General: July 2003 Archives

James Bennett's latest "Anglosphere" column compares the British and American approaches to religion (established church vs. no established church) to the two countries' handling of broadcasting (government network vs. commercial networks. Extending the metaphor, Bennett includes this sentence that made me grin:

America's public broadcasting network, in contrast, has the moral fervor of the early Puritans. Reading about the three-hour long Congregationalist sermons, incessantly hectoring congregants on some moral failing or other, during which ushers whacked napping miscreants on the head with poles, it occurred to me that the closest modern experience to match is surely being stuck in traffic while the only available channel is a National Public Radio station conducting a pledge drive.

Bennett calls for disestablishment of the BBC. The comparison of NPR to the Puritans is interesting -- Massachusetts was the last state to disestablish its church, sometime in the 1820s I believe. Perhaps it's time we disestablished NPR, too.

(Found via InstaPundit.)