Hello WBC,
My name is Brian and I am a student at the University of North Carolina, but currently am studying abroad In Australia, I am majoring religious history and am currently taking a course titled Religion and Television. For my final paper, I have chosen to write about how the media frames the WBC. The particular instances I have chosen to focus on are: Louis Theroux’s Documentary, Keith Allen’s pseudo-documentary, Michael Moore’s segment and segments of Hannity and Combs. The basic premise of the paper is that the media can create whatever impression that it wants by manipulating the content (i.e. Close-ups, facial expressions, foreground, background, taking cues from the announcer, we expect that the participant in the scene was, in fact, experiencing the location in the same way as he, Shaky camera angle, even though the average citizen does, in fact, see only a small segment of public opinion, even persons refrain from making estimates of the true reading of the public temper.) This view of the “overwhelming” effect of public moods and the impersonal logic on public events is hypothesized as a characteristic of the perspective resulting from the general structure of the picture and the context of television viewing.
If you have time and could comment on any of the 4 television clips in regard to these afore mentioned criteria that would be helpful.
Items of interest:
The voice over that Keith Allen used.
Order of scene editing by Louis.
If Michael Moore edited his clip so that it appeared that he "chased you off" or if you did not cut your picket short, he just strung clips of you leaving after scenes of him showing up.
Anything about the shouting matches at Fox.
Or, is all of this irrelevant?
Your time and insight is greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Dear Fitzwilliam Darcy –
1. All of what they did is irrelevant. We just say the words, and we strive to be faithful to the written words. We get those words before the world, according to the good will of our Heavenly Father. What happens with those words and the reaction thereto, and the efforts to suppress the words and worse and more, change nothing.
2. Louis Theroux acquired 80 hours + of video as he struggled to get his arms around the angle he wanted to present. Because the topic has been so very profitable for him, he just this day left us after 5 more grueling days of his questions that he repeats incessantly, our young people are sifted thoroughly and after he repeats his questions about 5 times, then he repackages the questions and asks some more. He would like to make us ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It won’t work.
3. Keith Allen – yikes! What do you say about a little short guy with some kind of rage.
4. Michael Moore – sweet. Yes, he arranged his clips to try and suggest that he ran us off. Yes, that is certainly believable in light of the vast clips of our pickets where today, you can see, that 20 years in, we still stand on the streets, even when the children (read attack dogs) of Doomed america are up in our grill with their filth and violence.
We don’t run from them, but Michael Moore would have you believe that we ran from him and his big pink van of freaks. Of course, it didn’t happen. Every picket must come to an end, so you can get to the next picket.
5. Hannity and Combs. They wanted to get us on their program to beat us up and try to make us ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Try to make us join the chorus of lying humans that pretend that having your child blown to bits by an IED and sent home in a bag in pieces is a great blessing from God. That God is really an incompetent blundering boob and that it is up to Doomed american’s crack military that is full of murdering thugs and brute beasts to pull the fat out of the fire. Further, that God is a liar, and His commandments are really optional and worse and more. No chance. We’re good for the hard words, but we will not waste the opportunity to say words in the ears of this nation. What they do with the words after the get them is not my business. We pity the foolish rebel of Doomed america that would stand before God in the judgment and say to Him that even though they heard the words from us, they did not believe the words because the whole nation was mocking and scoffing at us and making merchandise of us and the gospel and worse and more. Bet the rebels that perished in the flood found that to be a poor strategy.
In short, we take all comers, and we have one answer. God hates fags. Obey him. Nothing else will do. If you engage in a lot of words and actions as a sorry substitute for obedience, you will rue the day. The time is short. The King is even at the door.
Thanks for asking.
Westboro Baptist Church