to get back in the blogging swing but it’s seemed like there’s just too many places to start so I’d like to thank my local ABC affiliate for providing me with a two-fer and for pissing me off.

I wanted to tune in to the democratic debate tonight, which is 8pm EST, or 5pm here on the left coast.   Except it wasn’t on when I turned on the teevee.  Instead it was the evening ‘news’ which was actually running an extended segment special on the pope.  What.  The.  Fuck.

Poking around I found that ABC is not only tape delaying the debate, but they’re also restricting use to 30 second clips.  Their reason?  They’re paying for it.  So I guess this is an official acknowledgment of a pay-per-view democracy.  I know it doesn’t exactly fit but if ABC is treating a public debate as their intellectual property, because they funded it, than at the very least they shouldn’t have been given the debate.

And as for the local affiliate and their fawning treatment of the pope that’s just salt in the wound.  You’re taking away my entertainment sham democracy and replacing it with singing the praises of former fascist who now heads up the single most repressive and undemocratic organization on a global scale?  Fuck you very much.  And for anyone wanting to defend the pope or the church I’d point you to the highpoint of my day yesterday, this clip from the local npr station about the church and the pope (it’s a realplayer clip).  It’s hilarious and includes such highlights as:

Birth control is degrading to women, no really, it is.

Christianity is about suffering, not being joyous, so evangelical churches are… bad?  Worse?

The only thing that would have made it even better is if they’d attempted to blame the sex abuse on homosexuals like they have in the past, so hey, progress.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not singling out Catholics, I find all religions equally ridiculous.  I’m still pissed off that the FLDS scandal in Texas is being spun as a polygamy thing and not a crazy fucking religious nutbag compound thing.  They didn’t rape children and abuse women because they were polygamous, they did it because they were religious.