Didn’t he get overshadowed by a new young kid on the show after his youth started to fade? Wasn’t Leo DiCaprio brought on in later seasons to bring back the cute factor? Maybe I’m thinking of a different show.
Nope, he was not acting. Just being his usual dumbass self. Now he's trying to act the part of the responsible adult and failing miserably. That's a role he just does not have the acting chops for. He always falls back into toddler mode and throws a tantrum about "persecution!" every time he gets any pushback for his obnoxious behavior.
Unintelligent and under-educated religious nut-jobs like Cameron will always see their religion as the answer to every question. They never stop trying to shoehorn the universe into their magic book. It's no secret that the religious right would love to replace actual education in this country with religious indoctrination in spite of the fact it is never the job of the public schools to backstop anyone's religion, and our secular government cannot choose one religion over another. These people are doomed to fail in the long run, because their philosophy is intellectually bankrupt. None of which means they can't do a lot of damage on their road to failure.
I really really really want to shuffle them all off into a pocket dimension (and ONLY them) where they can (and must) implement all of their stupid policies.
Lanah Burkhardt, If reading about a "single kiss" led to a life of porn addiction then one has to wonder what else may have triggered it if you didn't read that one book. Would you have witnessed two dogs getting it on and decided to ban pets? Would you have seen your mother wash a cucumber and decide to ban vegetables? How about that electric toothbrush? Would you no longer brush your teeth?
You are a moron if you think you developed a "porn addiction" because you read a book. On top of that it was not that one book that caused you to be "depressed and suicidal", it was your religion. Your religion made you feel like you had dirty thoughts but for many people those thoughts are a Tuesday. We are sexual creatures Ms. Burkhardt. The human race would not have survived if we weren't. Your thoughts are not abnormal but your religion seeks to repress them because they are trying to control you the same way you want to control everyone else.
My paternal grandmother had tons of theses back in the 90's. One day I was bored and tried to read one. I spent more time noting all the historic inaccuracies. I am not a history nerd since third grade for nothing 😁
I was sent to Catholic school, kindergarten through h.s. graduation In h.s.,we had "retreats," to "pray and meditate, etc." We were allowed to read things other than the bible or religious texts, but they had to have religious content. I just took the dust jacket off Taylor Caldwell's "Dear and Glorious Physician," a novel about St Luke, and read whatever I wanted. Fortunately, no one in authority ever checked. Hey, whatever, I was religious about Walter Farley's Black Stallion series, as the stereotypical "horse crazy" girl. . ROFLOL
It’s really sad that the religious right can make all these preposterous claims, tell these ridiculous stories and folks will believe them. Then the real damage comes when they use these incredible stories to make policy that tears at our society like this.
Who really believes she read this book and then suddenly became addicted to porn. It’s completely unbelievable on its face. But now we have a school vilifying Scholastic over it. Not because the school board really believes what she claims, but because enough folks on the school board have an agenda that fits with hers. And the concerned parents were previously failed by their schools so they cannot think critically enough to see a scam when it walks in the room.
.... because they too have a porn addiction which must certainly have been caused by reading a book from the Scholastic book fair. Yeah, that's the ticket. Had to be that.
That was the basis for a push to ban videogames ~20 years back. I dunno if anyone else remembers Jack Thompson, but he was - along with a goodly number of prominent politicians, many of them Democrats- leading the charge to kill an entire entertainment medium right up until he was disbarred and basically fell into obscurity overnight.
That's a blast from the past. Some people in the 70s tried to use that as a legal defense in court; I did it because I saw it in a TV show or movie. 𝘉𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳 even did an episode on it.
Well, Dan White used the "I ate too many twinkies" defense. (He was the ex-cop who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. There's apparently a school district here in Calif which has a problem with textbooks mentioning Harvey Milk.) And, yeah, I was there on White Night, when people in SF marched because the jury bought Dan White's lies and gave him a slap on the wrist. Lies have consequences.
Also, I’ve read a few Christian novels and there’s plenty of sex and violence in them, no less than the mainstream novels of similar genres. Reading about one kiss isn’t enough to destroy a life like this. To be honest, a well rounded education would inoculate someone from this type of thing if what she claims is remotely true. Not a religious bubble hiding away any knowledge of sexuality, that only makes it worse.
I just saw yesterday that Hallmark will have their first christmas movie that at least implies a sexual encounter. I barely skimmed the article, so I don't know how explicit it is, but you know One Million Moms is having an aneurysm.
I'm assuming that means some light cuddling with perhaps a hand scandalously placed on a hip. Fully clothed, of course, under three layers of hideous Christmas sweaters and at least one blanket.
Ah, so... some light cuddling and a scandalous hand placement somewhere during a virtuous single mother's quest to stop her kidnapped daughter from being sold as a sex slave?
Well, it’s a good thing that Jerk Cameron’s sister made up a new channel to save us all from this perverted media. I mean, how dare they get so risqué. And now there won’t be any LGBT people working on any part of these programs either, so they’ll be extra good.
I got Siddhartha free at the airport once, I did read it but do t remember much about it. It was back when I was in the Army and bored in Korea.
One of my hubby’s childhood friends is a born again and his wife gave me one to read. Captain Cassidy reviewed it back on Patheos a while back. The main female character was a child of a mistress who was turned out when she was still a child. The mother turned to prostitution to protect the girl but she died and the girl ended up one anyway. At one point she has to provide services to her father who didn’t realize (or pretended not to). But she was saved by a godly man despite her own protestations and fought him for a while but he Saved her in the end. It was terrible and the sex and violence was worse than any of the trashy romance novels I read before it. Oh and the godly man rapes her to prove how great god’s love is.
I remember listening to a Christian radio program called "Unshackled" where I heard audio depictions of kids getting beaten by their parents and wives getting a black eye from their abusive husbands in so many episodes of the program. And yet they come after secular books, radio, TV, and movies in an effort to ban them for being too violent and disturbing for "young children" all because they saw one scene or heard one lyric or read one passage and I'm like, "shouldn't these Christian zealots go after their own materials which contains the very disturbing audio and visual scenes that they go after the secular media for?" Such hypocrisy!
FFS, my dad kept Playboy magazine on the coffee table and I didn’t develop a porn addiction. I did almost have a heart attack when I saw a young neighbor woman was a centerfold one month. :D
When I used to go to christian youth conferences, I remember one guy* talking about speaking at a previous event. Each speaker would tell their life story of coming to christ at the lowest point in their life. Then the youth were to break off into groups by selecting the person who's life story most spoke to them. As each speaker talked about their "lives," the stories just got worse and worse. It was a silent game of one-upmanship. He was the second to last, so he really had to work to top everyone. The last guy just told his plain-old boring story, which most of the youth identified with.
These extreme stories that come out - "a illustrated kiss led me to porn**" - remind me of that guy, literally fabricating stories for the sheer sake of climbing Mount Exaggeration. It's like religious Munchausen Syndrome. At least The Four Yorkshiremen is funny (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE). These christian attention-seekers bolstering their low self-esteem with genuine faux significance don't actually realize the harm they are causing to people. They have to keep it up to keep the limelight on them. And there's a lot of competition for that limelight.
What can I say? Satanic Panics can't be fueled without fear.
What next? Gay frog? ... Ummm ... Oh. Yeah.
* They were always men, I don't recall a single woman ever guest speaking at these events.
** Oh, and the massive volume of passionate kissing on TV and movies has no affect what-so-ever?
Your story reminds me of going to AA meetings (requirement during and after rehab). Some of these "recovering" alcoholics became just as addicted to telling their stories as they had been to alcohol, and just like you described, as the meeting went on, the stories got worse and worse.
It was the most depressing thing I ever endured. The minute I fulfilled the requirement of one year of meetings, I stopped going (I loathe AA).
So glad you mentioned that Sko. I too, went to an AA meeting with a friend in the throes of alcoholism. I sat mesmerized by the fantastic stories. It was like a campfire. I expected everyone to join hands and sing Kum ba yah.
I asked my friend if there were alternatives without the religious mumbo jumbo. He didn't know. I did some digging.
Alcoholics Anonymous and rehab helped prove to me that I was an atheist, actually. All that "appealing to a higher power" crap just made me roll my eyes.
Porn addiction? And from a single kiss in a Scholastic book? Seriously? How mentally and emotionally weak do you have to be to become addicted to porn after reading about a single kiss? Is Burkhardt a Christian? Does she have a clue to the content of the bible, especially what's found in Song of Solomon and elsewhere within its pages? What might she become addicted to if she read the bible? Adultery? Incest? Bestiality?
The bible belt is the biggest consumer of porn in the nation. Must be something they read in their holy book that triggered it.
"In line with the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), you may be asked to verify your date of birth to watch age-restricted videos. AVMSD covers all audiovisual media, including video sharing platforms."
Yet the Brexiteers keep telling me that I am rid of EU interference.
My mom told me that if I continued hanging out with one of the neighbour kids I would end up lesbian. She was so ashamed when I reminded her about it years later. We had a good laugh about it then.
First off, Cameron using the Matrix as a dig at the LGBT community, or Woke as he said, is pretty fucking ironic. Since the Matrix was written by a transgender person about the bigots in conservative world. It’s a shallow interpretation being turned about as a childish response to valid criticism of the right.
Secondly, that shallow interpretation and turn about is exactly what the SkyTree book fair is, as well as all the appropriated Christianized popular culture. Their assessment of what is popular in culture is never very deep, music is just plagarizing a song or genre and throwing god or Jesu wherever they might stick. But they don’t seek to understand why the music struck the right chord. That is why Christian pop culture has no traction outside of the small evangelical Christian bubble. This book fair isn’t going to take off, I doubt they do have 100 confirmed public schools right now anyway, because they do not understand why Scholastic is so popular. There’s more to it than just a bunch of books, or even the marketing for it. Scholastic is great at providing the age appropriate materials, with a variety for skill levels within a grade, plus they account for tastes, and include, as mentioned above, real life experiences and people. The purpose of SkyFairy is to remove all the variety to push an agenda, to ignore the many facets of life and abilities of the children they’re claiming to serve. They might get their claws in a few schools for a while, but the lack of titles and flexibility will turn so many parents off that they will find other ways to get back to Scholastic.
Thirdly, I am a bit concerned because my children’s school district has some very loud right wing voices attacking the school and the local public library and who are also affecting elections that want to ban books under the guise of age appropriateness or keeping porn away from children. When they’re focusing on the same LGBT themes the Moms against any real Liberty push. We’ve had the litterboxes in the bathrooms scare lose us an actual decent school board member. We’ve had the attack on our library claiming the LGBT display during Pride month was grooming children which led to death threats against our librarians. We now have folks claiming that not further disseminating a video of a bully in a bathroom attacking (verbally) a Down’s syndrome child is censorship but they ought to be able to knee jerk remove books from the school they deem inappropriate for all students. I’m fed up with my town and I do not want Kirk Cameron soiling my neighborhood with his lies and indoctrination. But I’m afraid it might be something suggested soon.
I think the right and conservative story telling, jokes, and movies are bad because they have to be simplistic for the audience. Particularly for christians hecause that's the way sermons are. Sermons are didactic because letting people infer their own interpretations can result in wildly differing outcomes. Ones that aren't likely to be compatible with the intended message.
The right excels at memes because they have to be simple to deliver a quick message. The left tends toward more nuance, which takes time, in our attention deficit society, to figure out and can too often fall flat. Appealing to the lowest common denominator or being relatable are effective tools for delivering a message.
Very important to vote in school board elections. Many kids lives are severely harmed by religious fanatics on school boards. Since it is not easy to learn about each individual candidate, I usually go with the recommendations of the teachers union. They are professional educators therefore I trust their professional opinion.
I make note of where their yard signs end up. Like if the candidate is found in the same yard as a Trump sign or other GOP/questionable candidates, I make a note not to vote for them. (There are certain corners of farms that lead me to who to not vote for) but also if their signs are with the folks I do trust. Plus, I keep up to date with the dog whistles on the right to see if the candidates are parroting them. The difficult part is that there’s very little information available about these types of candidates, their Facebook pages, websites and bios on candidate forums are generally sparse and generic. Sometimes they’ll include certain phrases that are dog whistles, but not always. The last election one candidate wrote (copy and pasted) an op-Ed piece accusing the village library of grooming children because they have books the religious right has deemed pornography but are simply LGBT stories. The op-Ed was anonymous, but it came out that it was that candidate (I think he was running for the village board not school board) that wrote it. Thankfully he didn’t get elected, but it might have been because of his personality more than anyone hearing he wrote the hit piece. I had to dig to get the scoop on who wrote it.
Unfortunately, the union doesn’t always publicize who they recommend here.
It seems as though Cameron and his evangelical brethren cannot do anything without being surreptitious, underhanded, and anything but open and above-board. Then, too, this has been his and his associates' modus operandi for roughly as long as I've been aware of him.
The usual problem is that, while WE are aware of Cameron's predilections, the average citizen isn't, and they might see SkyTree as just one more book fair with little or nothing to set it apart from Scholastic Book Fair's efforts. Obviously, understanding the difference requires looking BELOW the surface, in order to see Cameron's intent.
How many parents will make that effort? Therein lies the rub.
I learned something the other day watching this bible scholar I follow on TikTok, the serpent in Eden was just a plain old talking snake, not, as I was taught, Satan in disguise!
Granted, I left religion behind 4 decades ago, but I could swear that's what I was taught in Catholic Sunday school.
The Babylonians (and many other cultures) had a god that resembled a dragon/serpent. The imagery was probably intentional.
Like Babylon caused Israel to be exiled from the Promised Land, the serpent/dragon caused Adam and Eve to be exiled from Eden. Genesis includes a lot of imagery like that.
The association with a figure named Satan (who wasn't a singular entity to start with) didn't happen until later.
I did not know that. It makes sense blaming other gods for current circumstances. I think it also justifies prejudice against them to eventually fomment hatred and rebellion.
Actually, I believe that ordinary human vintners all over the world are capable of turning water into wine, and they don't think it's any big deal.
In fact, I've heard of people who DRINK wine saying that shortly thereafter they have to "make water", so apparently the process is also biologically reversible.
I do believe you've identified the entire point of the exercise, Hemant. Stoking an interest in reading creates a curious mind, and 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 minds are precisely what the wingnuts need more of. Their 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 goal may be to stop kids from reading books which might broaden their horizons, affirm their identities, or help them understand abstract ideas... but their 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 goal is to stop kids from reading so much, 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘥. A person kept from reading 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯 content in youth might go on to find it on a shelf in adulthood, when they've escaped their parents' and pastors' control, and read it anyway; someone whose entire passion for reading has been smothered in its infancy might never pick up a book again.
Agreed. We all know that GOP and c religious nutters want to keep the populace ignorant. What better way than propaganda disguised as an innocent children’s book
“SkyTree, named after a place in Brave Books’ imaginary universe of Freedom Island...”
Guys I don’t think we’re focusing enough attention on the fact that they build an imaginary universe and the best idea they could come up with for a name is fucking Freedom Island.
People in general aren't great at coming up with new names for places. There are at least 1070 cities or towns in the United States with an Elm Street.
I had a job years ago where I delivered equipment to nursing homes. About 80% of them were named after the street they were built on.
I went to kindergarten and then high school with a woman who was born on the same day as me in the same hospital. Our last names even started with the same 2 letters so we had the same home room throughout all 4 years of high school.
They're doing a Doctor Who Christmas special featuring Ncuti Gatwa as the Time Lord set to air Christmas Day.
Thing is, what he's wearing in that special is not the brown plaid and gold was he shown wearing before. The photo is cropped, but it looks very different. A brown leather jacket over a zippered two-toned shirt.
That would be fun. Naming places after other places is quite common on this globe. Naming places after how they are placed or what they look like is popular too. I kind of like that.
I'd have to ask each location about the ingredients of their dashi. It's usually just katsuobushi and konbo, but you can also use shiitake mushrooms and niboshi.
What is it about these nitwits who believe they need to shelter the parents of these kids from obscene content in books? Isn’t that the parent’s job?
I mean these kids could easily see porn on a cell phone. Or that can be exposed to gun violence in schools since the SC says the second amendment trumps any rights of students, and people in general to live freely and with safely
It's worse than that (except for the school shootings, let's hope we don't become inured to that). They believe in parental rights, just not for anyone who disagrees with them.
I think if the church had the means and authority, they'd strip parents of their children and put them in christian foster homes so that they can be raised properly. (See the Simpson's episode on that.)
I totally agree. These people want to impose a Christian version of Sharia law on the rest of us, and so far they are succeeding with impunity as the MSM either refuses to report on it, or when they do, it’s almost an afterthought.
While he was alive, Chick was allied with Tony Alamo Ministries. Alamo was that guy who finally died while serving a 175-year sentence for child molestation (guess that explains the Chick tract "Lisa").
AFAIK, Chick Publications is STILL allied with TAM.
I remember reading that about Tony Alamo. I think a friend went to hear him speak or was going to. I couldn’t figure out why he was so appealing. Made my skin crawl.
I never found out about them until a couple of years ago – probably on this site or its previous iterations. I don't know if they were ever exported outside the US, but if they were I wasn't moving in the sort of circles that would see them. Like you, when I did see them I was gobsmacked.
There was a website in French who published jc tracts to mock them. I don't know if the site's owner used French versions or translated them themselves.
At least 'ol CrackerJack had some unintentional entertainment value, and his crap could be had for free- so you didn't have to support his further work in order to obtain it.
Jack Chick's shit scared the crap out of me when I was little. Even the shit that wasn't scary was disturbing. I despise that motherfucker with the power of 10000 exploding suns.
No Gudule either, she was a Belgian author. She wrote, among other things, thrillers and horror books for preteens. "J'irais dormir au fond du puits" (I will sleep at the bottom of the well) is a masterpiece.
The reason why these Evangelical kids books are shit is the same reason Evangelical movies are shit. They aren’t art; they’re propaganda sermons.
It IS possible to produce good art that incorporates Christian theme. Books like The Brothers Karamazov, Flannery O’Conner’s stories, and A Wrinkle in Time. Movies like Tender Mercies, Chariots of Fire, and A Place in the Heart. The difference is that art allows for moral ambiguity. It doesn’t shy from dark themes. It doesn’t lecture you on what the answers are.
This other shit is just a more glossy update on the old cheap paper Bible tracts. Like those paper tracts, this stuff will be quickly tossed aside and forgotten.
After his show “Growing Pains was canceled, he moved on to making dough, peddling religious themed TV shows and movies that went straight to DVD.
I’d say he’s a failed actor, but like all these religious wing-nuts; they always have a grift to pawn off on their ignorant and easily manipulated flock.
Isn’t he famous for his “Left Behind” series? Fortunately, most school districts decided he and his religious fanaticism should be left-behind.
Good riddance this ridiculous clown and really bad actor, except when he plays a religious wing-nut; but that’s not acting, is it?....:)
The librarian at my middle school has had Scholastic book fairs for years. The point of the fairs, in addition to giving students access to many appropriate books, was to raise money for the library...which happened every year.
So, what you're telling me is when he played the dumb son in Growing Pains, he wasn't acting.
Didn’t he get overshadowed by a new young kid on the show after his youth started to fade? Wasn’t Leo DiCaprio brought on in later seasons to bring back the cute factor? Maybe I’m thinking of a different show.
Your memory is correct.
That's the right show. By the way, did cute kid Leo's acting career go anywhere after Growing Pains?
Idk, I heard it took him decades to win an Oscar.
He’s a creepy dude nowadays too, just predatory not religious.
He's my age, and he does like them young.
Do you know how hard it is to act much smarter than you actually are?
There are two ways. Fake it. Or keep your mouth shut. Some people find silence difficult.
Type casting.
I haven’t seen a single episode of that show and I suspect I never will.
Me neither.
Nope, he was not acting. Just being his usual dumbass self. Now he's trying to act the part of the responsible adult and failing miserably. That's a role he just does not have the acting chops for. He always falls back into toddler mode and throws a tantrum about "persecution!" every time he gets any pushback for his obnoxious behavior.
Unintelligent and under-educated religious nut-jobs like Cameron will always see their religion as the answer to every question. They never stop trying to shoehorn the universe into their magic book. It's no secret that the religious right would love to replace actual education in this country with religious indoctrination in spite of the fact it is never the job of the public schools to backstop anyone's religion, and our secular government cannot choose one religion over another. These people are doomed to fail in the long run, because their philosophy is intellectually bankrupt. None of which means they can't do a lot of damage on their road to failure.
I really really really want to shuffle them all off into a pocket dimension (and ONLY them) where they can (and must) implement all of their stupid policies.
Lanah Burkhardt, If reading about a "single kiss" led to a life of porn addiction then one has to wonder what else may have triggered it if you didn't read that one book. Would you have witnessed two dogs getting it on and decided to ban pets? Would you have seen your mother wash a cucumber and decide to ban vegetables? How about that electric toothbrush? Would you no longer brush your teeth?
You are a moron if you think you developed a "porn addiction" because you read a book. On top of that it was not that one book that caused you to be "depressed and suicidal", it was your religion. Your religion made you feel like you had dirty thoughts but for many people those thoughts are a Tuesday. We are sexual creatures Ms. Burkhardt. The human race would not have survived if we weren't. Your thoughts are not abnormal but your religion seeks to repress them because they are trying to control you the same way you want to control everyone else.
"I became addicted to drugs when I saw someone take Advil on TV."
I once saw a commercial featuring the "I take once-daily JARDIANCE®" dancers and now I am diabetic.
I am willing to bet her definition of porn isn't the same as mine or most of people's here.
Seeing people holding hands on TV make me feel kind of funny. Like sliding down the rope in gym class.
She would sneak over to the local book shop and gaze with passion at the book covers of trashy romances.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/213921051022248436/
My paternal grandmother had tons of theses back in the 90's. One day I was bored and tried to read one. I spent more time noting all the historic inaccuracies. I am not a history nerd since third grade for nothing 😁
She wasn't the only one, though mine were from the 80s...(but no one read them for the history, trust me! :D )
I learned to hide the trashy covers from my mom. she didn't care about the actual book.
I was sent to Catholic school, kindergarten through h.s. graduation In h.s.,we had "retreats," to "pray and meditate, etc." We were allowed to read things other than the bible or religious texts, but they had to have religious content. I just took the dust jacket off Taylor Caldwell's "Dear and Glorious Physician," a novel about St Luke, and read whatever I wanted. Fortunately, no one in authority ever checked. Hey, whatever, I was religious about Walter Farley's Black Stallion series, as the stereotypical "horse crazy" girl. . ROFLOL
It’s really sad that the religious right can make all these preposterous claims, tell these ridiculous stories and folks will believe them. Then the real damage comes when they use these incredible stories to make policy that tears at our society like this.
Who really believes she read this book and then suddenly became addicted to porn. It’s completely unbelievable on its face. But now we have a school vilifying Scholastic over it. Not because the school board really believes what she claims, but because enough folks on the school board have an agenda that fits with hers. And the concerned parents were previously failed by their schools so they cannot think critically enough to see a scam when it walks in the room.
The evilgelicals on the board probably do believe her.
.... because they too have a porn addiction which must certainly have been caused by reading a book from the Scholastic book fair. Yeah, that's the ticket. Had to be that.
"I became violent when I saw one violent scene on TV."
There was never any violence before TV. The world was at peace and America was Great. Then free speech happened....
And Darwin's Theory of Evolution happened and...
Jeez! You're right. Damn I didn't realize how nefarious science was. Homeschooling with Kirk's books is the way to go.
That was the basis for a push to ban videogames ~20 years back. I dunno if anyone else remembers Jack Thompson, but he was - along with a goodly number of prominent politicians, many of them Democrats- leading the charge to kill an entire entertainment medium right up until he was disbarred and basically fell into obscurity overnight.
That's a blast from the past. Some people in the 70s tried to use that as a legal defense in court; I did it because I saw it in a TV show or movie. 𝘉𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳 even did an episode on it.
Well, Dan White used the "I ate too many twinkies" defense. (He was the ex-cop who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. There's apparently a school district here in Calif which has a problem with textbooks mentioning Harvey Milk.) And, yeah, I was there on White Night, when people in SF marched because the jury bought Dan White's lies and gave him a slap on the wrist. Lies have consequences.
And no one's been allowed to use the Twinkie Defense since. Sure seemed tailor made for one-time-only usage by a bigoted Christian ex-cop/ex-fireman.
And he wasn’t punished for lying under oath? Gee, so much for swearing on the Bible.
Should I start firing arrows in people knees ? 🤔
Also, I’ve read a few Christian novels and there’s plenty of sex and violence in them, no less than the mainstream novels of similar genres. Reading about one kiss isn’t enough to destroy a life like this. To be honest, a well rounded education would inoculate someone from this type of thing if what she claims is remotely true. Not a religious bubble hiding away any knowledge of sexuality, that only makes it worse.
I just saw yesterday that Hallmark will have their first christmas movie that at least implies a sexual encounter. I barely skimmed the article, so I don't know how explicit it is, but you know One Million Moms is having an aneurysm.
I'm assuming that means some light cuddling with perhaps a hand scandalously placed on a hip. Fully clothed, of course, under three layers of hideous Christmas sweaters and at least one blanket.
Sorry, actually a Lifetime movie. I can't find the article I saw yesterday which had at least some detail.
Ah, so... some light cuddling and a scandalous hand placement somewhere during a virtuous single mother's quest to stop her kidnapped daughter from being sold as a sex slave?
Well, it’s a good thing that Jerk Cameron’s sister made up a new channel to save us all from this perverted media. I mean, how dare they get so risqué. And now there won’t be any LGBT people working on any part of these programs either, so they’ll be extra good.
I got a free book once and as I started reading it, I knew it had to be Xtian romance. Supposedly about a Marine who never used a cuss word.
I got Siddhartha free at the airport once, I did read it but do t remember much about it. It was back when I was in the Army and bored in Korea.
One of my hubby’s childhood friends is a born again and his wife gave me one to read. Captain Cassidy reviewed it back on Patheos a while back. The main female character was a child of a mistress who was turned out when she was still a child. The mother turned to prostitution to protect the girl but she died and the girl ended up one anyway. At one point she has to provide services to her father who didn’t realize (or pretended not to). But she was saved by a godly man despite her own protestations and fought him for a while but he Saved her in the end. It was terrible and the sex and violence was worse than any of the trashy romance novels I read before it. Oh and the godly man rapes her to prove how great god’s love is.
I remember listening to a Christian radio program called "Unshackled" where I heard audio depictions of kids getting beaten by their parents and wives getting a black eye from their abusive husbands in so many episodes of the program. And yet they come after secular books, radio, TV, and movies in an effort to ban them for being too violent and disturbing for "young children" all because they saw one scene or heard one lyric or read one passage and I'm like, "shouldn't these Christian zealots go after their own materials which contains the very disturbing audio and visual scenes that they go after the secular media for?" Such hypocrisy!
FFS, my dad kept Playboy magazine on the coffee table and I didn’t develop a porn addiction. I did almost have a heart attack when I saw a young neighbor woman was a centerfold one month. :D
Did he get her autograph?
There is no such thing as a "porn addiction." Nope, nada, it is as imaginary as their gawd.
When I used to go to christian youth conferences, I remember one guy* talking about speaking at a previous event. Each speaker would tell their life story of coming to christ at the lowest point in their life. Then the youth were to break off into groups by selecting the person who's life story most spoke to them. As each speaker talked about their "lives," the stories just got worse and worse. It was a silent game of one-upmanship. He was the second to last, so he really had to work to top everyone. The last guy just told his plain-old boring story, which most of the youth identified with.
These extreme stories that come out - "a illustrated kiss led me to porn**" - remind me of that guy, literally fabricating stories for the sheer sake of climbing Mount Exaggeration. It's like religious Munchausen Syndrome. At least The Four Yorkshiremen is funny (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE). These christian attention-seekers bolstering their low self-esteem with genuine faux significance don't actually realize the harm they are causing to people. They have to keep it up to keep the limelight on them. And there's a lot of competition for that limelight.
What can I say? Satanic Panics can't be fueled without fear.
What next? Gay frog? ... Ummm ... Oh. Yeah.
* They were always men, I don't recall a single woman ever guest speaking at these events.
** Oh, and the massive volume of passionate kissing on TV and movies has no affect what-so-ever?
Your story reminds me of going to AA meetings (requirement during and after rehab). Some of these "recovering" alcoholics became just as addicted to telling their stories as they had been to alcohol, and just like you described, as the meeting went on, the stories got worse and worse.
It was the most depressing thing I ever endured. The minute I fulfilled the requirement of one year of meetings, I stopped going (I loathe AA).
So glad you mentioned that Sko. I too, went to an AA meeting with a friend in the throes of alcoholism. I sat mesmerized by the fantastic stories. It was like a campfire. I expected everyone to join hands and sing Kum ba yah.
I asked my friend if there were alternatives without the religious mumbo jumbo. He didn't know. I did some digging.
If anyone (in Canada) wants a secular group:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/addictions-group-offers-secular-alternative-to-alcoholics-anonymous-1.2936718
The campfire analogy is perfect. Sitting around and making up scarier and scarier stories.
Alcoholics Anonymous and rehab helped prove to me that I was an atheist, actually. All that "appealing to a higher power" crap just made me roll my eyes.
Life Ring is another secular alternative.
Porn addiction? And from a single kiss in a Scholastic book? Seriously? How mentally and emotionally weak do you have to be to become addicted to porn after reading about a single kiss? Is Burkhardt a Christian? Does she have a clue to the content of the bible, especially what's found in Song of Solomon and elsewhere within its pages? What might she become addicted to if she read the bible? Adultery? Incest? Bestiality?
The bible belt is the biggest consumer of porn in the nation. Must be something they read in their holy book that triggered it.
I became LGBT after seeing the Good Witch kiss Dorothy on her way to see the Wizard.
I kissed a girl on the lips once about 41 years ago and I became addicted to books.
You dirty bibliophile!
Not as much as her https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM&pp=ygUURnVjayBtZSByYXkgYnJhZGJ1cnk%3D
"In line with the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), you may be asked to verify your date of birth to watch age-restricted videos. AVMSD covers all audiovisual media, including video sharing platforms."
Yet the Brexiteers keep telling me that I am rid of EU interference.
I became bi when I saw a boy and a girl kiss.
My mom told me that if I continued hanging out with one of the neighbour kids I would end up lesbian. She was so ashamed when I reminded her about it years later. We had a good laugh about it then.
She was cute, but that voice was annoying AF.
(Same with the witch. 😉)
Wally was pretty cute.
He never laid a hand on the Beaver.
Why should the big brother be anymore believable than the parents?
You mean American moms DONT wear pearls to do the dishes?
I'm so disillusioned.
First off, Cameron using the Matrix as a dig at the LGBT community, or Woke as he said, is pretty fucking ironic. Since the Matrix was written by a transgender person about the bigots in conservative world. It’s a shallow interpretation being turned about as a childish response to valid criticism of the right.
Secondly, that shallow interpretation and turn about is exactly what the SkyTree book fair is, as well as all the appropriated Christianized popular culture. Their assessment of what is popular in culture is never very deep, music is just plagarizing a song or genre and throwing god or Jesu wherever they might stick. But they don’t seek to understand why the music struck the right chord. That is why Christian pop culture has no traction outside of the small evangelical Christian bubble. This book fair isn’t going to take off, I doubt they do have 100 confirmed public schools right now anyway, because they do not understand why Scholastic is so popular. There’s more to it than just a bunch of books, or even the marketing for it. Scholastic is great at providing the age appropriate materials, with a variety for skill levels within a grade, plus they account for tastes, and include, as mentioned above, real life experiences and people. The purpose of SkyFairy is to remove all the variety to push an agenda, to ignore the many facets of life and abilities of the children they’re claiming to serve. They might get their claws in a few schools for a while, but the lack of titles and flexibility will turn so many parents off that they will find other ways to get back to Scholastic.
Thirdly, I am a bit concerned because my children’s school district has some very loud right wing voices attacking the school and the local public library and who are also affecting elections that want to ban books under the guise of age appropriateness or keeping porn away from children. When they’re focusing on the same LGBT themes the Moms against any real Liberty push. We’ve had the litterboxes in the bathrooms scare lose us an actual decent school board member. We’ve had the attack on our library claiming the LGBT display during Pride month was grooming children which led to death threats against our librarians. We now have folks claiming that not further disseminating a video of a bully in a bathroom attacking (verbally) a Down’s syndrome child is censorship but they ought to be able to knee jerk remove books from the school they deem inappropriate for all students. I’m fed up with my town and I do not want Kirk Cameron soiling my neighborhood with his lies and indoctrination. But I’m afraid it might be something suggested soon.
I think the right and conservative story telling, jokes, and movies are bad because they have to be simplistic for the audience. Particularly for christians hecause that's the way sermons are. Sermons are didactic because letting people infer their own interpretations can result in wildly differing outcomes. Ones that aren't likely to be compatible with the intended message.
The right excels at memes because they have to be simple to deliver a quick message. The left tends toward more nuance, which takes time, in our attention deficit society, to figure out and can too often fall flat. Appealing to the lowest common denominator or being relatable are effective tools for delivering a message.
Very important to vote in school board elections. Many kids lives are severely harmed by religious fanatics on school boards. Since it is not easy to learn about each individual candidate, I usually go with the recommendations of the teachers union. They are professional educators therefore I trust their professional opinion.
I make note of where their yard signs end up. Like if the candidate is found in the same yard as a Trump sign or other GOP/questionable candidates, I make a note not to vote for them. (There are certain corners of farms that lead me to who to not vote for) but also if their signs are with the folks I do trust. Plus, I keep up to date with the dog whistles on the right to see if the candidates are parroting them. The difficult part is that there’s very little information available about these types of candidates, their Facebook pages, websites and bios on candidate forums are generally sparse and generic. Sometimes they’ll include certain phrases that are dog whistles, but not always. The last election one candidate wrote (copy and pasted) an op-Ed piece accusing the village library of grooming children because they have books the religious right has deemed pornography but are simply LGBT stories. The op-Ed was anonymous, but it came out that it was that candidate (I think he was running for the village board not school board) that wrote it. Thankfully he didn’t get elected, but it might have been because of his personality more than anyone hearing he wrote the hit piece. I had to dig to get the scoop on who wrote it.
Unfortunately, the union doesn’t always publicize who they recommend here.
It seems as though Cameron and his evangelical brethren cannot do anything without being surreptitious, underhanded, and anything but open and above-board. Then, too, this has been his and his associates' modus operandi for roughly as long as I've been aware of him.
The usual problem is that, while WE are aware of Cameron's predilections, the average citizen isn't, and they might see SkyTree as just one more book fair with little or nothing to set it apart from Scholastic Book Fair's efforts. Obviously, understanding the difference requires looking BELOW the surface, in order to see Cameron's intent.
How many parents will make that effort? Therein lies the rub.
The Bible says the Serpent was sneaky but apparently...
I learned something the other day watching this bible scholar I follow on TikTok, the serpent in Eden was just a plain old talking snake, not, as I was taught, Satan in disguise!
Granted, I left religion behind 4 decades ago, but I could swear that's what I was taught in Catholic Sunday school.
The Babylonians (and many other cultures) had a god that resembled a dragon/serpent. The imagery was probably intentional.
Like Babylon caused Israel to be exiled from the Promised Land, the serpent/dragon caused Adam and Eve to be exiled from Eden. Genesis includes a lot of imagery like that.
The association with a figure named Satan (who wasn't a singular entity to start with) didn't happen until later.
I did not know that. It makes sense blaming other gods for current circumstances. I think it also justifies prejudice against them to eventually fomment hatred and rebellion.
Yup! Talking snakes, and prophets turning water into wine. I know at least four magicians that could do the same. Are they gods?...:)
Actually, I believe that ordinary human vintners all over the world are capable of turning water into wine, and they don't think it's any big deal.
In fact, I've heard of people who DRINK wine saying that shortly thereafter they have to "make water", so apparently the process is also biologically reversible.
𝔜𝔢 𝔬𝔩𝔡𝔢 𝔧𝔬𝔨𝔢: What is the difference between beer and piss?
Twenty minutes.
"You can't buy beer. You can only rent it."
"...𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘴?"
--------------
I do believe you've identified the entire point of the exercise, Hemant. Stoking an interest in reading creates a curious mind, and 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 minds are precisely what the wingnuts need more of. Their 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 goal may be to stop kids from reading books which might broaden their horizons, affirm their identities, or help them understand abstract ideas... but their 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 goal is to stop kids from reading so much, 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘥. A person kept from reading 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯 content in youth might go on to find it on a shelf in adulthood, when they've escaped their parents' and pastors' control, and read it anyway; someone whose entire passion for reading has been smothered in its infancy might never pick up a book again.
Agreed. We all know that GOP and c religious nutters want to keep the populace ignorant. What better way than propaganda disguised as an innocent children’s book
New titles to look forward to:
"A Christian Child's Guide to the Solar System."
"Fido the Faithful Dog."
"How to Get Anywhere by Always Turning Right."
"Timmy the Very Macho Boy."
"How to Think Like a Christian" (a pictures-only book)
"If You Pray It'll Be Okay." (a rhyming book)
"Christina and the Bad Thought"
"Yes, Yes, It's Absolutely True"
"How You Feel is What is Real"
"Andy and Andrea, the Aardvarks on the Ark"
"Fido the Faithful Dog."
As with all things christian, it's a rip-off. It's like Old Yeller, he gets martyred at the end for his faith.
"6000 years of archaeology"?
"Ark building 101"?
“SkyTree, named after a place in Brave Books’ imaginary universe of Freedom Island...”
Guys I don’t think we’re focusing enough attention on the fact that they build an imaginary universe and the best idea they could come up with for a name is fucking Freedom Island.
Christians concocted an imaginary universe and set it in the bible.
Didn't they concoct the bible itself to begin with anyway?
That would imply they had an original idea.
They didn’t. They stole every part of it from all the other, older civilizations from around them.
People in general aren't great at coming up with new names for places. There are at least 1070 cities or towns in the United States with an Elm Street.
I had a job years ago where I delivered equipment to nursing homes. About 80% of them were named after the street they were built on.
That’s why that one guy went to school with 27 Jennifers. We can’t even come up with unique names for our offspring.
We didn't have any Jennifers in my class (sample size = 40), but we had 3 Larrys.
My name was pretty popular as well, I even shared my birthday with another girl in my class who had my name as well.
I once dated a woman who was born the day after I was.
I check celebrity birthdays to see who celebrates on my month and day. Lotsa musicians.
I went to kindergarten and then high school with a woman who was born on the same day as me in the same hospital. Our last names even started with the same 2 letters so we had the same home room throughout all 4 years of high school.
I have a friend who always wanted to name a band "Six Guys From Houston Named Larry".
Unfortunately, neither of us has a drop of musical talent.
Many cities and smaller places in US have a name originating from other parts of the world, as York, Orleans and many more.
There is even a New York in Lincolnshire (pop. c. 150). https://mapcarta.com/17628694 Had the US NY been named after that, would it be NNY?
https://youtu.be/JmBdIN5_ZxE?feature=shared&t=90
I rewatched that episode last week.
They're doing a Doctor Who Christmas special featuring Ncuti Gatwa as the Time Lord set to air Christmas Day.
Thing is, what he's wearing in that special is not the brown plaid and gold was he shown wearing before. The photo is cropped, but it looks very different. A brown leather jacket over a zippered two-toned shirt.
I'm confused.
That would be fun. Naming places after other places is quite common on this globe. Naming places after how they are placed or what they look like is popular too. I kind of like that.
St. Petersburg, Floriduh.
Don't forget the endless list of rivers whose names are essentially "river" in one language followed by "river" in another.
Now that's not fair, It's the Grand River. Sure it's in Spanish, but that's its name.
Ramen noodles anyone?
Loves my ramen. Got a number of Japanese noodle places here.
Is the dashi with or without fish ?
I'd have to ask each location about the ingredients of their dashi. It's usually just katsuobushi and konbo, but you can also use shiitake mushrooms and niboshi.
American Hophornbeam Street never caught on.
Boy, Freddy must be busy. All those teenagers to terrify and kill.
I grew up on an Elm Street. But I never saw Freddy around.
"With over 1,000 books to choose from, it’s not hard to find content that some parents will object to."
“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.” ― Jo Godwin
You know where to find me.
What is it about these nitwits who believe they need to shelter the parents of these kids from obscene content in books? Isn’t that the parent’s job?
I mean these kids could easily see porn on a cell phone. Or that can be exposed to gun violence in schools since the SC says the second amendment trumps any rights of students, and people in general to live freely and with safely
Good times...:)
It's worse than that (except for the school shootings, let's hope we don't become inured to that). They believe in parental rights, just not for anyone who disagrees with them.
I think if the church had the means and authority, they'd strip parents of their children and put them in christian foster homes so that they can be raised properly. (See the Simpson's episode on that.)
I totally agree. These people want to impose a Christian version of Sharia law on the rest of us, and so far they are succeeding with impunity as the MSM either refuses to report on it, or when they do, it’s almost an afterthought.
I loved Scolastic book fairs as a kid. I’d be so excited to get their lists and pore through the possibilities. My mom never said no.
Kirk Cameron is no Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison nor Eric Carle (if you know children’s authors). I wonder how often his books are remaindered?
I doubt Cameron’s books even rise to the level of Jack Chick, not that we’d want that.
I found out about those Chick tracts well into adulthood. I read some and was appalled.
While he was alive, Chick was allied with Tony Alamo Ministries. Alamo was that guy who finally died while serving a 175-year sentence for child molestation (guess that explains the Chick tract "Lisa").
AFAIK, Chick Publications is STILL allied with TAM.
You should never mention that abomination without providing a link so people can see the stomach-churning awfulness for themselves:
https://jackchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/chick-tract-review-lisa/
I figured you might. This way I don't get the blame for traumatizing people who might actually look it up.
I at least warned them.
That’s just fucking awful!
Hopefully, you read it on an empty stomach.
I remember reading that about Tony Alamo. I think a friend went to hear him speak or was going to. I couldn’t figure out why he was so appealing. Made my skin crawl.
I never found out about them until a couple of years ago – probably on this site or its previous iterations. I don't know if they were ever exported outside the US, but if they were I wasn't moving in the sort of circles that would see them. Like you, when I did see them I was gobsmacked.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” I’m just aghast that someone could write those horrific tracts.
There was a website in French who published jc tracts to mock them. I don't know if the site's owner used French versions or translated them themselves.
If the translations were readable, then they probably weren't done by Chick publishing.
At least 'ol CrackerJack had some unintentional entertainment value, and his crap could be had for free- so you didn't have to support his further work in order to obtain it.
But the misguided fools who left them out paid for them. Jack wasn't doing that shit for free.
Jack Chick's shit scared the crap out of me when I was little. Even the shit that wasn't scary was disturbing. I despise that motherfucker with the power of 10000 exploding suns.
He's not even Stephan Pastis, who authors children's books like "Looking Up" in addition to his daily gig at "Pearls Before Swine."
Have you read Mo Willems? Don’t let the Pigeon Drive the Bus or Elephant and Piggie are a couple examples. My kids loved them.
I only know of his work on "Codename: Kids Next Door." I'm unfamiliar with his other works.
I love that cartoon
No Gudule either, she was a Belgian author. She wrote, among other things, thrillers and horror books for preteens. "J'irais dormir au fond du puits" (I will sleep at the bottom of the well) is a masterpiece.
https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/dare-truth-or-promise-9781775535362
This is on the shelves of our local high school library. Has been for years. I don't know if anyone ever complain, but if they did they were ignored.
I loved horror when i was a teen
I still have the very first book I ever bought at a Scholastic Book Fair. I was in first grade, and the book was "The Magic Fish."
The reason why these Evangelical kids books are shit is the same reason Evangelical movies are shit. They aren’t art; they’re propaganda sermons.
It IS possible to produce good art that incorporates Christian theme. Books like The Brothers Karamazov, Flannery O’Conner’s stories, and A Wrinkle in Time. Movies like Tender Mercies, Chariots of Fire, and A Place in the Heart. The difference is that art allows for moral ambiguity. It doesn’t shy from dark themes. It doesn’t lecture you on what the answers are.
This other shit is just a more glossy update on the old cheap paper Bible tracts. Like those paper tracts, this stuff will be quickly tossed aside and forgotten.
Question: Why are books at the SKyTree Book Fair printed with white ink.
Answer: Because black characters aren't allowed.
After his show “Growing Pains was canceled, he moved on to making dough, peddling religious themed TV shows and movies that went straight to DVD.
I’d say he’s a failed actor, but like all these religious wing-nuts; they always have a grift to pawn off on their ignorant and easily manipulated flock.
Isn’t he famous for his “Left Behind” series? Fortunately, most school districts decided he and his religious fanaticism should be left-behind.
Good riddance this ridiculous clown and really bad actor, except when he plays a religious wing-nut; but that’s not acting, is it?....:)
The librarian at my middle school has had Scholastic book fairs for years. The point of the fairs, in addition to giving students access to many appropriate books, was to raise money for the library...which happened every year.
Can we say the same about SkyTree? It certainly isn't obvious from their web page. The most obvious thing is solicitations for donations to SkyTree.