Immodest Proposals: Keep You Doped With Religion and Sex and TV

Inside Television 541

Publication Date: 2-18-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

I haven't written an Immodest Proposals column in, I think, a year or two. For those who don't remember the format, I put forward an idea or three that would make excellent sense in a sane world. They will never happen, for this is not a sane world. Still, it's nice to dream of things that have never been and ask, 'Why not'?

What got me to thinking was a combination of two conversations and one news item. The first conversation was one I held over the phone with Emma Forrest, author of the memoir 'Your Voice in My Head'. Forrest, a journalist turned screenwriter (aren't we all?) went through a period of mental illness that included cutting and an attempted suicide. When I asked her why cutting had appeared as a plague affecting adolescent women in the last 15-20 years, she expressed her opinion that it was as a result of the sexualization of very young girls. It starts with the manufacture of the Lindsays and Britneys and carries down into the classrooms and bedrooms of our own neighbourhoods.

The second conversation was with a woman of my acquaintance who sincerely believed and forcefully expressed the opinion that the Muslim people - all of them - had an agenda to kill Christians in order to get to Heaven. Therefore, Canada should lock its immigration doors to Muslims before they 'took over the country.' Being polite (and in shock) at the time I just said, 'No no, they're much too sensible for that.'

And third, there was a radio interview Charlie Sheen gave with Dan Patrick which was repeated on CTV News. Sheen in short said that his drugging and debauching was a periodic thing and the producers of 'Two and a Half Men' should restart production now while he was reasonably sober and strapped together.

Did I mention that we don't live in a sane world?

Now I have been at this rude sport of covering television a little too long to ever imagine that anything I suggest will ever happen. But I'm rather hoping you might agree and adjust your viewing schedules, or at least your viewing perception accordingly.

Broadly taken, gag orders aren't very popular in North America - they're de rigueur in the UK - because those of us on the Western shores of the Atlantic have this silly idea that we have an absolute right to know everything about everything. We are self-accredited experts in solving other people's problems (especially famous people with problems) as it saves all the effort of solving our own. However, I put it to you that a cone of silence above a cloak of invisibility might help in several ways.

I live in a city which is struggling honourably with the development of a drug and intoxication strategy. To me, the issue is a relatively simple one. Should one be arrested for public intoxication in any form. one would then lose the right to purchase or consume any variant of liquor or stimulant that can be quaffed, lit, swallowed or rubbed on the belly for one year. You abuse it, you lose it.

Now what if this was twisted and extended to entertainment and news? Lindsay and Charlie, you aren't doing well and worse than that - for God gives us a perfect right to make fools of ourselves - you are setting the example that it is okay for the kids out there to grow up to be slam partying, abusive slut bags. Um, that really isn't working well for the rest of us.

There is no good reason to incarcerate Charlie Sheen for his addictions - his ritual domestic abuse is another matter - it's expensive and it doesn't work. Rather, let's snuff out the fire by removing the oxygen. No judge can order this; freedom of expression gets in the way. What if the networks and studios dusted off the old 'morals clause' and determined that Charlie's shows (sorry to pick on you old boy, but you are a gold medal pig) can't be seen anywhere for a year, his pictures will not be printed, his interviews will not be requested. For a celebrity, this is Papillon or Dreyfus territory. This would be harsh on a first offence, but if it is established that one is a celebrity Ho, then to no Ho shall celebrity go.

Charlie Sheen's photoshoot: November 2011

The other item I would like to see suffocated is any reference to religion anywhere in the news. Your mind has immediately focused on the Middle East, as it would, but allow me to explain. One of the basic struggles of that region is usually described as that between Muslims and Jews. That's become a tidy capsule description for correspondents and talking heads who either don't know a Shi'ite from a shirt collar and would never be given the proper time by their producers to do so in the first place. For if that is to be the dominant issue and its resolve a framework for peace, then that issue needs to be re-framed regularly, not just in a 2AM documentary that no one will ever see.

Besides which, it's inaccurate. I was reminded when reading 'The Midwife of Venice' by Roberta Rich that around the time of Shakespeare it was the Caliphate based in what we know as Turkey and as Muslim as it gets, that was the sanctuary for Jews fleeing the prejudice of Europe and the press-gang slavery of the Knights of Malta. Those Knights, bored with the end of the Crusades and good Catholic men every won, would capture Jewish traders and hold them for ransom. If the ransom wasn't met, they became slaves. The Turks or Muslims or Arabs took the escapees and protected them.

So if that Middle Eastern struggle is not the result of an intrinsic hatred of a different version of God's opinions on how to lead a model life, then what if analysis took religion right out of the formula? Then stories would be based around subjects, legal subjects, repairable subjects like political repression, loss of human rights, and the distribution of oil wealth. You're never going to completely agree with my sense of who or what God is, any more than you'll ever understand why tears come to my eyes whenever I hear 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. So let's just put religion aside and discuss what we can discuss moving forwards to agreement. And the final benefit is that people won't be hearing snatches of conversation or sound clip exaggerations that leads to half of the Republican Party in the U.S.A. thinking a) that Barack Obama is a Muslim born outside the U.S.A.; and b) that somehow matters. Because even personal religion will be tossed out of the news scripts.

None of this will happen Out There. But in your opinions and perceptions, maybe it can happen In Here. Be seeing you.