"Say It Isn't So"

Greetings citizens.

I'm in the midst of a crazy day trying to extricate myself from my current job before the next one sinks its claws into me... so until I can see my way clear to post something substantive, head on over to Paddyco's place and dig the reanimation job he's attempting to perform on our old '80s favorites, Hall & Oates.

Blogging soundtrack: "Just Can't Make It" from Maktub's "Subtle Ways"

Wired: The Resurrection of Indie Radio

Pursuant to the post below, I found a great piece in Wired magazine that actually gives me a little bit of hope for the future of radio.

Quoting:

Ultimately, broadcasters will have the chance to spray multiple streams of bits into listeners' dashboards and homes - as many as six streams per station, depending on the fidelity requirements of the programming. Because the 1s and 0s in HD radio are functionally identical to those sent across the Net, says Jim Griffin, founder of media consulting firm Cherry Lane Digital, "digital audio implies the ability to carry video, software, email, text messages, you name it." Within a few years, he says, radios will have what he calls a buffer - a TiVo-like device that stores broadcast signals at the listeners' command.

"You program it to store All Things Considered for the drive home. Maybe on the show there's an alert about a new virus. You punch a button and download an antivirus update into your buffer from NPR B, then take that into your house when you get home." Or perhaps you hear a review that makes you want to get a movie or an album, which you download as you drive. Meanwhile, your radio, which taps into the automobile's GPS unit, is constantly scanning for local traffic reports, and when a pertinent one appears, interrupts and then resumes the stored All Things Considered.

"At the other side of the transition," Griffin says, "digital radio isn't necessarily radio in the way we think of radio, other than the fact that it uses transmitters. It's all about pushing and pulling bits into the buffer."

The only dissonant note I would sound: I am not in favor of anything that adds more buttons and distractions to the driving environment. My fellow travelers are distracted enough, thank you.

This just in: commercial radio lies to its listeners

Have to give a shout to some great press my girl Lisa Wood in Seattle is getting for calling on the carpet the corrupt practices of commercial radio. Sure, I know that commercial radio DJs often are voicetracked from another city, that requests mean jack, and that countdowns are completely fabricated... but the average listener doesn't.

As she says:

“The most frustrating thing to me was the lies,” Wood said. “Every single person that called that radio station generally wanted to make a request. … You’d say, ‘Yeah, I’ll try to get it on.’ But we weren’t, you know. So it came down to this thing where it was like coming up on the playlist then maybe you’d get a good phone call out of it. Then you’d try to edit up the phone call to make it sound like this person actually got his request. It’s so deceitful.”

Lisa, if you're planning to be in Austin, Tex. next week I'd love to buy you a drink. Keep up the good work!

Is Julio Franco 87 years old?

Well, my brother thinks there's a decent possibility that the Braves first baseman is something more than human. I have to say, I wouldn't be surprised. There has to be more going on there than "Jesus Juice."

.

And heeeere's Steve:

I was watching The Two Towers extended yesterday, and there was the scene where Eowyn gives Aragorn the bowl of stew and they're talking and she says that he rode into war with Theoden's grandfather or something. And she tries to figure out how old he is and it finally comes out that he's 87 and she realizes that he's a Dunedain and all that.

One of these days, the same thing is going to happen with Julio Franco. Someone's going to find a picture of him in some long-lost Negro league photograph from the 40's and we'll realize that all this time he was actually an heir to the great Numenorean baseball players of the west.

Or something like that.

Righteous Journalism

-- Frontrunner for the coveted (?) "Charlatan Of The Year" Award!

On Sunday night, I was fortunate enough to catch a Dateline: NBC expose of televangelist Benny Hinn. The report was itself a follow-up from a similar report in 2002.

The gist of the NBC report?

• Despite Hinn's claims to be "an instrument of God's healing," there is not one single documented instance of someone being healed at one of his "crusades." In fact, the show contacted some people who allegedly had been healed who ended up dying of the very conditions they had been "healed" of.
• There is no public accounting of all the millions Hinn raises (NBC didn't say this on the air, but I would point out here how telling it is that Hinn organization is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a voluntary watchdog group that makes sure church-related nonprofits handle their resources wisely and in a transparent manner. ECFA now has an article posted to deal with the traffic the Hinn piece has spurred.)
• Hinn doesn't keep his promises. "Pastor Benny" promised, on stage, to pay for the education of a child who thought he'd been healed of his eye disease. But the family got nothing, and still has gotten nothing despite repeated promises. (And the child wasn't actually healed, it turns out.)
• Hinn lies and exaggerates. "Pastor Benny" has told his followers that their funds help "thousands" around the world. But Dateline's research turned up only 247 children supported by the ministry. I was impressed that it was that many!
• Hinn lives a lavish lifestyle, funded completely by his "ministry." This includes a pricey private jet, a multi-million dollar California coastal mansion, $80,000 cars, Beverly Hills shopping sprees, "layovers" in such places as Milan, Cancun and Hawaii, and an insistence on staying only in the most expensive hotel suites on the road. (Many costing nearly $10,000 a night.)

As soon as the piece began, I suspected that the Trinity Foundation of Dallas was involved. The TF (a Christian organization, by the way) has long investigated money-grubbing televangelist charlatans like Hinn, to the point that nearly every TV expose you see on one of these guys uses Trinity's well-oiled research machine. This was the first time I'd seen Trinity's leader, Ole Anthony, do an on-camera interview though.

Trinity rightly puts these guys in the crosshairs because they prey on the weakest and most vulnerable, and have the gall to do it in the name of Jesus. There are thousands of really sick people who go to Hinn crusades, wait fruitlessly for a call to the stage, and leave bitterly disappointed. And there are people who give him money they can ill afford, only to have it fund private jet trips to the Mediterranean.

And after all this, solid guys like Michael Horton (who had the audacity to publicly check Hinn's theology against the Bible) have to get hate mail because they dared to publicly question one of "God's Anointed." (Check out the selection here, and note the awful grammar, spelling and reasoning from the Hinn defenders.)

But here is the point I love in all this: by virtue of having Christians involved in repudiating charlatans like Hinn, the issue of having greedy televangelists represent Christianity in the media is negated. Negated, because anyone who watched the entire piece saw thoughtful, balanced Christians like Horton and Anthony join in condemning Hinn, his theology and his methods.

In this respect, it is far different from the televangelist exposes of the 1980s, when many did equate televangelists with evangelical Christianity.

The difference between Benny Hinn, Inc. and the Trinity Foundation is night and day. Ole Anthony and Trinity challenge me to the core. In inner-city Dallas, they take in the homeless and work with them until they're able to be self-supporting... a process which involves everything from dealing honestly with addictions to getting restraining orders to halt violent ex-spouses. According to Anthony, who's passionate about this, if every church in the U.S. took in just one homeless person we'd lick the whole problem.

Anthony, a rich man at one point, now lives a pauper's life, and his ministry is gut-level. (Trinity also publishes a religious satire magazine: "The Door," which I love.) It feels like what Jesus would be doing, which is much more than I could say for "Pastor Benny."

I love Trinity's explanation of why their investigative work is necessary:

The church should be shocked by the televangelists' blatant parade of pagan ideas and their "gimme gospel of greed." The church should be ashamed for allowing a $2.5 billion business to prey on the elderly, the poor and the desperate and do it in the name of God.

I'm calling this paganism, because if you take the cross out of Christianity, nothing is left but paganism--even if it looks like a church. And the cross is nowhere to be found in these broadcasts. Sadly, the only picture many people have of God is through these televangelists' TV circuses.

Amen!

"I've been everywhere, man"

I'm in the midst of a "departure" from my major airline employer to be a full-time scribbler, and I was asked an interesting question at lunch today: where are all of the places I've traveled on my airline benefits?

Full disclosure: while Finchale, UK is where my heart lives, I personally must reside in Atlanta, Georgia. (Suggested slogan: The Next Best Thing to a Real City in the American South.)

So here's an exhaustive list of my destinations. I've put asterisks next to the places I've visited in a single day at least once (with no hotels involved.)
Albany, N.Y.
Asheville, N.C.
Amsterdam
Barcelona
Beijing
Bentonville, Ark. (NW Ark. Regional)
Boston*
Brunswick, Ga.
Brussels
Chicago*
Cincinnati*
Cleveland*
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Columbia, S.C.*
Dallas
Denver
Detroit
Dublin
Grand Junction, Colo.
Greensboro, N.C.
Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C.*
Hartford, Conn.*
Houston
Kansas City, Mo.*
Kuwait City
Jacksonville, Fla.
Las Vegas
London
Los Angeles*
Montreal
Myrtle Beach, S.C.*
New York*
Omaha, Neb.
Ontario, Calif.
Orlando, Fla.*
Philadelphia*
Phoenix
Portland, Maine*
Rome
Saint Louis
Salt Lake City*
San Diego
San Francisco
Seattle
Sint Maarten, N.A.
Tampa, Fla.
Tulsa, Okla.*
Washington, D.C.*
Worcester, Mass.

Open for business

OK, folks, I'm back. I've been going through a work transition, and some last-minute traveling, but now I plan to pour some energy into this blog. (A pity -- I had been blogging elsewhere and had raised my profile quite well in the TTLB ecosystem, but now I am starting over for various reasons. However, just know that I'm not new to this!)

For now, expect at least one update every weekday. Probably in the evening if I'm being good.

Topics upcoming:
* The New Urban / Big Box conundrum
* A surprising breeding ground for "Next Big Things"
* World-class ale in cans? You bet!
* Gunning down the charlatans
* Post-evangelicalism and how I avoided it
* Colonizing the "commons" -- a place where the Left has a real point
* The moppet's "mommy thing" and how it makes daddy feel
* Snow=crack. The addiction of winter sports.
* What Joel Osteen and the LDS Church have in common

I'm a wanderer, yes, but also a professional writer. Heretical Orthodoxy is my scratch pad for ideas (often those which have no place in the paid outlets), and I welcome conversationalists.