Catholic Blogging Wednesday
Summer comes in four stages: Memorial Day, the first day of June, kids out of school, June 20th. Welcome to Stage Two. * * * * * * * Talk about a priest shortage: "Whispers in the Loggia" says there are only 275 Catholic clerics for all five of the military branches. Link. * * * * * * * Intriguing: Fr. Z endorses Mystic Monk tea. It's about 40 cents per tea bag. Yikes. Great priests are hard to find, so we must be paying Fr. Z well. * * * * * * * For those who aren't aware, it's an acceptable practice to drive traffic to your blog by commenting on other people's blogs, as long as your comment adds something to the conversation and you don't go overboard. Comment spammers, of course, meet neither of these fundamental rules of courtesy. I've rarely used the comments section of other blogs to drive traffic here, but I'm thinking about it. I'd post comments, using broken English, flattery, and other tools of the spamming trade, but then I'd use TDE's URL. That should really baffle 'em. "I find your site goodly. Lots of useful information to pad my intellectual quotient. So much useful word for free no charge. Keep up your work good. Thank you." * * * * * * * The Archbishop of Canterbury is ready to acknowledge that Shakespeare was probably Catholic, or at least had a Catholic background. But he's quick to add that Shakespeare wasn't so great: "He wasn't a very nice man in many ways - it's always very shocking, that. The late Shakespeare was hoarding grain and buying up property in Stratford - it was not terribly attractive." Link. But was Shakespeare petty? * * * * * * * An atheist says, if God exists, let my Mom win a million dollars. The next day, his Mom wins a million dollars in the lottery. The man now believes. Link. It's a bit too Peale-ish for me, but we'll take the converts however we get 'em. * * * * * * * What percentage of Americans are gay? It's hard to say, but it's under 5%. But that's not what members of the American idiocracy believe. According to Gallup: "U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian." Link. Why the disconnect between reality and perception? Again, it's hard to say, but here's one theory: TV.
At the launch of the 2010-2011 television season, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) examined the five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox, andNBC) and found that 41 characters on 84 programs were homosexual. An additional 53 homosexual characters appeared on 30 scripted cable programs. That's a total of 94 characters on the 114 shows that were counted.
GLAAD's numbers don't even include other types of programming on which openly homosexual characters appear, such as daytime dramas . . . daytime talk shows . . . or reality programming. . . .
Of these 138 shows, 86% include at least one gay character.
