WGN’s Robin Baumgarten Still Believes In Fairy Tales
Apparently living every day as if it’s a holiday is an angry act.
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Baumgarten: I was attacked.
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“Can you imagine Baumgarten saying to Pastor Joel Osteen, ‘Your book title is Your Best Life Now . . . doesn’t that imply that life up to this point has been very depressing?” the “Friendly Atheist” Hemant Mehta writes.
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Let’s break this down.
1. Penn is playing it a little coy; his book title is not without subtle antagonization, implying that atheists don’t need holidays based on myths to celebrate life (and that they celebrate life every day, not just on artificially proscribed days).
2. Baumgarten is oddly befuddled to apparently not get Penn’s larger point (or, if she gets it, to not come up with a better question). In fact, Baumgarten seems offended by Penn’s thesis, no matter how much she protests that she “didn’t mean anything” by her question.
3. Mehta is right. More to the point, Osteen or any religious figure is not only automatically accorded respect, but their beliefs are never challenged. (“Joel, when you say ‘your best life is now,’ does that include Jews? Muslims? Gays?”)
4. Meanwhile, and this is not to be a killjoy, the media celebrates holidays religious and otherwise without regard to the falsity of the claims made by such holidays or the offense given to those who simply do not believe. While this has gotten better in recent years with grudging acknowledgement, for example, that, say, Christopher Columbus was just the worst, the media by and large propagates our nation’s myths with more verve than Pravda.
5. Atheists – and I’m not one; I’m agnostic and there is a difference – who dare to speak out are treated like oddities.
So just be a little more thoughtful next time, Robin.
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Note: Sorry about the autoplay, Tribune Co. insists on wringing cheap dollars out of its video by aggravating the very viewers whom their clients are selling to. Perhaps a softer sell would be more effective.
– Steve Rhodes
Comments welcome.
Posted on November 7, 2013