The topic of white privilege and male privilege are subjects that most of us have heard about while reading in the left blogosphere.
This morning I read an article at CNN about the indignation of the creators of Veggie Tales when they found that their product had been edited for television.
But now that the vegetable stars have hit network television, they cannot speak as freely as they once did, and that has got the Parents Television Council steamed.
The conservative media-watchdog group issued a statement Wednesday blasting NBC, which airs "VeggieTales," for editing out some references to God from the children's animated show.
"What struck me and continues to strike me is the inanity of ripping the heart and soul out of a successful product and not thinking that there will be consequences to it," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council. "The series is successful because of its biblical world view, not in spite of it.
This cry of censorship from an organization that the Cato Institute called "relentless censorship advocates" rings a bit hollow. Of course it is easy to shout back "Hypocrites!" but it might be more accurate to think about the blindness of religious privilege.
It's not as common to find discussions of religious (and in this society, that means Christian) privilege as it is for those about race or gender. Lo and behold, someone has made a Christian privilege checklist. I think some of the items are debatable, but in general it captures the way that being on top, the most accepted, and not subject to the kind of restriction that those same people on top would apply to others is taken for granted. Austin Cline did an about.com piece on religious privilege for their atheism section, and it's not a deep thinking kind of article (it is about.com after all) but he does get this part:
Most "battles" in the Christian Right's so-called Culture Wars can be best understood if seen, at least in part, as attempts to reassert and enforce Christian privilege in modern society. One of the hallmarks of modernity has been the rooting out of various forms of illegitimate privilege, with Christian and religious privilege being among the last.
...
A common defense of Christian privilege is the idea that Christians are a majority, and in a democracy, the majority rules. If Christians want to shape legal, political, and cultural institutions to express their religious values and to privilege both Christianity, that's what being a Christian Nation is all about. In a liberal democracy, however, the rights and equality of all are protected. Christians can no more vote to privilege Christianity than whites can vote to privilege their race.
Of course what I was thinking while reading the CNN story was how privilege has blinded them to the Golden Rule and Proverbs 16-18: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Posted by binky at September 23, 2006 07:53 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics | Religion