We look at three recent TV programs that have attracted the attention of the Eye of Sauron, a.k.a. Catholic League president Bill Donohue, whose job it is to manufacture outrage anytime anyone makes fun of the Church or offers sharp criticism of it. Sarah Silverman’s video “Sell the Vatican, Feed the World” appeared on the season finale of Real Time with Bill Maher. The Simpsons mock the Eucharist in their annual “Treehouse of Horror” special with the segment “Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind.” And Curb Your Enthusiasm auteur Larry David accidentally splashes urine on a portrait of Jesus in the episode “Dealing with the Midriff.” Bottom line: if it makes the Eye apoplectic, it warms our hearts.
Speaking of TV, Muslims have yet to riot or issue any fatwas over a controversial commercial by German lingerie company Liaisons Dangereuse.
We’ve been reading! Check out John’s chapter-by-chapter thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth starting here, as well as his reviews of Carl Zimmer’s evolution textbook The Tangled Bank and Robert Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated. Also, David recommends Robert Schadewald’s posthumous collection of skeptical essays Worlds of Their Own.
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Theme music by Body Found.
Recorded November 1, 2009. Hosted by John C. Snider and David Driscoll.
Tags: bill donohue, catholic league, curb your enthusiasm, eye of sauron, larry david, sarah silverman, simpsons
I think Bill Donohue’s reasoning behind his “everybody loves to attack Catholics” claim runs something like this, deep in Donohue’s martyr-complex-laden mind: “When HBO (or whoever) criticizes Jews or Muslims, they’re not *attacking* Jews or Muslims, because what they’re saying is true, since Jews and Muslims are deserving of criticism, since they aren’t Catholics. But when they criticize Catholics, that’s an attack, because Catholics are completely innocent of any faults.”
Did you guys see the movie Cars? Remember the insane combine that was guarding the tractors? That’s Bill Donohue.
Good show, but you guys got a few things wrong. There IS mercury in the H1N1 vaccine. (http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/vaccine_safety_qa.htm) Thimerosal is Ethyl Mercury. Of course, it doesn’t matter because Ethyl Mercury is excreted and does not collect in the body or affect our tissues like Methyl Mercury would. It’s unfortunate that the guy saying there’s mercury in the vaccine was telling the truth but at the same time being misleading.
Now next may be BD’s mistake or perhaps because I don’t watch the show I missed something, but I watched the clip of that episode online and I didn’t see anything specifically Catholic about it. Lots of People put up pictures of Jesus, though it does seem like it’s mainly Catholics who are into the Mary on Toast, weeping statues type of “miracle”. Anyway, when I saw it I thought it was just making fun of gullible Christians, not specifically Catholics.
Finally, Bill Maher separating himself from atheists.
Maher has many times said he is not an atheist and that atheists are just as fundamentalist as theists. I can’t believe you guys didn’t know that.
It’s been a big deal, I think I even heard him saying before Religulous came out that his beef was with organized religions, not undefined theism since he didn’t think he could really say there is no god.
But when he last has Richard Dawkins on his show he introduced him as “my fellow atheist”.
My guess is Maher has finally been convinced that atheist just means lacking a belief in god, not necessarily forwarding the positive claim that no god exists. He clearly used to think otherwise. Good for him if he can take in argument and change his mind as a result.
I was incorrect by saying that the current flu shots do not contain Mercury. I thought that all vaccines Since 2001 recommended for children 6 and under had been produced with either no thimerosal or only trace amounts, but the exception is some versions of the flu shot. As Vincent points out, thimerosal contains only Ethyl Mercury which isn’t accumulated by the body like Methyl Mercury. The reason they have kept small amounts of it in Flu shots is due to the use of eggs in the manufacturing process.
Study after study has shown the Thimerosal has no harmful side effects and since it has been removed from all of the other vaccines since 2001, autisim rates haven’t declined.
Sorry for the error! Thanks for keeping me honest!
Bill Donohue is using a blurb from Stephen Colbert to promote his new book: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/donohue_quotes_colbert_review.php
You touched a little bit on High-fructose Corn Syrup in this podcast, but maybe that subject should be revisited on the show in the future because it’s something worth investigating. On this subject, I’m not an expert at all but my understanding of the issue is that HFCS is broken down in the digestive tract differently than regular sugar (sucrose) is. And this difference is thought by some people to cause certain health issues that wouldn’t occur if a similar amount of sucrose had been consumed instead of HFCS.
Here’s a good anti-HFCS take-off response to one of those pro-HFCS TV ads that has some of this info in it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYiEFu54o1E