NBC backs off on edits of ‘VeggieTales’
After initially requiring that all references to biblical or evangelical messages be edited out of the popular children’s show “VeggieTales,” NBC has cut back on its editing requests in episodes, according to the show’s creator, Phil Vischer.
“Well, we’ve just shipped out the last few episodes, and guess what? Bob and Larry are talking about God!” Vischer wrote on his blog. “‘Huh?’ you say, ‘Wazzup wit dat?’ Well, I really don’t know. But the last four or five episodes, most of which had at least as much ‘theistic’ content as the earlier ones, if not more, came back from NBC standards and practices department with no requested edits. None. So they’re going to air just the way they were originally written.”
Vischer said he has no idea what caused the change, but he reported that NBC may have received about 600,000 e-mails about the VeggieTales edits.
“So if you stopped watching your veggies on NBC out of protest, turn it back on! Your protest may have brought a little more light to TV’s ‘vast wasteland,'” Vischer said. “Let NBC know you’re thrilled with their recent choices by watching the show.”
Conservatives give more than liberals
Per capita, Americans who attend a house of worship weekly are 25 percent more likely to give than people who rarely attend, according to Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks in his book, “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism,” released in November.
Brooks is a behavioral economist who writes a regular op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal. Brooks uses an array of statistical analysis to conclude that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and don’t favor government-funded social services are far more generous than their counterparts.
“While 85 million American households give away money each year to nonprofit organizations, another 30 million do not,” Brooks wrote in The Wall Street Journal Nov. 27, adding that the charity gap is driven not by economics but by values. “Nowhere is the divide in values more on display than in religion, the frontline in our so-called ‘culture war,'” he wrote. “And the relationship between religion and charity is nothing short of extraordinary. … These religious folks also give nearly four times more dollars per year than secularists, on average, and volunteer more than twice as frequently.”