"The Catholic League believes in free speech"- unless it involves TV

The BBQ Pit
1

Although my parents and grandparents are Catholic, I consider myself semi-agnostic. And I love controversy. So I was interested in something that appeared on the website of the organization Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

In this press release earlier in the month, the League commented about a marathon in San Francisco where a number of runners dressed as the Pope engaged in risqué behavior. The president of the League, William Donohue, said he would not sue the city over the incident since “we at the Catholic League believe in free speech.” I found this humorous, since in the past, the League has shown just the opposite when it comes to television:

-The League forced The WB to remove a sketch from an episode of the animated childrens’ history show Histeria! which depicted the Inquisition as a game show called “Convert or Die.”
-They forced Fox to change a line in a Simpsons episode in a scene poking fun at the incomprehensibility of a good number of TV commercials. The scene in question featured a parody of a ZZ Top music video ending with the tagline, “The Catholic Church. We’ve made a few…changes.” The League, apparently not realizing the ZZ Top parody or understanding the joke, forced the producers to change the line from “The Catholic Church” to “The Church.”
-They made NBC pull from reruns a recent episode of the TV show Committed in which two non-Catholics are accidentially given Holy Communion. Not being Catholic, they get rid of the communion wafer by flushing it down a toilet.

And now they are up in arms over Showtime’s recent episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit! in which the duo comments on Mother Teresa and the idea that she was apparently not as kind to the poor as she was made out to be, often depriving them of things such as beds or bathrooms. (I don’t get Showtime, I’m just going by the press release). He even goes so far as to make a Nazi comparison. Strangely, Donahue is not offended by barbs toward himself, and I wonder if would have been as offended if the show made the same claims but did not use lines such as “Mother fucking Teresa.”

I really have no other opinion, just to point out the irony of the phrase “We at the Catholic League believe in free speech.” Yes, they do. Just keep your thoughts about Catholics off of television.

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It’s all pretty funny too. “We support free speech as long as you say what we want” is how I see it. I saw Bullshit, and they were pretty harsh. If it’s false, they’ll be called on it. If it’s true, they “done real good”. They also had a lot of fun with the Dalai Lama and Ghandi. I guess they don’t watch South Park. That’s good, because it would have given them coronaries :smiley:

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Actually, they have complained about South Park in the past, and mentioned that the head of the Catholic League commented on an episode of the show at one time on Phil Donahue’s show. I just think the idea of Phil Donahue interviewing Bill Donahue is funny.

4

Everybody is for free speech, until they see speech they don’t like.

5

That is BS. Just because some people are opposed to what another person is saying doesn’t mean that they support censorship. We exercise our right to speak up too.
But these situations are a little different. What do you think?

There have been a couple of times when I wanted to see misleading thread titles changed so that they accurately reflected the truth of what the thread contained. I remember only one of them. It inaccurately attributed a stupid remark to a Southerner for the purpose of pointing out how stupid the Southerner was. Later in the thread it is pointed out that the quote was actually from SNL. Was I advocating censorship to ask the Mod to change the title? (I had been told previously that that was what I should do when a title was inaccurate.)

I am a civil liberatarian. On the news tonight I heard about a man who owns a television station who has begun censoring some of the network television shows and commercials that are broadcast. I wasn’t familiar with some of them. The only one that comes to mind is the Paris Hilton hamburger commercial.

I’m opposed to government censorship. But this man owns the station. Does he have a right to decide what he will broadcast and what he will not broadcast? Is that censorship or responsibility for one’s actions?

6

How the fuck exactly would the city of San Francisco be liable for the behaviour of a bunch of marathon runners?

7

WAG here, but I’d say he does have the right as long as he hasn’t signed a contract stipulating he will broadcast the network programming and commercials unless there’s local programming that can reasonably preempt the network.

As to the Catholic League, they have every right to voice their opinions. That’s it. That’s as far as it goes. The networks and producers and station owners are chickenshit and letting themselved be cowed (does that make them chickenbeef?) into submission if they yield.

That’s what I like about Penn and Teller. They pull no punches.

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You really think they wouldn’t want the government censoring the things they don’t like for them? I’m sure they’d be thrilled about it.

9

Quiet, you.

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Actually, I really don’t think that is true.

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To begin, I view William Donohue as a self-aggrandizing asshole of the first order, and the Catholic League to be, as far as a I can tell, his personal soapbox from which he sputters and spouts whenever he finds something that offends his constricted view of Catholic dignity, particularly if by doing so he can get his face in front of a camera.

That being said, I think that advocating that private media companies change the content of their shows does not constitute advocating censorship. The media companies have the free speech right to show what they want, and Donohue and the Catholic League have the free speech to advocate for change. As long as it involves only private companies and organizations, it’s not censorship.

On the other hand, when the government is involved, it becomes censorship. Advocating that a city ban runners poking fun at the Pope, would be advocating censorship. As I’m sure Donohue and his legal advisors know, suing to try to enforce such a ban would be promptly shot down as improperly interfering with free speech.

In short, advocating that private companies change their programming, even if done by an asshole of the first order, is not inconsistent with free speech.

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I was wondering the same thing. I don’t even know how you could sue the runners themselves (identity theft?).

I love this line from Donohue’s response to Penn & Teller’s Mother Teresa segment:

Misrepresenting (in Donohue’s opinion) Mother Teresa is absolutely horrible, but calling Penn & Teller Nazis is… well… a figure of speech.

Blessed Jon Stewart has skewered clips of Donohue a couple of times on his show (one in which he screamed for tolerance and understanding, t hen in the same speech launched into a denunciation of gay activists).

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So a Catholic organization voiced its oppinion about certain things it didn’t like on TV. And TV executives agreed with them on some of the issues and made changes.

No one was forced to do anything, no one had their freedom of speech affected. Was there any point to this OP?

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To have some fun at the expense of a hypocrite.

15

That depends on what the Catholic League was capable of doing to them if they refused its demands.

16

That William Donohoe’s a hypocritical asshole and that the Catholic League is an organization of loony reactionaries? I can get with that program.

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I think you all know that I’m Catholic, and pretty strictly Catholic.

The Catholic League, however, makes me laugh my ass off.
Do I think someone dressed as the Pope, committing “questionable” acts, is disrespectful? Sure. Am I offended by it? On some level, sure. But I don’t think His Holiness much cares, so why should the Catholic League?
Disparaging the Church itself? Well… depends. The Simpsons thing I see along the lines of “Dogma.” It’s funny. The Church is ancient, and staid. “Jazzing it up” is funny, to me, anyway. To rail against that is silly, IMO.

Flushing a holy wafer… not funny to me. Especially post-blessing. That’s cutting a bit close to home, and I can see myself siding with the League on this one. The Koran-flushing’s got everyone up in arms, and this is the exact same theological ground we’re treading. Desecrating holy items= not cool.

The Mother Teresa bit? Well, she did a bunch of stuff, all of which is on record, and her acceptance of public life included an acceptance of public scrutiny, and, if you don’t like the way she did things, you’re perfectly welcome to second-guess her methods or her intentions. If all is well, she’ll come out vindicated, and, wherever she may be now, I’m not sure it’s an issue to her one way or the other. If all is not, well, isn’t the truth supposed to set you free?
The Holy Mother Church endures. A throwaway line on “The Simpsons” is not going to bring her crashing down, nor is some dude in a Pope costume (even if it’s the actual Pope). For Donohue to think so implies a lack of faith I find… disturbing. Plus, he’s a frickin’ nutjob.
There’s a great deal of actual anti-Catholic bias out there. If the Catholic League spent more of its resources either combatting the real bias (like a public-information campaign on the persecution of Catholics in China and South America) or eliminating the causes of the real bias (like compassionately aiding the victims of abuse, or, if that’s too much, removing the abusers), their mission would likely be closer to success than it is today, if all the laughing and pointing at Leaguers is any indication of “closeness to success.”

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Sure they sound pittable. Luckily fo me I don’t hear much about either myself. The OP didn’t discribe anything terrible, but if the people involved are tools then they should be pitted.

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I knew about persecution of Catholics in China, but South America? Isn’t something like 70% of the population there at least nominally Catholic? :confused:

20

Well, sure, but the various armies kill 'em when they get uppity, like when they support labor organizations or try to get medical supplies to sick people.