HBO Max’s ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot Also Revives Outdated Marriage Tropes by M. Weldon

HBO Max’s ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot Also Revives Outdated Marriage Tropes by M. Weldon

(Link): HBO Max’s ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot Also Revives Outdated Marriage Tropes 

The televised pursuit of fictional and real-life dating partners is an outdated cultural obsession.

By Michele Weldon / December 8, 2021

…There were many emotionally — and sexually — dangerous encounters over the original six seasons of “SATC” from 1998 to 2004; 10.6 million people tuned in for the finale, which was spun off into feature-length movies. But through all the adventures, and misadventures, the overall goal stayed mostly the same: find a male soul mate and settle down.

This mate hunt has always seemed like a strangely reductive life goal for confident women. But in 2021, it feels sorely outdated.

BBC’s Head of Religious Programs Reveals He Is An Atheist

BBC’s Head of Religious Programs Reveals He Is An Atheist

(Link): BBC’s Head of Religious Programs Reveals He Is An Atheist

by Mark Jeffries

The BBC was engulfed in a holy war of words today after the man in charge of religious programmes admitted being a non-believer.

James Purnell was speaking on (Link): Radio 4’s Today programme to promote the Beeb’s commitment to setting up a new unit for improving religious coverage.

But the ex-Labour MP, appointed BBC director of radio and education last year, stunned many of the audience when he admitted having no religious beliefs.

Presenter Nick Robinson asked him, “Are you a religious man?” to which a flustered Mr Purnell replied: “I’m not.

Norman Lear, Age 95, Shooting New Pilot About Life, Sex in Nursing Home

Norman Lear, Age 95, Shooting New Pilot About Life, Sex in Nursing Home

(Link): Norman Lear, Age 95, Shooting New Pilot About Life, Sex in Nursing Home

…Now, with TV veteran Peter Tolan, he’s got “Guess Who’s Dead?” a droll comedy set in a Palm Springs nursing home with frisky post “Golden Girl” types. There are also young people as regulars, so the whole thing isn’t liver spots. The show comes from NBC and Sony.

Last year at the Austin Film Festival, Lear and Tolan tested out a reading of a pilot script.

Robert Walden (from “Lou Grant”) and Oscar nominee June Squibb (“Nebraska”) played Murray and Patricia, a Jew and an Irish Catholic who fall in love when Murray’s wife who’s also her sister, dies.

TBN’s New Line Up and Other Changes as of 2017

TBN’s New Line Up and Other Changes as of 2017

I noticed that starting some time around January or Feb. 2017, TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network – Christian entity), changed its programming a little bit.

They also changed their P.T.L. (“Praise the Lord”) show.

It’s no longer called PTL – they dropped the “TL” and now just call the show “Praise.”

The PTL show used to come on at 4 p.m., and then later around 9 or 10 p.m.

They not only switched up when the “Praise” show airs, but they changed how the show is run, which I am not happy with.

Cheating Christian Man Tells Wife He is Not Built for Marriage – Take Carrie’s Advice On Cheating Jerks – Equally Yoked Is A Stupid Teaching

Cheating Christian Man Tells Wife He is Not Built for Marriage – Take Carrie’s Advice On Cheating Jerks – Equally Yoked Is A Stupid Teaching

A Christian woman wrote to Pat Robertson, host of the Christian show ‘The 700 Club,’ with the following letter (you can view the video segment with this letter, as well as listen to Pat Roberson’s reply to her (Link): here (You Tube)):

[Dear Pat Robertson]

I married a man who I thought was a Christian … even though I knew he cheated on me a year before I married him.

He is addicted to porn and I just recently found out he was talking to another woman.

They both said they did not have sex, but I am crushed.

Is this adultery? What should I do? He says he wasn’t made for marriage,

[Signed] Caroline.

Robertson basically tells her she does not have grounds to divorce the guy (I disagree with him. More on that farther below).

Dad from TLC’s Conservative Christian ‘Willis Family’ TV Series Arrested for Child Rape

Dad from TLC’s Conservative Christian ‘Willis Family’ TV Series Arrested for Child Rape

The guy in this story, Willis, is a married father who was on a “family values” type TV show, where he was passing himself off as being a good, Christian guy. He has been arrested for having raped a child years ago.

As someone who can be pretty critical of lots of Christians and “family values” rhetoric, I do think I should periodically mention when blogging about these news stories I do realize that not all Christians (or people who have traditional values) are scum bags.

However, these sorts of stories are common enough – stories about guys who claim to be Christ-followers or who are big advocates of “Family Values” who do end up being child molesters or wife beaters – that maybe Christians who are heavily vested in the culture wars might want to take a step back.

I will also remind readers how this story about a married man who is father to numerous biological children who raped a person shows that the Christian propaganda and stereotype that being married and a parent is necessary to being a good, godly, mature, or ethical person is a bunch of nonsense.

(Link):  Father-of-12 Toby Willis from TLC’s The Willis Family is charged with raping an underage girl after attempting to flee from police

(Link):  Dad from TLC’s Conservative Christian ‘Willis Family’ TV Series Arrested for Child Rape by D. Ferguson

Excerpts:

Toby Willis — patriarch of the conservative Christian family featured on TLC’s reality show The Willis Family — has been arrested and charged with the rape of an underage girl.

(Link): The New York Daily News reported Saturday that Toby Willis, 46, was arrested and charged by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) for raping an underage girl 12 years ago.

TBI agents carried out a days-long investigation of the charges against Willis, who is the father of 12 children, all of whose names begin with the letter J. The Duggar-like musical family were the stars of their own reality show about traveling the country spreading the Christian gospel and performing country music. However, due to poor ratings, TLC canceled the show in April.

Willis was apprehended in Kentucky where he fled in an attempt to evade arrest. He will be extradited to Tennessee’s Cheatham County Jail, where he will be held without bond.

Willis and his wife Brenda — like Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar — are (Link) Quiverfull parents, adherents to a Christian dominionist sect that encourages married couples to produce as many offspring as possible in order to raise an army of believers.

The Rise of Delayed Marriage and Female Friendship – article from The Atlantic

The Rise of Delayed Marriage and Female Friendship – article from The Atlantic

Speaking of friendship: there is an account on Twitter whose owner sticks up for friendship and sometimes blogs against the Christian obsession with marriage or the stupid Billy Graham Rule. That account is (Link): Forbidden Friendships (@MenWomenFriends)

The Atlantic has a very long article about societal shifts concerning the delay or demise of marriage and the rise of female friendships, as they discuss it in the context of some television show called “Broads” that is about two lady friends. I’ve never seen the show.

(Link):  Broad City and the Triumph of the Platonic Rom-Com by Megan Garber

Excerpts:

The show’s new season asks what its heroines, Abbi and Ilana, are to each other: friends? Partners? More?

….Abbi and Ilana share, basically, what a lot of young women—and young men—share in this age of delayed marriage and emergent adulthood and platonic roommates and geographic peripateticism and economic prosperity and economic uncertainty: a friendship that occupies the psychic space that used to be devoted to spouses and children.

While the (Link): marriage plot may still, dissolved and distended, drive many of Hollywood’s cultural products, Broad City reflects friendship’s age-old, but also new, reality: The show is suggesting that its heroines are already, effectively, married. To each other.

…The women’s partnership [which is platonic; they don’t have sex with each other], crucially, is not merely a matter of social circumstance; they aren’t simply keeping each other company until their respective dudes carry them along to their Happily Ever After. They are each other’s Happily Ever After. The pair, as Ann Friedman (Link): put it, are “more obsessed with each other than they are with men.” They are very probably the loves of each other’s lives.

Which makes Broad City, on the one hand, yet more evidence that we are living, as The Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg (Link): put it, in “a golden age of female friendship.”

The Muppets Are Having Sex Now – editorial from RNS

The Muppets Are Having Sex Now – editorial from RNS

And I just did this post on the previous blog page: (Link): Sex as Cultural Idol – post at S. McKnight’s Blog (Re: Brian Harris book)

Here is the commentary from RNS:

(Link): How ABC’s ‘The Muppets’ killed Jim Henson’s vision of making the world a kinder place (COMMENTARY)

Excerpts:

(RNS) The Muppets are back — and they’re having a lot of sex.

So much, in fact, that Franklin Graham and One Million Moms called for “responsible viewers everywhere” to urge ABC to drop the new series. The reboot, warned Graham on his (Link): Facebook page, will cover a range of topics, including sex and drugs, with no topic off-limits.

“The puppet characters loved by kids in the 1970s and 1980s,” reads a (Link): release from One Million Moms, “are now weighing in on interspecies relationships and promiscuity.”

It’s not every day that either Graham or the Moms find mainstream support, but even the (Link):  A.V. Club’s Gwen Ihnat found herself forced to explain to her child one of the show’s many sexual innuendos.

…Henson was raised as a Christian Scientist, as Timothy Dale, co-editor of “Jim Henson and Philosophy,” explains. But Henson “began to distance himself from the church” later in life, Dale said, choosing instead to emphasize “a broader message of inclusivity and diversity that wasn’t bound by any particular doctrine.”

In his biography of Henson, Brian Jay Jones acknowledges the Muppet creator’s move away from his childhood religion, particularly after the death of his mother.

“When it came down to it, Jim was more spiritual than religious,” he writes.

Henson himself fleshed out his spiritual impulse in “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

---

Related:

(Link): ‘Muppet Babies’ Disney Series Features Cross-Dressing Gonzo Wearing Princess Dress to Ball

(Link):  Everything Is Sexualized: LEGO Now Features an LGBTQ+ Set With a Drag Queen

(Link): Outrage As First Transgender Kids’ Doll With Penis and Dress Spotted in Toy Shop

(Link): M&Ms Candy Being Sexualized by Both Liberals and Conservatives

(Link):  “The Family Sex” Show – Nude Sex Show For Children (as Young as Five) at Theater

(Link): Dutch Pedophile Selling “Therapeutic” Baby Sex Dolls by Anna Slatz

(Link): Muslims Angry Over Rainbow Dildo Monkey at Children’s Event at Public Library (update))

(Link): What is the Opposite Conservative Christian Purity Culture? Why, It’s Leftists Insisting that Children Should be Exposed to ‘Kink’ Culture

Russell Wilson, Ciara, and Who Else Is Not Having Sex – via CT

Russell Wilson, Ciara, and Who Else Is Not Having Sex

————–

Reminder

• (Link): John Morgan, who claims I am not trustworthy because I use a pen name, still lurks at my blog
• (Link):  Blogger Guy Who Accused Me Of Being Untrustworthy Finds My Blog Trustworthy Enough to Use as Resource

—————————-

Russell Wilson, Ciara, and Who Else Is Not Having Sex

You know what most of these writers and most of the media never report on or comment on? People who are still virgins over the age of 30.

They marvel at these celebrities who are around 27 or 34 years old (which the following page I link you to discusses), ones who were previously fornicating, but who become engaged, and then stay celibate until their wedding day six months later.

Big deal.

I’m over 40 and haven’t had sex at all… the Christian media is not celebrating adults such as myself. (And I have a sex drive.)

This also points out one minor point I mentioned once or twice before on my own blog- not everyone is having sex. But you wouldn’t know this from our hyper sexualized cutlure.

This page below also links to a few articles I’ve linked to here on my blog a year or more ago.

(Link): Russell Wilson, Ciara, and Who Else Is Not Having Sex by K. Shellnut

Excerpts:

• ….But the public face of abstinence is changing. It’s no longer just teens from super-Christian homes or the ones we fear will ditch their promise rings any day now. Take the case of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and hip-hop singer Ciara.
• Wilson, 26 years old and a practicing Christian, ended his marriage to his high school sweetheart two years ago. Ciara—known for songs such as “Goodies,” “1-2 Step,” and, most recently, “Dance Like We’re Making Love”—has dated a string of rappers and has a young son. Because both of them are attractive, famous adults who have been in sexual relationships in the past, many would assume they’d inevitably sleep together. It’s the 21st century, and that’s what hot people do. But at Wilson’s request, they chose not to.
• ….Evangelicals constantly point out elements of today’s hyper-sexualized culture: the rise of sexting, widespread porn use, the normalization of cohabitation, and the prevalence of revealing images of women in the media. These things remain significant issues as the church promotes a Christian sexual ethic. But for all the concerns about the place of sex in our society, this counter-trend—singles opting out of sex by choice or by circumstance—rarely comes up.

Howard Married to Flirty Wife Who Had Affair – Pat Robertson’s Insensitive Advice

Howard Married to Flirty Wife Who Had Affair – Pat Robertson’s Insensitive Advice

Watch the video to get the context, it’s the first letter in the video:

(Link): Howard has a cheating spouse

Whoa, there Pat.

All Howard said is that their sexual relationship doesn’t exist. Howard does not say why this is so, but Pat just assumes it’s because Howard is holding a grudge over his wife’s 25 years ago affair, so he is with-holding sex. But Howard doesn’t say that is why they’re not having sex.

Pat then goes on to tell Howard if you with hold sex from your wife, you are asking her to cheat.

No, Pat, no. I don’t buy excuses for affairs. I don’t care if a guy has been withholding sex from his wife, that doesn’t give her a right to get it outside of the marriage.

If she needs it that bad, she can divorce his ass and marry some dude who will boink her.

Also, masturbation is not a new concept (that is, she can get herself off, which IMO, is not a form of adultery, so she gets her sexual kicks met without sleeping with another guy, everybody wins. Unless it’s Howard who is sexless because the wife won’t boink him, in which case, say hello to masturbation, Howard, it can work for you too).

But Howard never tells us why he and the misses aren’t knocking boots anymore.

Howard does make one brief statement at the end of his letter like, “God says forgive, maybe I haven’t.”

Pat really grabs latches on to that to blame Howard up the ying yang and tells Howie he’s holding on to a grudge and to let go of it.

Pat also says, “God has forgiven her if she has asked him to.”

More speculation by Pat. The letter does not mention if the wife asked God to forgive her. We don’t even know if she’s asked her spouse to forgive her, if I am remembering the letter right.

Sex Doesn’t Sell After All, Study Says

(Link):  Sex Doesn’t Sell After All, Study Says

Excerpts:

• By L. Colby.
• Maybe sex doesn’t sell after all.
• Commercials that feature sex and violence — or appear on programs with that kind of content — are less effective than those with neutral themes, according to a (Link): study published by the academic journal Psychological Bulletin.
• Violent and sexual television programming impairs viewers’ memory because it diverts attention from the advertising, said Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University and co-author of the study, which analyzed the results of 53 previous experiments.
•  Results were similar when ads themselves contained sexual or violent content, he said.
• “It never helps to have violence and sex in commercials,” Bushman said. “It either hurts, or has no effect at all.”
• The study concluded that “brands advertised in violent contexts will be remembered less often, evaluated less favorably, and less likely to be purchased than brands advertised in nonviolent media. We also suggest that advertising in sexual media may not be as detrimental as advertising in violent media, but does not appear to be a successful strategy either.”

————————————

Related Posts:

(Link):  Scientists say too much sex can make you miserable

(Link):  Researchers measure increasing sexualization of images in magazines

Christians Teaching That All Sexual Sins Are Equal – Thoughts and Reflections

Christians Teaching That All Sexual Sins Are Equal – Thoughts and Reflections

I found out that Janet Mefferd, (Christian personality – she had her own radio program until April 2015) – wrote this the other day, or today:

(Link):   Predators, Dangerous Deviants & J.D. Hall by Janet Mefferd

Here are a few excerpts:

• You know the story by now, so I won’t rehash it. But on social media, I’ve been quite clear about my position on this rallying cry of:
• “Don’t judge Josh! He’s forgiven! Aren’t we all sinners? There but for the grace of God go I!”
• To this simplistic mentality, I have said: “There’s more to this than just that.” Josh Duggar may have been forgiven by God, but he also got away with his sex crimes at the civil level. Read the online news reports for more on how that happened.
• And a truly repentant sinner both repents before God and accepts the full legal consequences for any crimes he has committed, without equivocation, cover-up, excuse or carefully worded PR statements.
• So again, I called for evangelicals to stop all this cheap-grace garbage and start addressing the problem of sexual abuse in our circles with more screening, more reporting and more compassion for the victims.
• Now in airing my views on Josh Duggar out on social media, I apparently made some people mad. Par for the course; I am used to it. But soon, the barbs moved in a direction that really shocked me.
• Some people actually started telling me that we’re all basically sexual predators at heart.
• One follower informed me that “All 14-year-old boys want to molest girls.”
• He went on to tell me, “We have all committed sexual assault, if only for a second, if only in the heart.”

Before I continue, I would like to say that no, I  personally have never, not once in my life, thought about, considered, or fantasized about raping or sexually assaulting another human being.

Me saying that I’ve never fantasized about sexually assaulting another person is not the same as claiming, “I am totally without sin and have never sinned.”

The Bible says that everyone sins and shows that they do so in their own way.

However, the Bible does not teach that all people are guilty of the same exact sorts of sins, or of every sin, or that all types sins are as equally severe as other types of sins.

I suppose the “Christians” saying these things – the ones claiming that everyone fantasizes about rape – must think they sound very pious, but they sound troubled and like lunatics. I do seriously think a lot of them probably need to visit mental health professionals.

You can visit that page ((Link):  Predators, Dangerous Deviants & J.D. Hall by Janet Mefferd) to get a better, more thorough idea of what’s going on, but in a nut shell, we have examples of Christians – and there are a lot of them, ever since the  (link): Duggar story and (link): Village Church story broke – who equate all sins.

As of late, on social media and on blogs, you can find some Christians saying off-the-wall things, such as, all Christian men think about rape, fantasize about raping women.