When a Line is Crossed

Your blog entry was very informative. Thanks for your effort. We have started a new site called FaithTube

(http://faithtu.be). It contains religious videos from all around the internet. If you could visit us then it would be great.

Thanks.
Simone.

It's pretty hard for folks past 60 to have any appreciation for today's humor - or music, for that matter. Since Corporate America co-opted both venues and the news media for their own profit and control, the quality that was fairly common in these entertainment venues has long disappeared. I don't think this is necessarily just an age-related phenomenon.

This is Big Business applying lightweight formulas for quick success and the exercise of vast control over artistic creativity. I see this more in the music industry because I rarely go to movies - other than by movie-by-video.

As far as quality goes, whether you liked George Carlin or hated him, he had gravity - really the Lenny Bruce of his age. He conjured up biting, truth-telling, social satire that we will likely never see again.

Say good-bye to the 'good old days' - the young ones will probably never know what they missed.

Not to poke fun at the dead but heart problems are often the result being steeped in one's own bile.

Carlin's increasingly manic on stage performances ceased being funny to me 10 or 20 years ago.

George Carlin, 71, the much-honored American stand-up comedian whose long career was distinguished by pointed social commentary that placed him on the cultural cutting edge, died last night in Santa Monica, Calif.

His death was reported by the Reuters news agency and on the Los Angeles Times Web site. He had long struggled with health problems and a heart condition dating to the 1970s.

Carlin was selected last week by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to receive this year's Mark Twain Prize, a lifetime achievement award presented to an outstanding comedian.

Over a career of half a century, Carlin placed himself in the forefront of comic commentators on the American scene. He was particularly known for an album that referred to what he described as the seven words that could not be used on television.

The playing of the album on a radio station led to a case that went to the Supreme Court, and the material was judged indecent but not obscene. The legal controversy brought about the enunciation of a rule permitting a ban on certain material when children are most likely to be in the audience.

The case was one of the highlights of a career that included TV and radio performances, including HBO specials and many comic albums.

The New York-born performer, who also was an Air Force veteran, once summed up his approach:

"I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."

Carlin's entertainment career began in 1956 at a radio station while he was in the service.

In the early 1960s, he began his one-man act, and his live appearances and the albums he recorded proved highly popular.

His wife Brenda, predeceased him. They had a daughter, Kelly. A second wife survives him.

HO Hollywood pokes fun at christianity almost monthly. They lose money most of the time but they still do it.

I am awaiting for a movie from Myers which makes fun of Christianity or Islam, especially I would like to see if anybody has the guts to do comedy on Islam...

Hollywood lost track of what was truly funny some years back. I find most of what passes for comedy these days to be little more than mindless boring or embarrassingly silly mental pratfalls. I thought Borat which the under thirty crowd seemed to think hysterical an embarassment of the sort that twenty years ago no one would have paid money to see. But then I was raised in a different time in which making fun of people who happened to be different from one's self was largely fraowned upon and not thought funny by decent people.

All that being said to expect those who do not follow your religious views to hold them in the same esteem as you do is a sort of exercise in totalitarianism of the mind.

People get to believe what they want including that your most cherished beliefs are stuff and nonsense and ought to be treated as such.

You, on the other hand aren't and shouldn't be required to support such rude and arrogant people with your time talent and treasure.

i see my words were to honest for you to actally post.. i will paray for you and your church to get a litter better

free speech and every americans right to be right or wrong in public speech art and comedy, or religion or written words, or satire or lampooing in a well defined and for most people a bedrock moral and values issue.. for most americans the feww people in the faith community who because they are on tv or have a lot of money think it is fine to promote and elect dishonest, possible immoral midgets into office to misguidedly start wars, and borrow money from china to give away in tax breaks to wealthy people to bribe the faithfull, in of all things appperently in the name of jesus christ and christians, and then then smear attack and try to coverup all or most of the wrongoing, and actually pardon some of the guilty, while still trying to wrest power and control from people who may know better and be better human beings than they are ...and they claim 2 do this for the moral good of us ... quite frankly i, and many many real americans are appalled at some religious leaders and so called representatives in both parties vacuaous lack of morales, insite, judgement, and honesty, and commpassion in many many areas including the tragic idea that you cabn bring peace through war and aggressive acts instead of diplomacy and justice.....maybe you should turn your fine critical eye to your own log in your eye and maybe leave commedy to the commedians,, i for one am not amused by the comedy or errors and bluster being perpetuated not by good bedrock moral americans but by charletans, snakeoil salesmen, and the lovers of money and here i'm talking about some preachers and organized religions.. if i have read you r article correctly perhaps shame on you it is possible you have mispoken or i have missread your points.. sincerly...
keith

:) despite all of the titillating pseudocontroversy tugging at my curiosity i went and saw get smart-

the bad guys were chechnyans- which is pretty clever- both muslims and russians!
i dont want to spoil anything in case someone else sees it-
well, its it really possible to spoil it as its your basic formula-

two thumbs up-

one thing i liked about it was the underlying message that even the bad guys are people too-

ps- i also really loved geoffrey rush's portrayal of peter sellers

VICTORIA:

I have all of Peter Seller's films and when things get boring I watch one.

Now "we're getting down to the brass nails." I doubt this 'disrespectful' film is even close but they are tweaking my appetite with all this disrespect for humor. Could it possibly be that funny? I suspect somebody's tender feelings have been hurt by the truth, not usually real entertaining.

i guess i'll have to see both- i don't know if get smart will stay true to it's 60's roots or be in 2008- so i dont know yet if the (old) bad guys will be russians or the (new) bad guys muslims...

i'll let you know

BGONE_ i was raised in pittsburgh pa- so i know well what you mean :)

JIHADIST- well i was raised on spy spoofs-
casino royale, our man flint...
im the biggest peter sellers fan there is-
so that stuff is right up my alley-
now i dont know what to see- get smart or the love guru- :)

It's not all that complicated. Heaven is a place of laughter while it's impossible to laugh in hell. That's how the REAL GOD wants it and the REAL GOD gets everything IT wants. Those on their way to hell by not laughing are just practicing for the real thing. And, we know all three great faiths are all headed for hell because the being in the burning bush was the Lord of hell Himself, Lucifer. What's new is the number one symptom of "hell bound" which is no sense of humor at all is now shown to apply to the Hindu faith as well.

The Bible along with other "not included" sacred scriptures tells us the supernatural being in the burning bush, the one Moses made the deal with was Lucifer. If you can't read the Bible or don't have access to "other sacred scriptures" then you can have a look at hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul. Wikipedia doesn't have it yet so I understand.

There's nothing funny about selling one's soul and whatever it is Hindu folks do must be somewhat similar. Maybe their "next lives" are as cock roaches or worse for following some devil god like those who faith the fallen Lucifer is God. It's easy to go to hell but it's not humorous only funny folks would demand to get in on it and claim to be moral. Understanding comes by noticing that lying is not one of their deadly sins. Same thing for the Hindu "faith"?

Pastor Smith, I always enjoy your messages and this one is truly another one of your best.

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things. it's name my days personalities. spent days were having came sweet,

Re Movie Love Guru on further exploration of the movie website:

I get the impression that the movie is not about a Hindu guru or Hinduism at all, but indirectly about Dr Deepak Chopra and his collection of wisdom from different religious/non-religious sources, and his unique blend of them, being portrayed as fictional comedy! TM is introduced in the movie guru's teachings at a subliminal level. Dr Deepak Chopra seems to have lent his voice to Guru Pikta!

For more visit

http://www.thegurupitka.com/

VICTORIA:

At churches in Ohio everybody has two significant parts kept with them all the time. One is an opinion that is nearly always impossible to distinguish from the other part. One need not see and is advised to not look at the other part but just take their opinions "on faith."

Hello Victoria,

If one is to go by Mike Myer's other movies, speficically the Austin Powers' series.....There's no accounting for taste of what people like to see and find humourous.

From his Austin Powers movies, Mike Myers seems to do parodies of the sixties spy movies and unfunny to my mind too. But there's no accounting for taste.

So, on this "Love Guru", one is never sure if he is parodying Indian gurus of Hollywood movies, or he is just, well......

Who knows for certain what with this artistic licence and satires and parodies is good for us and all that.

Cheers

"J"

how can anyone have an opinion until they have actually seen the movie?

Hi!
Thanks for the very good commentary. I agree that if the "love guru" had been a Protestant minister, Catholic priest or Jewish rabbi, there would have been a lot more controversy. Since I am a "Christian" I can only speak for them, and some I know do not like to laugh at themselves.
God Bless!