Wife Swap 2/17/06

[NurseCarmen]

Pagans vs. Jesus freaks.

That toothless Jesus lady is going to give me nightmares for a long long time.

And wow, it was funny how welcoming and friendly the pagans were and how close minded and unfriendly the christians were.

Now, some of these reality shows are edited to make out people to seem a characteriture of themselves, but ... well. wow. just wow. There seemed to be no need to make her out to any more freaky than she was.

[AuntiePam]

Do you mean Trading Spouses? Is Wife Swap on tonight too?

I was just at another board (a horror board) where one of the regulars announced that she'll be on Wife Swap. They're filming in March, a producer visited with her today. It should be great. She works at a radio station, runs a chat room for horror authors, and loves Alice Cooper. :)

It'll be nice to get an insider's point of view on the editing.

[NurseCarmen]

Yes! Trading spouses!

[AuntiePam]

Was it a repeat? The Jesus Warrior lady?

[Zabali_Clawbane]

Is it the woman in this (http://arkansastonight.castpost.com/185809.html) video? (I won't use the term "lady" with that one, it would be a misuse of the word.)

[Rushgeekgirl]

That woman was so completely over-the-top it wasn't believable.
I know some of the fundiest of the fundamentalists and I've never seen anything like that before. If she wasn't faking it for the camera, she has a mental illness. Why did they use her as the Christian example and use the nicest pagans they could find for the other family?

I would love to try out for this show, but I have a feeling they would find me a bit too boring. ;)

[Stillwell Angel]

When that episode originally aired a few months ago, Jesus Warrior rode out her fifteen minutes of fame like a true camera whore.

She appeared on the tonight show and some dude made a bobble head doll of her that sold for (I believe) $800 on Ebay.

For days after watching that, our favorite sayings around here were

"You're all DARK SIDED!!!!

and

"You're not a CHRISTUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!!!!!!

[Linty Fresh]

That woman was so completely over-the-top it wasn't believable.
I know some of the fundiest of the fundamentalists and I've never seen anything like that before. If she wasn't faking it for the camera, she has a mental illness. Why did they use her as the Christian example and use the nicest pagans they could find for the other family?

I would love to try out for this show, but I have a feeling they would find me a bit too boring. ;)

Gotta agree with Rushgeekgirl about this (The mental illness part, I mean. I'm sure she's not boring.). That's not the Christianity talking. That's the I-really-need-to-get-back-on-my-meds talking. I grew up in pentacostal/JW/rattlesnake handling Christianity country, and no one I knew came close to that level of insanity.

Either that, or she's just fucking with us to get on TV.

[Alias]

I'm going to sound like a nut saying this, but that episode really freaked me out. I got a little weepy after watching it because it bothered me so much that the "pagan" mother was so kind and caring, while the Christian mother was so hateful and cruel. Her own family seemed to have a positive experience with the astrology mother, and they wanted to tell her about it. All the Christian mother wanted to do was spew venom and hate for the evil family she had to spend the week with. She sounded like she'd been forced to spend the week at a concentration camp from the way she wept and carried on about how terrible it was.
I thought it was funny that she reconsidered the tainted, dark-sided, evil 50K.

[Liberal]

Goes to show that labels are cheap. The "pagan" woman was Christ-like while the "Christian" woman was demonic. I felt extremely sorry for Abigail (the little girl) for having to witness the tirade, and for Brooke who, inexplicably, was given no money for dance school (outside of Ashley's influence).

[NurseCarmen]

What about the Christian woman's blonde "friend"? How much holier than thou can you get?

[AuntiePam]

Pagan woman was much too polite with those harpies, and Pagan dad was so nice and patient with God Warrior Woman.

Some of Marguerite's friends posted on the Wife Swap board that she really wasn't like that. Sorry folks, selective editing can do a lot, but her frenzies weren't the result of editing.

I thought it was weird that Pagan Dad called her Marguerite, but when she said her name, she said Margaret. What's up with that? French pronunciations are eeeeeeeeevil?

[Frostillicus]

I literally had nightmares aftering seeing a tape of this episode. I am not kidding. That "Christian" woman is scarier than Hannibal Lector. :eek:

[Hostile Dialect]

Some of you are befuddled at the show's message (I haven't seen it, BTW), which seems to be that our society's norms and the people we consider "good" and "bad" are in some cases not indicative of reality. I have a few friends who are pagan or Wiccan and are uniformly the nicest people I've ever met, in large part because their various religious beliefs never included "look down on other people because they don't follow exactly the same moral code as you". Don't get me wrong, traditional Western religion has done a lot of good for a lot of people--I have one close friend who has saved herself from sex addiction with the help of her newfound life as an Orthodox Jew, and another who was able to leave a white supremacy group with his Christian salvation--but sometimes we have to realize that people aren't necessarily what they seem. The way the Abrahamic religions teach its followers to be mortally afraid of other religions--whether that be the other Abrahamic religions or the worship of Athena and Neptune--is, if you ask me, akin to the way white supremacy groups teach their followers to be afraid of black people and Jews, and it has similar effects (just usually not on as large or noticeable a scale).

[Guinastasia]

What got me watching the clip online was the little girl in the Christian family just hiding her face her dad's shoulder-she looked really upset, the poor little thing.

She may have been faking it for the camera, but I don't think her daughter knew, and that was just cruel.

[ddgryphon]

Quite simply, mental illness knows no religion. People like that can be found in any group and they all need help regardless of what denomination they cling to.

[pendgwen]

It just kills me that this woman is convinced that she planted seeds of Christianity in the other family. Actually no. You've singlehandedly ensured that those kids will never want anything to do with Christianity.

[Guinastasia]

What was she like with the pagan family?

[pendgwen]

What was she like with the pagan family?
She absolutely refused to listent to anything about their beliefs but made sure she had one-on-one conversations with each child where she "witnessed" at them and tried to pressure them in to going to church with her. They all refused. So she went to their father and talked to him about how much she needed them to come to church with her. Because the dad was a nice guy who was trying to be a good host and make her feel comfortable the whole family ended up going to church. I don't think the pagan kids witnessed any of her real meltdowns but she did keep calling their beliefs ungodly. So unless the kids have other contact with Christianity they'll be left with the impression that Christians are rude, intollerant, controlling loons.

[marymargaret]

I wonder what the God Warrior is up to these days?

[Guinastasia]

I wonder what the God Warrior is up to these days?


Why not visit her website? (http://www.margueriteperrin.com/)

[marymargaret]

Omg!!!

[START]

Best episode ever...the Pagan family was mad cool but I find it hard to dislike "Christian Mommy" because she was such a character you couldn't make her up.

Put God in your hearts and you'll know what I'm talking about.

[Linty Fresh]

I literally had nightmares aftering seeing a tape of this episode. I am not kidding. That "Christian" woman is scarier than Hannibal Lector. :eek:

I wouldn't want to be eaten by either of them.

[Liberal]

[Carrie's Mother's voice]

You'll know the love o' Jesus when you're burnin' in hell.

[/Carrie's Mother's voice]

[AuntiePam]

I kept waiting for Marguerite to give us an idea of what her faith was about. "This is dark-sided" and "They're not Christian!" and "Get me to a church, now!"

She had a chance to tell everyone what Jesus meant to her, but she was too ignorant to take advantage of the opportunity. All she could do was vomit up fundie buzzwords, "You need Jesus in your heart." Okay. But why?

Just ignorant, she was. I don't think anyone thinks that most Christians are like that though, so she didn't do any damage to anyone but herself, and her poor family.

[YWalker]

Best episode ever...the Pagan family was mad cool but I find it hard to dislike "Christian Mommy" because she was such a character you couldn't make her up.

Put God in your hearts and you'll know what I'm talking about.
I think "Christian Mommy" was trying to be a decent, likable person, but she finally just snapped. I think her behaviour could have been indicative of mental illness.

The one who REALLY got to me was her blond friend --- the one who came to visit Pagan Mom in the Christian Mom's home, and then immediately started giving her the inquisition --- "Are you a Christian"? "Unitarians? Isn't that one of those churches that believes in a "higher power" rather than God?", etc. The Crazy Christian Lady seemed legitimately crazy. Blond lady was just a judgemental bitch.

[Alias]

Best episode ever...the Pagan family was mad cool but I find it hard to dislike "Christian Mommy" because she was such a character you couldn't make her up.

Put God in your hearts and you'll know what I'm talking about.

I loved the pagan family. The mother was a kind, decent and caring person. She went into the show with an open mind, and the desire to learn something from the experience. I disagree with you calling the christian mother a character, though. In my opinion, she was a hateful, closed-minded, unstable looney. I do agree with the possibility of her being mentally ill, though. She was just way too out there to be anything else. She scared me.

[AuntiePam]

Just a heads up -- ABC's doing a 2-hour Wife Swap special tonight, revisiting some families from last season.

I wish Fox would do this with Trading Spouses -- I really want to know if that one super-controlling woman let her husband use $20,000 to plant his orchard.