Jodie Foster and Fable TV News Shows

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – I think there is, at some level now with what we’re being barraged with and what is presented to us as news and what is presented to us as the most important issues and events of our day, that there’s something to the Steve Jobs view of the world.  Were I not responsible or feel compelled to do these things, I wouldn’t watch it.  I’d turn it off.  I have no desire to watch anymore of what I now call today and introduce to you as, instead of Cable TV News, it’s Fable TV News.  Quote it, live it, know it, learn it.  That’s what it is.  It’s fantasy.  You could go back in time and say the day the TV stood still.  I’m serious about this. Check out more in today’s audio and transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Foster’s commentary, this goes back to the conservative idea of looking for the beautiful in life.  Isn’t this part of what makes it wonderful to be alive, that there are beautiful things out there?  We tend to always look to the dark.  We tend to seek out the darkness.  We tend to seek out the bad instead of the good, to find fault and flaw instead of to praise, gift and talent.  Very rarely do we.  In the next breath, we appoint ourselves judge, jury and executioner of same talent and then seek to destroy it because it has disappointed us.  Think about this.  You can’t destroy God if it disappoints you.  If you say, “I expect to have a good day today” and you pray to your lord and savior Jesus Christ or to your God for his blessing on your day and you have a bad one, you can’t destroy God.  Believe me, men have been trying for 8,000 years of recorded history.  He’s going to survive the attack.  He will be here tonight and tomorrow, but you can destroy Jody Foster.  You can take your anger out on Mike Church.  You can take your anger out on whoever it is on the other side of the camera.

If you look at this through the lens that I’m presenting to you, I think it’s a challenging thing to do.  You may come away, after a couple days or weeks or moments of reflection, “I never thought of it that way.  Why do we do that?”  Well, we do that because we’ve been instructed to do it.  This is part of our modern existence.  Again, we’ve come eye to eye, mirror to person with the true object of our current struggle, which is we are arrogant, not humble, no longer creatures of a God.  We are instead productions of elements on Earth, free to choose whatever path, whatever direction, whatever sleight or infraction upon our fellow man so long as it makes us feel good and there are no laws passed to stop it.  Tradition no longer matters.  It has gone out the window.

What Foster was writing about here, when she was on the set of Panic Room, that she worked with the then very young and very innocent Kristin Stewart.  They laughed and hung out and carried on.  She went with her mother to Kristin’s basketball games when she was still in school.  She asked her mother, “What does she want to do?”  Her mother said, “She wants to be an actress.”  And Jodie Foster says, “Oh, please talk her out of it.”  The mother says, “She really loves doing it.  She wants to do it.”  Jodie Foster says, “You have no idea what you’re getting that child into.  Make her stop.”  This whole Kristin Stewart breakup — who’s the guy she allegedly is caught cheating on?

AG:  Robert Pattinson, Patterson?

Mike:  That sounds right.  If you go stand in line at the grocery store, you’ll see all the magazines: Kristin Stewart kissed this guy or this guy kissed some other chick.  I don’t even pay any attention to this.  There seems to be no respite from the bad.  It’s because we are obsessed with it.  We are obsessed with the trivial and obsessed with the non-important.  It does not matter to you one iota who Kristin Stewart kissed last night.  This is not going to balance your checkbook.  It’s not going to stop your government from taxing you.  It is not going to beat a path to St. Peter’s door and forgive you for any sins.  It’s not going to do anything for you, yet it is presented as though it matters.

The argument we just heard, with all due respect to Ms. Kupp, it’s presented as though it matters.  It doesn’t matter.  Those people do not have a vote.  They don’t have a say-so on anything that’s going to go before a legislature or a judge.  They certainly don’t have a vote or say-so on anything that’s going to go before the supreme judge.  It’s all presented as though we must stay up on the news.  That’s not news.  The news is that someone that doesn’t have a vote on things that actually matter to you said something that might offend someone else.  That’s news?  No, that’s innuendo, the stuff of what used to be pulp fictions.  It’s all so shallow.  I get to the point now where if I didn’t have to, if I did not have to or feel compelled to do this as part of my job description hosting this show and keeping you informed, I wouldn’t watch any of this anymore and I wouldn’t allow it to be played on the program.  We would limit ourselves purely to what is said and done by those that actually have votes or are campaigning for votes in our political system, because that’s what we talk about here.

At the end of the day, when we talk about Jefferson and the founders, we rarely talk about any theater stars of the day, do we?  Can you name one?  We rarely if ever talk about anyone that was not a representative or a participant in some level of government, do we?  Is there anyone in the rare instances that we bring up someone that was a writer, that may have been a bit player, it is usually because they were writing great tracts and great essays about certain struggles of their day in a very serious manner.  It wasn’t a trivialization of how Jefferson’s daily life went, of whose ankles James Madison was caught looking at when he left the Russell office building.  We didn’t have any of these things because they didn’t matter.

So much has been lost.  What does matter, it’s hard to even fantasize or put together a fantasy world of what this current age of ours, with all of this technology, would look like if we were to do what I just said I would do were I not compelled and felt responsible to continue monitoring this stuff on the audience’s behalf.  Quite frankly, I don’t want to do it anymore.  I want to go Steve Jobs.  I want to be as ignorant as Steve Jobs was, and God bless him for being ignorant.  I want to be as ignorant about current events and pop culture as Jobs was.  Jobs famously did not allow televisions in his house.  He was out there selling Apple computers with monitors on them and promoting iPhone and iTunes and all the delivery services.  He was not a television watcher.  He famously did not allow his children to watch television.

I think there is, at some level now with what we’re being barraged with and what is presented to us as news and what is presented to us as the most important issues and events of our day, that there’s something to the Steve Jobs view of the world.  Were I not responsible or feel compelled to do these things, I wouldn’t watch it.  I’d turn it off.  I have no desire to watch anymore of what I now call today and introduce to you as, instead of Cable TV News, it’s Fable TV News.  Quote it, live it, know it, learn it.  That’s what it is.  It’s fantasy.  You could go back in time and say the day the TV stood still.  I’m serious about this.

End Mike Church Show Transcript