The Coonridge Digest: Blurring your vision

Greetings from the Ridge.

I think that Howdy Doody first introduced the color television.

If I remember correctly, if you saved enough bottle caps or box tops or Wheaties bags or something, then sent in about seventy-five cents, Howdy would send you back a piece of red cellophane to put over your television set. Then, instead of watching Buffalo Bob and Clarabelle in plain old black and white, you could watch them in blurry red. What can I say? The medium was new, we were young, and it took less to get us excited. My brother and I kept the red film on the set until it finally melded itself to the screen’s surface and our parents were forced to watch Huntley and Brinkley with what looked like an advanced case of leprosy.

I think it was called a Magic Screen. To my recollection, the only magic was in how I managed to hide under my bed that night until Dad got tired of looking for me and went to sleep.

Seems like a silly childhood memory, but in recent months I’ve seen the Magic Screen return.

Pat Robertson has one. Through some fluke of nature or genuinely divine inspiration, he’s been able to discern the mind of God through his tinted spiritual lenses. Poor Arial Sharon was struck down with a stroke for "dividing God’s land" by giving up part of Gaza. A couple of months ago Smiling Pat suggested that we show God’s love by assassinating Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela. This same Magic Screen deemed that Hurricane Katrina was the Almighty’s wrath over abortion.

All this leads to several possibilities:

A) God has indeed chosen this one man to interpret His divine mind and He’s given Pat an absolute corner on the market. He either whispers into Pat’s ear and no one else’s, or He’s whispering to all of us and Pat’s the only one who’s had his earwax removed. I started having my doubts about Pat when he began inferring that God was a Republican. I take a look at God’s co-workers like Duke Cunningham ($2.4 million in bribes) , Bob Ney (felony charge pending), Tom DeLay (column space prohibits even a partial listing) , and Bill Frist (a little too much inside knowledge), and I wonder if maybe God couldn’t use a bit of help in his job screening process.

Do the Democrats then have all the divine wisdom cornered? Gimme a break.

B) God is speaking to Pat, but Pat’s not hearing him. After living 56 years with Herb, I wouldn’t rule this out.

C) Pat’s a fool. Okay, now we’re getting down to definite possibilities.

Yulanda Bates, our church’s moral scorekeeper, once came up to me and told me that God had told her that I should join the church. I said, "Yulanda, I’ve been a Presbyterian all my life and Coonridge has no Presbyterian Church, so I worship with the Methodists because they’ll take anybody. Besides, if I joined the church then I’d have to serve on committees.?

She looked at me with a stare somewhere between Mother Teresa in her funeral casket and Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea and claimed that I had best not ignore it when God speaks. I calmly suggested that God might remove the middle-woman and speak directly to me. She huffed a good huff and whisked herself away leaving a slight stench of what I took as brimstone.

Now a new controversy has jumped into the news as the TV drama, The Book of Daniel dares to depict a minister with a dysfunctional family. Heavens. I’ve never heard of such a thing. And the show commits further blasphemy by portraying a live, in the flesh and robe Jesus who actually speaks to someone who doesn’t own a Christian TV network.

Both Focus on the Family and The American Family Association have slapped their Magic Screens on the world, filtering the show’s message through their spiritual cellophane, and declared it unfit for us to watch. They’ve lobbied their NBC affiliates and convinced eight of them that although Focus on the Family and The American Family Association can watch the show, their viewers cannot.

Frankly, I think I got a bargain. Considering the tens of thousands of bucks poured into this campaign of evangelical censorship, my box top and seventy-five cents was a real bargain. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that Magic Screens do nothing but blur your vision.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.