Showtime vs. Christianity
The Golden
Globe Awards nominations have been announced, and once again, the
Hollywood judges really know how to find the worst junk to honor. Two nominations went to stay-classy Showtime's program called "SMILF," which stands for "Single Mother I'd Like to F—-." The show's lead actress is also its creator and executive producer. Her name is Frankie Shaw, and she says she picked this profane title as a "deliberate" feminist move to take back the sexist phrase "MILF" from objectification by males. Try deciphering that one.
Obviously, the executives of (CBSowned) Showtime also designed it to nudge people to click on it because they know it's going to be dirty, or as the critics call it, "a raw, honest look at the life of a 20-something single mom." Shaw insists, "If it offends you, don't watch." That's also a sound bite designed to sell the program to Showtime's subscribers.
The feminist site Refinery29 hailed Shaw's character, Bridgette, as "TV's Most Important New Character." One of the dominant themes is the character having suffered sexual abuse by her father when she was a child. Another is a serious — and predictable — loathing of religion, specifically Christianity.
When the show debuted a few weeks ago, in the first few minutes viewers watched Bridgette yelling at Rafi, her baby's father, for saying a bedtime prayer with their 2-yearold son. She says: "Knock it off . ... there's no praying in this house!" In the second episode, she's at a group rehab session, and when they say the Our Father, she protests by saying "our mother" and closes the prayer saying, "A-women" instead of "Amen."
But the real delight for Hollywood came in the fourth episode, when Bridgette's mother, Tutu, suggests a prayer to the Virgin Mary. "Mothers cannot be virgins," lectures Bridgette. "Mary was forced to have that baby . ... Matthew and Luke and whoever did some stuff to her and then called it an angel baby . ... Now we're all stuck praying to this 'angel baby.'"
In other words, Mary was raped by the Gospel writers, and Jesus was just an illegitimate result worthy of no one's adoration.
There's more. Tutu, the character who fights back by saying, "That's the mother of God you're talking about," is played by ... Rosie O'Donnell. What a cosmic joke. It's the same comedian who yelled, "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America."
In the latest episode, Rafi is upset and struggling to avoid relapsing into alcoholism, so he goes to a Catholic church to talk to Father Eddie. As he pours out his sorrows, Father Eddie kisses him passionately right there in the pew, because that's what priests do in church.
There's some leftist politics, too. Shaw created a diner scene during which her character expresses amazement for her high school history teacher who burned their textbooks and taught instead radical leftist Howard Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States." That episode began with an on-screen quote from the latest leftist/atheist comedian George Carlin: "It's called the American Dream 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it."
This show might seem like unwatchable, blasphemous garbage to the average American, but that never stops the Hollywood left. It could win some Golden Globes, and Showtime is so delighted it has already renewed it for a second season.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.