Whither The Holy Show?

(I found this cartoon here.)

Can I tell you, I kind of agonized over this show?  I had a recent experience where something I was involved in, which had no hint of offense, had to be changed because it might have been offensive.  I don't know if I've ever worried about that before.

For example, a while ago I did a show about glue.  During one airbreak, I pretended to sniff glue on the air.  Later on, of course, I admitted I hadn't sniffed glue, but the only comment I got (& yeah, I am assuming more than one person was listening, which is perhaps a bad assumption) was someone saying, "This is why I love your show!"

But the climate is weird.  Someone like Kim Davis - who lives & works within about an hour & a half's drive from here - should I put works in quotes? - who lives & "works" close to me - she can refuse to do her job because of her beliefs.  My sensitive brain was saying to me, "What if someone thinks by doing a 'holy show,' I'm somehow making fun of people's beliefs?"

Once upon a time I worked in a building on the campus of the University of Texas.  I ran a computer lab.  I had to be in the lab at 8am every morning, so I'd drag myself into old Batts Hall, take the ancient elevator up to the second floor, & open my lab.  During one semester in the mid-90s, some joker with a sharpie would write, probably twice a week, the phrase "Jesus was gay" on the inside of the elevator door.  I would note it with amusement but would otherwise be unaffected by it.

Around 9:30 or so, I'd have to go downstairs to do something in my department's office.  I'd stumble into the antique elevator, & what would be on the wall?  Desperate scratching, violent crossings-out, crazy wild strokes of pen, pencil, or marker, all over the phrase "Jesus was gay."  I mean, the door probably needed repainting, but this was a strange way to suggest it!

What struck me about this odd little back-&-forth is how insecure the reaction was to a meaningless little phrase.  How in the world does it affect your faith if someone believes or says something about it that you disagree with?  I suspect most people would have shrugged the graffiti off, if they even noticed it - I imagine some eyes don't focus until they've had coffee.  But there are the others - the ones who just cannot allow what they consider insult or even blasphemy to exist.  So they deface public property in such a way that draws more attention to the provocative scribble.

Which is my way of saying, who the hell knows.  I may offend someone today, someone who thinks the word "holy" is, well, "holy."  It's not my intention.  But boy the possibility that it might has affected some of the things I might say on the air.  Expect me to be more self-censoring than is my normal practice.

Hey!  Find out how inoffensive I can be today from 4-6 pm on 88.1 fm in Lexington, & also simultaneously online at wrfl dot fm if you like to listen to the radio & the computer at
the same time.  I'll archive the show tomorrow on the show's website, of course, but it'll be in real time that I might ruffle some feathers.

It does seem to me that the thin-skinned are, in fact, covered in feathers.