A History Of Degenerative America In One Easy Lesson: A Christian Right Leader's Memories Of Fantasyland!

Carol Brady might have told him to STFU (see below)


The Christian Right'as grip on reality has never been very firm, and now Rick Scarborough of Vision America proves it. In one short diatribe, Scarborough managed to show just how skewed the Christian Right's views of America have been. Read the quote, view the video below. It's worth taking apart point by point - just for the fun (and the reality) of it.

Scarborough: We’ve gone from Andy Griffith to Bart Simpson in my lifetime; we’ve gone from Leave it to Beaver to Beavis and Behind Head, from My Three Sons to Two and a Half Men, from the Brady Bunch to the Big Bang Theory, we’ve gone from the Partridge Family to Desperate Housewives, from Happy Days to Jerry Springer, and look at comedians, there used to be comedians like Bob Hope who epitomized class and loved his country, now we have Larry the Cable Guy being gross and crass, and Christians laugh, what used to amaze us now simply amuses us. We’ve gone from commentaries from such cultural icons as Eric Sevareid to Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow. Look at our movies; we’ve gone from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain, from musicals like the Sound of Music to Oklahoma, from showgirls to slasher porn. Our schools were once the envy of the world, now we have dropout rates exceeding fifty percent in some of our major cities, graduating seniors can’t even read the diploma they’re receiving. Prayer and bible study are out, metal directors and drug-sniffing dogs are in, the Ten Commandments are out, murder and mayhem are in, the theory of evolution is taught as fact while the fact of God is taught as theory, sex-education has become nothing more than the facilitation of fornication, complete with home study with the teachers, in many cases.

1. Andy Griffith was television's answer to Will Rogers. Unfortunately, it made buffoons of Southerners through characters portrayed by Don Knotts (Barney Fife), Jim Nabors  (Gomer Pyle) and George Lindsey (Goober Pyle). Even Frances Bavier's character (Aunt Bea) was non too bright at times. As to Bart Simpson, he's waaay more intelligent, dude!

2. Leave It To Beaver was America as it wanted to be, but never was. That is, unless we knew of any housewife who cleaned the house in pearls. Perhaps the only realistic character was the smarmy Eddie Haskell. We knew kids like Eddie, but we never knew any family even approaching the Cleavers. And unfortunately, we all know idiots Like Beavis and Butthead.

3. My Three Sons was an attempt to give credence to fatherhood by making the dad single and his sons mildly contemporary. It managed to cover up the problem of deadbeat dads which was real, but not well known. And while Two and a Half Men doesn't tackle social issues, the characters deal with one of today's most prevalent lifestyles: the surrogate family.

4. Making the comparison of the Big Bang Theory to The Brady Bunch is more apt to the study of our fictional past than Scarborough knows: while the BBT touts science, the Brady Bunch borders on science fiction. The show, with its cutesy-sweet characters living in a sprawling suburban dream house might have been scripted by aliens from Mars. The stars of TBB certainly knew that they were playing out-of-reality characters and, later on, had some fun going totally against type (see Florence Henderson's rendition of "When You're Good To Mama" below).

5. The Partridge Family was a cute, musical attempt to bring the sitcom up-to-date, after the Monkees/Beatles era. It  made Oscar winner Shirley Jones a hip, working mom and spawned a minor rock star in Sean Cassidy. But it never touched upon reality in the slightest. In comparison, Desperate Housewives has highlighted today's war on women: remember, the beginning premise is that the narrator killed herself and the angst generated by the plots was the key to the first riveting episodes.

6. Scarborough's pairing of Happy Days to Jerry Springer is probably the most outlandishly ridiculous comparison, like countering a kumquat with an elephant. Happy Days was a spoof on what the Beach Blanket Bingo crowd looked like at home. Jerry Springer is a spoof on the mores of trailer trash. Springer himself never took any of it too serious. 


7. Bob Hope's class was born of vaudeville's less seamier side, kind of vaudeville lite. Hope's humor was always created to counter the grim realities of life and war. Was it based on reality? Only in allowing the common man hope that he too could get Dorothy Lamour. Larry The Cable Guy was, ironically, born of the humor of Jeff Foxworthy who now hosts The American Bible Challenge. 


8. The most distinguished hallmark of the American society is and always has been change. - Eric Sevareid. 


Scarborough would have hated his Sevareid's guts had he bothered to find out what Sevareid thought - and what he stood for. Sevareid was definitely to the left of center and one of his proudest achievements was in obtaining Adlai Stevenson's last interview. If he were alive today, he'd probably be co-hosting uber-intelligent Rachel Maddow's show. 


9. True Grit's Rooster Cogburn was not exactly a nice man and any love affair with the likes of Katherine Hepburn (in any character) would have been out of character for a misogynistic egotist. Brokeback Mountain  delved into the psyches of "macho" men in the closet. Much closer to reality and Rick Perry (regardless of leather jacket) wouldn't you say?
10. Hollywood's first real "slasher porn - "Psycho" - was made five years before the Sound of Music.


11. Drop out rates in inner cities has always been high, especially at a time when segregation dictated a poorer education for African Americans. Besides, you can't drop out of a school you're not allowed to attend. 


12. Christian prayers were "in" because diversity was not an issue (especially in Scarborough's Southern Baptist school). 


 13. Of course, Scarborough saved the most salacious and fallacious for last when he said: "...sex-education has become nothing more than the facilitation of fornication, complete with home study with the teachers, in many cases."


Has Scarborough ever visited the homes of today's youth pastors?