Obligatory Oscar Rant
I've basically come to the embarassing conclusion that I am a typical, spoiled, whining, stupid American. Even worse, I've succumbed to the worst kind of spiritual arrogance, that of the rich, American evangelical.

What I mean by all of that is that I'm pretty much fed up with the pathetic emptiness and cliche-ridden approach of the conservative Christian movement in this country. While I do continue to hold to many of the political and cultural philosophies current within this segment of the American Christian community, I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the degree of divergence between the impact on culture that Christ has called us to have, and what the leading and most visible American Christian institutions are actually doing.

A recent example of this is what I heard on WORD-FM yesterday afternoon from Sam Siple, one of the rotation of insipid, afternoon talk show replacements with which we are again being inflicted, now that Jerry Bowyer has taken an indefinite leave of absence for health reasons. Like so many in the Christian media, Sam had dedicated his show to assessing the impact of the Academy Awards on Sunday night, primarily pontificating on the 'victory' implied by the fact that "Brokeback Mountain" didn't win Best Picture, or any of the Best Acting, Oscars. I can't really describe how stupid and inane I find such nyeh-nyeh celebrations, other than to wonder why Christian media doesn't have anything better to do than do a happy dance over some overly symbolic and overstated victory over the gay agenda.

How about this? Of all the movies that were nominated for major Academy Awards, only "Walk The Line" broke into the Top 20 of 2005 domestic gross dollars. The feared homo horse opera came in next at #26, followed by "Crash" at #49 and "Syriana" at #58. "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", on the other hand, currently sits at #3 in domestic gross for release dates in 2005, behind only "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire".

Here's a few interesting facts related to TLTW&TW:

1. It opened the same weekend as "Brokeback Mountain" (12/9), yet has nearly 4 times the box office receipts.

2. It is poised to overtake "Harry Potter" in domestic receipts, despite being released 3 weeks later.

3. Most successful movies rake in one-third to one-half of their total domestic gross on opening weekend. TLTW&TW's opening weekend represents less than a quarter of it current gross, pointing to a steady and sustainable interest that is rarely seen in the movie industry, but was also recently seen in the box office numbers for "The Passion of the Christ". Coincidence? I think not!

4. TLTW&TW currently sits at #25 for all-time, domestic, box office grosses. "The Passion of the Christ", incidentally is #10.

Speaking of the Top 25 All Time Top Grossing films, they include all 6 "Star Wars" films, all 3 "Lord of The Rings" films, and two of the four "Harry Potter" films. No film in this list carries a rating worse that PG-13, and only a handful ("The Sixth Sense", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Forrest Gump") could be argued to have presented strong, anti-family, anti-traditional messages. Of course, I would argue that several more of them do at a much subtler level, but that's a discussion for another time.

So my point here is, "Why all the hysteria?" George Clooney basically made an ass of himself trying to portray his work, and that of his peers, as important counterweights to what they see as the evils of our culture. Yet the public is speaking loud and clear, with both their dollars and their attention to these wannabe leaders of our society. The Hollywood elite is not only 'out of touch', they're irrelevant. Ratings for last year's Oscars were down 10 percent, and there's no real reason to believe that they will do all that much better this year, despite having a new host and 'controversy'.

When you consider the spiritual messages behind "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter", and assume the overt Christian themes underlying "The Lord of the Rings", "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", and "The Passion of the Christ", the presence of these 13 movies in the Top 25 grossers pretty much says it all. Yet why is the Christian Church so fundamentally out of step with the culture's heartbeat, tilting at the windmills of the 'gay agenda', legislated morality, and liberalism? Aligning itself with a political agenda that pays lip service to Christian morals, yet turns a blind eye to gross injustice -- both here and abroad? Why, when these box office numbers clearly indicate that our culture yearns for leadership and direction into the reality that these films give homage to?

It baffles the mind how clueless we Christians really are sometimes in our drive to be right. When, in fact, it is God who is right, who has always been right, and has done all that needs to be done to give our country -- and our world -- hope.

We act like we are in a losing fight, instead of walking into our society full of the confidence that our victory has already been won with the gifts that so many people really are craving.

This country is tired to death of blowhards like George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, and Sean Penn. But they are equally, if not more so, tired of idiotic windbags like Pat Robertson and find nothing of substance in the inane prattlings that occur within most 'Christian' media.

Wake up, people! It's time to get real.
- posted by The Drake @ 9:29 AM