Having criticized KSNW, Channel 3, on this blog for pulling “The Book of Daniel” from tonight’s lineup, I’m happy to praise the station now for thinking better of that decision. Officials have decided to put the series’ two-hour premiere back on the schedule for 8 tonight, then make a decision about continuing the series once viewer reaction comes in.
That’s the preferred way to handle a controversial show — by paying attention to reaction from people who’ve actually seen it, rather than prevent anyone from seeing it.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
KSNW, Channel 3, is a business that can choose to serve its customers however it thinks best. But it was a disservice to the vast majority of its Kansas viewers to pull the NBC drama “The Book of Daniel” from its Friday night programming in response to 300 orchestrated complaints — all from people who haven’t yet seen the show but have prejudged it to be offensive to Christians.
“The Book of Daniel” is about the dysfunctional family of an Episcopal priest. Maybe it’s junk, like 95 percent of the rest of what’s on television. Maybe it’s the show of the decade.
KSNW should have let all its viewers decide for themselves, via their remote controls. Instead, it let a few hundred people, urged on by the Mississippi-based American Family Association, decide for all of us that we shouldn’t be able to see it.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has taken some heat for being slow to condemn the Jack Abramoff corruption. But it took the gloves off in an editorial today, calling on GOP lawmakers to “banish the Abramoff crowd from polite Republican society, and start remembering why you were elected in the first place.” The editorial acknowledged that Democrats are also stained by the scandal, but it focused fault on self-styled conservatives — including Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas — “who claimed to want to clean up Washington instead of cleaning up themselves.” And it noted that “the party that swept to power on term limits, spending restraint and reform has become the party of incumbency, 6,371 highway-bill ‘earmarks,’ and K Street.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Washington Post blogger Emily Messner offered this quote from James Madison to try to decide how the Founding Fathers would respond to the domestic spying:
A “man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. . . . He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
There ought to be a law against “Twas the Night Before Christmas” parodies after Jan. 1, but this timely one from the office of Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., via The Hill newspaper, nicely sets the feisty mood for next week’s Alito hearings:
‘Twas a month after Miers, when all through the land,
Went a plague of amnesia ’bout how she was canned.
Now, Cornyn! Now, Sessions! Now Kyl and Frist!
Not one had some recall of how she was dissed.
They blathered and brayed about up-or-down votes.
They acted dismayed and gave virulent quotes.
They forgot how their own was battered and fried,
How an up-or-down vote on her was denied.
With her conservative views not patently clear,
They allowed a campaign of cynical smear.
On Alito, they say, he deserves confirmation,
But don’t wait for the hearings, just accept coronation.
Don’t ask if his views on the law are too cramped,
This substitute nom must be rubber-stamped.
So “advice and consent” gets thrown out the door,
When there’s peace to be made with the right wing’s hard core.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Why was $3.4 million for Lewis and Clark bicentennial activities included in the 2006 defense appropriations bill? How about $3.4 million for Breathalyzers? Or $1 million for a “Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative”? Or $1.7 million for “brown tree snakes”? Or $500,000 for the Arctic Winter Games in Alaska? If Congress insists on paying for such pork, it should do so without the political cover of a bill intended to support national defense.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The following satirical headlines come from BorowitzReport.com:
CIA TO MONITOR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS; Hopes to Decipher Threats in Yearly Promises
FORMER FEMA CHIEF VOWS TO MAKE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS BY MARCH 1; Michael Brown Apologizes for Delay
PARIS HILTON RESOLVES TO BE EVEN SLUTTIER IN ’06; Hotel Heiress Setting Bar Impossibly High, Experts Say
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
It would be best if the historic Carnegie Library building at 220 S. Main, the former home of the Omnisphere, were used for a public purpose. But absent any viable plan — or the ready resources to fix and reinvent the deteriorating building — it would be much better for the city to allow Fidelity Bank to lease and renovate the building, as the company is proposing, than to leave it empty. There’s something else on the line besides the 92-year-old building’s fate, too: the city’s reputation as being hard to deal with when it comes to private use of public property.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
