For anyone who thought that electing a black man president might mean America was on its way to growing up, overcoming petty bigotry, backbiting, and ignorance here’s a splash of cold water. According to a survey done by the Anti-Defamation League 61% of Americans believe religious values are under attack by Hollywood. A Hollywood which 22% agree is “pretty much run by Jews”. The solution to this problem according to 40% of them, is to start banning “dangerous ideas” from libraries. That’s right, America’s ready for a good old-fashioned book burning.
There has been some improvement. Back in 1964 fully half of respondents thought that the Jews were out to get them. Go us, we’re slightly less prone to becoming Nazis. Unfortunately, we still haven’t gotten over blaming our problems on other people. It’s the TV that made your husband cheat on you, not the fact that you haven’t seen the inside of a gym in 10 years. It’s the goddamn movies that turned your kid atheist, not the Catholic priest who molested him behind the pulpit after choir practice.
Apparently, Obama or no, we’re still a nation of half-crazed conspiracy theorists who refuse to take responsibility for our actions because it’s easier to scream and moan about entertainment. That guy on the TV just said he doesn’t like the Pope! They’re trying to take away Jesus! We’ve got to stop them! Shoot the artists! I’m sure that’s what Jesus would do. It’s definitely what the 49% of us who believe America is becoming “too tolerant in its acceptance of different ideas and lifestyles” would do.
This really shouldn’t be a surprise. These are the people who voted for Prop 8 in California a few weeks ago, these are the people who bitched and moaned over the posters for Zack and Miri Make a Porno. These are the people who live in the “Real America” and find their own lives so unfulfilling, that they must waste time and energy meddling in and controlling the lives of others. I don’t know how they find the time to bother looking over my shoulder, personally after a hard days work I wouldn’t have the energy for it. I guess when you’re motivated by fear, you run on adrenaline. These are people who live their entire lives in fear, who thrive on ignorance. They’ll do anything in the name of keeping things the same. They want to oversee what you read, what you think, what you say, what you do, and who you marry. They want to make your decisions for you. Make you think the way they do. Just don’t take away their guns. It’s the American thing to do.
The good news here is that this book-burning American majority seems unwilling to put its money where its mouth is. Rated-R movies still make big money at the box office, they’re still showing up in droves. Everybody loves to bitch about something, and Hollywood is a favorite target for anyone given the opportunity to rant. This survey gave them an opportunity to rant and they did. It’s my hope that at least some of them, probably don’t really mean it. You may not find them buying a ticket for Religulous, but you’ll still see them sitting beside you at the next Quentin Tarantino flick.
Here’s a full breakdown of the Anti-Defamation League’s findings. Read and despair even more over there:
• 61% of Americans say they believe that "Religious values are under attack in this country," while 36% disagree with that statement (graph). 59% agree that "the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans." And 43% hold the view that Hollywood and the national media are waging an organized campaign to "weaken the influence of religious values in this country."
• Significantly fewer Americans believe today that Jews control the TV and film industries. The survey showed that 63% disagree with the notion that "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," while only 22% agree. When ADL conducted its first survey on anti-Semitic attitudes in 1964, nearly half of all Americans believed that the television and film industries were run by Jews.
• There is surprising support for censorship. Nearly 40% of the American people support the notion that "dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries," and nearly the same number of Americans disagree with the statement that "censoring books is an old-fashioned idea."
• Nearly half of those surveyed – 49 percent – believe that the United States is becoming "too tolerant in its acceptance of different ideas and lifestyles;" 47 percent disagreed with that statement.
