The Middle Class Just Ain't Cool ...there are just too many of us
On O'Reilly's show Jim Pinkerton of Newsday was asked why the NY Times is so blatantly hypocritical in their support of anti-Christian art while disdaining its anti-Islamic equivalent. (Examples were duly given.)
And Pinkerton said something I hadn't heard before. He said that the Times simply doesn't like the American middle class. Pretty much hates it. And I think that sounds more credible than O'Reilly's assertion that they are anti-Christian. If they are anti-Christian it's not because of Christ or the gospels but because they associate contemporary Christianity with the bourgeois middle class. The yahoos. Reminds me how co-worker once told me how he hates what he calls "the herd". I said the herd is sometimes right and he blew a gasket: "the herd is stupid!" he fumed. And the middle class is the herd of the American nation. You have a few elites and a few poor but most of us live in the middle.
But if tomorrow the American middle class suddenly became Buddhist and Hollywood - and the heads of the New York publishing houses - became Christian, who would doubt that the Times would be far more solicitous towards Christianity? I think the whole Da Vinci Code brouhaha and anecdotal evidence suggests that many people are simply bored by orthodox Christianity, despite never having really tried it. (If you really try it you can't find it boring.) How else to explain the fascination with apocryphal gospels? They are different. I recall buying Augustine's "City of God" at a Border's bookstore and the cashier giving me an "attaboy" because I was buying something the Vatican had suppressed. St. Augustine suppressed by the Catholic Church? As they say, you can't make it up. But the gospels apparently don't have any forbidden allure, made up or otherwise.
By definition news is new. There is a bias for reporters to be interested in what is new not what is old. And the apocryphals are new or at least "more" new than the familiar names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Throw a Thomas in there and people raise an eyebrow. Perhaps that is why. Or perhaps it all comes down to what is cool - and sadly the NY Times has never escaped that high school mentality.
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