Category: Rants, Opinions, and General Contrariness

Even the opera is get­ting in on the mul­ti-site move­ment

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If you don’t know what I’m refer­ring to, the mul­ti-site move­ment pathol­o­gy dvdrip down­load is a trend among church­es to use tech­nol­o­gy to meet in mul­ti­ple loca­tions at once.

And now the opera is doing it too.

So what do opera and the church have in com­mon that make them both ide­al for a mul­ti-site expe­ri­ence?

Dr. Collins, a geneti­cist who strong­ly believes in Christ, lec­tured on “God and the Genome” ear­li­er this week. As a geneti­cist, he strong­ly believes in evo­lu­tion. Watch­ing the Chris­tians on cam­pus respond to his pre­sen­ta­tion has been fas­ci­nat­ing.

A few thoughts:

1) I real­ly wish Chris­tians on all sides of this debate would real­ize that oth­ers are doing the best that they can with the knowl­edge that they have. As they update their knowl­edge, they update their views. For the most part, peo­ple on all sides real­ly do love God and truth. In Philip­pi­ans 1:18 Paul makes the point that he even gives thanks for false teach­ers: “But what does it mat­ter? The impor­tant thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.” In like man­ner, learn to rejoice in those who dif­fer from you on this issue.

2) On the Bible side of things, I wish more Chris­tians knew just how many dif­fer­ent options there are for inter­pret­ing Gen­e­sis 1 — google for “Frame­work Inter­pre­ta­tion”, “Gap The­o­ry”, “Day-Age View”, and “The­is­tic Evo­lu­tion” to get start­ed. In the end you’ll like­ly con­clude that some of the options are fair­ly implau­si­ble, but they are all worth con­sid­er­ing. For the record, I’m fond of the Frame­work Inter­pre­ta­tion. The idea that Gen­e­sis 1 might not be a chronol­o­gy of cre­ation isn’t some sort of knee-jerk reac­tion to Dar­win­ian ideas. Way back in the 4th cen­tu­ry Augus­tine was look­ing at the text and say­ing, “Some­thing com­plex is going on here.” For a good sum­ma­ry of Augustine’s per­spec­tive, read The Con­tem­po­rary Rel­e­vance of Augus­tine.

3) On the sci­ence side of things, I wish more Chris­tians were open to the idea that sci­en­tists have good rea­sons for the things that they say. There is no vast anti-Bible con­spir­a­cy. Sci­en­tists are look­ing at reams of data and try­ing to syn­the­size it rea­son­ably. That does­n’t imply that every sin­gle claim sci­ence makes is proven true in the long run, but it does mean that we should take sci­en­tists very seri­ous­ly when they tell us there is over­whelm­ing evi­dence that the earth is bil­lions of years old and when we dis­cov­er that there has been con­sen­sus with­in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty about this for a while now. If you’d like to do a lit­tle more dig­ging on the sci­ence side, these three web­sites are pret­ty good places to start: Sci­Bel

is a fun lit­tle web­site with engag­ing arti­cles, the Fara­day Insti­tute

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has some short but stim­u­lat­ing papers on essen­tial top­ics, and the Amer­i­can Sci­en­tif­ic Affil­i­a­tion has a huge col­lec­tion of arti­cles from a vari­ety of per­spec­tives.

I’ll wind this down by quot­ing from an email I sent to my stu­dents last night.

1) There are two sources of data for Chris­tians — the Word and the world.
2) Facts from the two realms don’t con­tra­dict one anoth­er, but the inter­pre­ta­tions we use to arrange those facts often do.
3) We’ve almost always got more inter­pre­ta­tive options than we real­ize (this is true of both sources of data).

And while I’m talk­ing about sci­ence and faith, I’d like to rec­om­mend an arti­cle about Galileo’s dis­pute with the church. The full sto­ry is some­thing you’ve like­ly not heard before: The Myth of Galileo down­load dia­mond dogs dvd .

Kevin Kel­ly, an influ­en­tial thinker about all things dig­i­tal, just post­ed an essay called Bet­ter than Free.

It’s quite good.

The gist is that tech­nol­o­gy is mak­ing copies eas­i­er and eas­i­er to cre­ate. In fact, copies of most things are so cheap that they’re essen­tial­ly free.

In his words:

When copies are super abun­dant, they become worth­less.
When copies are super abun­dant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valu­able

…

Well, what can’t be copied?

There are a num­ber of qual­i­ties that can’t be copied. Con­sid­er “trust.” Trust can­not be copied. You can’t pur­chase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It can­not be down­loaded. Or faked. Or coun­ter­feit­ed (at least for long). If every­thing else is equal, you’ll always pre­fer to deal with some­one you can trust. So trust is an intan­gi­ble that has increas­ing val­ue in a copy sat­u­rat­ed world.

Kel­ly iden­ti­fies 8 sim­i­lar dif­fi­cult-to-copy qual­i­ties which add val­ue to prod­ucts and ser­vices:

1. Imme­di­a­cy: get­ting it now (as it is pro­duced or cre­at­ed)
2. Per­son­al­iza­tion: get­ting it made just for you
3. Inter­pre­ta­tion: hav­ing it explained in a way that makes sense to you
4. Authen­tic­i­ty: know­ing it’s the real deal or a copy of the real deal (as opposed to a song being done by a cov­er band or some­thing)
5. Acces­si­bil­i­ty: it’s con­ve­nient to expe­ri­ence
6. Embod­i­ment: it’s some­thing you can expe­ri­ence on a unique­ly intense lev­el (you can shake the hand of the ath­lete who just scored the game-win­ning point, etc)
7. Patron­age: you believe that by con­sum­ing it you’re enabling more of it (what­ev­er it is you val­ue) to be pro­duced
8. Find­abil­i­ty: it gets on your radar some­how

Kel­ly is most­ly speak­ing about busi­ness in his essay, but it occurs to me that this is a pret­ty good check­list for min­istry.

A sea of min­istry copies is float­ing around your com­mu­ni­ty. There’s Chris­t­ian radio (car­ry­ing copies of some the best wor­ship music and preach­ing to be found), there’s Chris­t­ian tele­vi­sion (car­ry­ing copies), there are Chris­t­ian books and mag­a­zines (car­ry­ing copies of wise peo­ple’s opin­ions and Bible inter­pre­ta­tions), and there are blogs that give every­one the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act with any num­ber of oth­er esteemed Chris­t­ian lead­ers. On top of that, there’s the mul­ti-site church move­ment which at its heart is about copy­ing min­istry.

And this is to say noth­ing of the min­istry clones that abound in every com­mu­ni­ty. You know the ones I speak of. They are the Star­bucks of church­es, the McDon­ald’s of min­istry. Each of them looks and feels the same no mat­ter what com­mu­ni­ty they nom­i­nal­ly inhab­it. They could care less whether they are in El Paso or Austin. They will treat Boston and Spring­field, MO alike.

In this copy-laden con­text, what true val­ue does your min­istry offer?

There are cer­tain­ly oth­er things we need to con­sid­er than Kel­ly’s list. Some of them are of exceed­ing impor­tance, such as whether we’re pro­claim­ing the gospel clear­ly and faith­ful­ly.

But his list still nags at me. It seems to me to be a help­ful way to exam­ine our­selves from a pure­ly prag­mat­ic per­spec­tive.

I think min­istries do well by these stan­dards. For exam­ple, most min­istries I know are strong at

1. Imme­di­a­cy: peo­ple are there while we preach it — live. Our wor­ship team is per­form­ing — live. Our prayers are spon­ta­neous. Peo­ple are oper­at­ing in the gifts of the Spir­it — live and with­out rehearsal.
2. Per­son­al­iza­tion: peo­ple are meet­ing with men­tors who are show­ing them how to under­stand the Bible giv­en their par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion in life (although they’re not usu­al­ly called men­tors — they’re usu­al­ly called youth spon­sors, sun­day school teach­ers, next-door neigh­bors, friends, co-work­ers, or some­thing else that’s not very trendy to be cal­lled)
3. Inter­pre­ta­tion: peo­ple are not only giv­en a Bible, they’re giv­en a whole learn­ing envi­ron­ment with it — ser­mons, Bible stud­ies, Sun­day School, sem­i­nars, con­fer­ences, Chris­t­ian media, web­sites
4. Authen­tic­i­ty: it’s become cliche to knock around the estab­lished church for being inau­then­tic, but I just don’t see it. Most peo­ple love their pas­tor for a rea­son. Notable exam­ples aside, most min­is­ters aren’t hyp­ocrites and are serv­ing up the goods of a life lived in humilty before God.
5. Patron­age: giv­ing in the offer­ing pays the salary of the pas­toral team and allows the min­istries of the church to oper­ate. Giv­ing in offer­ings allows mis­sion­ar­ies to take the gospel around the world.

I think a lot of min­istries could use work on the oth­er parts of the list, how­ev­er.

1. Acces­si­bil­i­ty: we too often make min­istry incon­ve­nient for the peo­ple we say we’re try­ing to reach. Our ser­vice times are funky. Our dress code is off-putting. Our lin­go is dif­fi­cult to decode.
2. Embod­i­ment: too many church­es seem obsessed with mak­ing church as bland and palat­able as pos­si­ble. This is espe­cial­ly true of my Pen­te­costal com­rades: we’ve become embar­rassed about our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. To them, I can only quote Curt Har­low: don’t tone it down, sin­cere it up. Make com­ing to church sig­nif­i­cant­ly more live­ly and reward­ing than watch­ing a church ser­vice broad­cast on a big screen tv at home with sur­round-sound.
3. Find­abil­i­ty: not near­ly as many peo­ple know about your min­istry as you think. Exist­ing is not enough to pro­duce aware­ness.

So to my min­is­te­r­i­al friends, I pose this sim­ple ques­tion: in a world of copies, what makes your min­istry valu­able? Is it some­thing that can’t be copied out from under you?

The things I find myself obsess­ing over are all too often the things that are the most copy­able. Did my ser­mon sound like one of Rick Warren’s/John Ortberg’s/John Piper’s/etc? Does my wor­ship team sound like they just rolled off the Pas­sion Tour/IHOP Prayer Room/etc?

What I should be ask­ing is: if Rick War­ren set up on my cam­pus, would I still be adding val­ue to stu­dents’ lives? If Dave Crow­der decid­ed to lead wor­ship for anoth­er min­istry on my cam­pus, would I still be adding val­ue to stu­dents’ lives?

What’s not copy­able about what I’m doing?

Any­way, just some off-the-cuff thoughts inspired by his essay. Read the arti­cle ladykillers the down­load free .

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A friend of mine asked me to watch the first sec­tion of Zeit­geist (a movie you can watch for free on the inter­net at http://zeitgeistmovie.com/) and give him some per­spec­tive on it.

Here goes:

I don’t recall ever hav­ing run across so many fac­tu­al inac­cu­ra­cies in such a short span of time. I doubt I even caught them all — they were fly­ing fast and furi­ous.

I’ll start with a few that are easy for an untrained layper­son to see right away. There’s some oth­er stuff he said that I know is false, but demon­strat­ing it is less easy. It becomes “my expert you’ve nev­er heard of” ver­sus “his expert you’ve nev­er heard of” with me say­ing “my expert is bet­ter than his expert — trust me.” So I’ll keep this list focused on stuff any­one can eas­i­ly ver­i­fy on their own.

One eas­i­ly-checked fact that he builds his argu­ment on is that the South­ern Cross is the real inspi­ra­tion for the cross of Jesus (watch from 17:35 through 19:03). Three prob­lems with this:
a) The South­ern Cross is a mod­ern inven­tion — not an ancient con­stel­la­tion. Check http://www.windows.ucar.edu/the_universe/crux.html and http://www.fillingthesky.com/constellationhistory.html
b) The South­ern Cross is not vis­i­ble from where the New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten. In the North­ern Hemi­sphere you have to be below 30 degrees lat­i­tude to see it. The New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten from Jerusalem on north.
c) It’s hard to see how a con­stel­la­tion that did­n’t exist and could­n’t be seen inspired the sto­ry of Jesus when Romans actu­al­ly killed peo­ple on cross­es all the time. Is he seri­ous­ly sug­gest­ing that the Romans did­n’t actu­al­ly cru­ci­fy peo­ple?

Miss­ing such a basic fact does­n’t inspire con­fi­dence in the more eso­teric, less eas­i­ly-checked facts he uses to make his entire case. There are oth­er eas­i­ly-checked facts he dis­torts. Two from the Bible struck me.

In the time range 23:38 — 25:20 the movie claims that Jesus is a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the astro­log­i­cal sign of Pisces. Towards the end of this sec­tion, the nar­ra­tor states that Jesus’ dis­ci­ples asked him when he would cel­e­brate the next passover with them him after he is gone and that Jesus’ answer in Luke 22:10 was code lan­guage for Aquar­ius (the next age of the Zodi­ac). This is easy enough to check — and it turns out to be a lie. Luke 22:10 is about the passover they are cel­e­brat­ing that night, not the next meal they will share after his res­ur­rec­tion. That isn’t a minor dif­fer­ence — it under­mines his entire inter­pre­ta­tion.

Anoth­er exam­ple of his will­ing­ness to dis­tort the Bible to make his point occurs around time mark­er 21:10, when he says that the Bible teach­es that Jesus comes from heav­en wear­ing a crown of thorns, which rep­re­sent the rays of the sun. He quotes John 19:5 to sup­port this point. Look it up. There’s not even a hint of Jesus descend­ing from heav­en any­where in this pas­sage. He’s walk­ing from one place to anoth­er — not descend­ing from the clouds as the nar­ra­tor claims.

These two instances aren’t nit­pick­ing — these are very eas­i­ly checked state­ments in the best­selling book of all time which is always avail­able for instant fact-check­ing on the inter­net at places such as Bible Gate­way. If he did­n’t even check these ref­er­ences that key parts of his argu­ment rely on, then how much stock can we place in his ref­er­ences to obscure ancient Egypt­ian texts that only schol­ars have ready access to?

He’s evi­dent­ly received crit­i­cism along this line, because he felt com­pelled to give some doc­u­men­ta­tion for his use of ancient texts at http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/GMappendix.htm

Just look through it. Pay atten­tion to the sto­ries of Jesus in the right col­umn (you are pre­sum­ably more famil­iar with them). I think you’ll be sur­prised at how flaky that list is.

Bot­tom line: Zeit­geist is very imag­i­na­tive, but that’s about it.

UPDATE 2/24/2008: This post is still gen­er­at­ing com­ments. It’s been six months since I wrote this post, and since then a help­ful review by Ben With­er­ing­ton has been post­ed — The Zeit­geist of the ‘Zeit­geist Movie’. Look to it for a more detailed rebut­tal of the movie’s claims.

Every so often I’ll hear some­one men­tion in pass­ing that we are over­loaded with infor­ma­tion com­pared to our ances­tors. I’m sure that’s true if you mea­sure “infor­ma­tion” in a very spe­cif­ic way, but I’m not sure it’s as true as peo­ple think it is.

Augus­tine, the 4th cen­tu­ry bish­op, left behind over 5,000,000 words in writ­ing.

That’s 5 mil­lion words.

Many nov­els have 50,000 (the range varies depend­ing on the genre).

He left behind the equiv­a­lent of 100 nov­els. And he’s just one author.

For the edu­cat­ed elite, the ancient world was rife with infor­ma­tion. And, by and large, the stuff they read was more impor­tant than the “infor­ma­tion” we’re so proud of. Most of what we devote our brain­pow­er to pro­cess­ing is from news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and tele­vi­sion… the knowl­edge equiv­a­lent of emp­ty calo­ries.

For all the “infor­ma­tion” we each have at our beck and call, not many of us could muster up 5 mil­lion words.

And since our point in say­ing that we’re so over­loaded com­pared to the ancients is that we’ve got so much more stuff to process than they did, maybe we should­n’t be so smug. After all — we don’t real­ly process the “infor­ma­tion” that bom­bards us. We rush through it and prompt­ly for­get as much as pos­si­ble to get ready for the next del­uge.

The ancients were read­ing and reread­ing and rereread­ing sub­stan­tive works and actu­al­ly under­stand­ing them. And so Augus­tine was able to write 5,000,000 words that peo­ple still mull over today.

We have no idea what infor­ma­tion over­load feels like. If we can­celed our news­pa­per sub­scrip­tions, threw away all our mag­a­zines, and replaced all that read­ing time with reread­ing a hand­ful of sol­id books until we under­stood them thor­ough­ly, then we’d have some inkling of what true infor­ma­tion over­load is.

And since we’ve got so many years of insights beyond Augus­tine to avail our­selves of, and the mod­ern peer-reviewed sys­tem of jour­nals to draw from, we’d be very jus­ti­fied in say­ing that we wres­tle with infor­ma­tion in a way that the ancients nev­er did.

But not now.

Some­where I heard that most of today’s best-known pas­tors did­n’t go to sem­i­nary. As I recall, this obser­va­tion was brought up in the con­text of crit­i­ciz­ing the very con­cept of grad­u­ate-lev­el min­is­te­r­i­al train­ing. The impli­ca­tion was that the time spent learn­ing about the Bible would have been bet­ter spent learn­ing about mar­ket­ing (or the inter­net or psy­chol­o­gy or some­thing prac­ti­cal).

This crit­i­cism did­n’t have a lot of weight for me — I just knew sem­i­nary had been good for me and I con­tin­ued to rec­om­mend it to any min­is­ter who loved learn­ing.

But I real­ized this morn­ing that the alle­ga­tion was untrue. Not only have lots of the big-name pas­tors gone to sem­i­nary, I would say that the major­i­ty of those that we first think of are sem­i­nar­i­ans.

• Andy Stan­ley — Dal­las The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
• Craig Groeschel — Phillips The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
• Rob Bell — Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
• John Ort­berg — Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
• John Piper — Fuller and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich (Ph.D.)
• Tim Keller — Gor­don Con­well and West­min­ster The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary (Ph.D.)
• Rick War­ren — Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary

There are sev­er­al who haven’t. Bill Hybels has­n’t gone to sem­i­nary, for exam­ple. I don’t think Ed Young, Jr. has, either. Joel Osteen has­n’t. Mark Driscoll is, I believe, fin­ish­ing up a sem­i­nary degree right now.

But from what I can tell the major­i­ty of nation­al­ly-known Chris­t­ian pas­tors have gone to sem­i­nary.

I’m not say­ing that going to sem­i­nary will guar­an­tee you a numer­i­cal­ly fruit­ful min­istry — but I can guar­an­tee you that it won’t pre­vent you from build­ing a numer­i­cal­ly fruit­ful min­istry, either. And you’ll be a bet­ter per­son for hav­ing gone.

In an age when sem­i­nary gets a lot of knocks, I thought that was worth shar­ing.

I’ve been think­ing about LifeChurch.tv late­ly (check the Wikipedia arti­cle on them).

In case you’re not famil­iar with the church, it’s one of the best-known exam­ples of the mul­ti-site church move­ment. At present, Life Church uses live video feeds to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly have the same ser­vice in Okla­homa, Ari­zona, Texas, and Ten­nessee. They also stream the ser­vice over the inter­net.

They both start new church­es and acquire exist­ing church­es (that’s their lan­guage, not mine. They are very clear that they are not propos­ing merg­ers — they are propos­ing acqui­si­tions — lis­ten to Kevin Pen­ry). If you’d like to be acquired you can sign up online ask the dust divx movie online .

One thing I want to praise them for: they make their resources avail­able online for free. They’re clear­ly very King­dom-mind­ed.

But some­thing about LifeChurch’s approach wor­ries me.

I’ll explain what it is after some nec­es­sary dis­claimers:

1. I have no fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal prob­lem with mul­ti-site church­es. If you think it’s okay for a sin­gle-site church to have two ser­vices on a Sun­day morn­ing then you’re incon­sis­tent to oppose mul­ti­ple-site church­es. Once you cede the split­ting of the con­gre­ga­tion it’s all just a mat­ter of degree (if this is not clear to you then spend some time think­ing through your prob­lems with mul­ti-site church­es and how they are also applic­a­ble to a church that has an 8:00am ser­vice and an 11am ser­vice).
2. There are a lot of ways to do mul­ti-site church and there is cer­tain­ly diver­si­ty with­in the move­ment. My con­cerns about LifeChurch’s approach don’t apply to all the ways mul­ti-site is done.

Here’s my con­cern: if LifeChurch’s phi­los­o­phy becomes the norm (an excel­lent test of the sound­ness of a phi­los­o­phy) then we lose some­thing vital to the health of the church.

Let’s say LifeChurch con­tin­ues to grow and spreads into 10 or 15 states. They reach 100,000 in aggre­gate atten­dance. 200,000. 500,000. 1,000,000. These num­bers are not unrea­son­able — mul­ti-site church­es seem to be scale-free net­works and thus will exhib­it the win­ner-take-all phe­nom­e­non. The largest mul­ti-site will be about twice as large as its next-great­est neigh­bor and so on down the line.

In effect, LifeChurch (or some­one like it) will become the Wal-Mart of church­es soon, and just like Wal-Mart the over­whelm­ing nature of their dom­i­nance will be sur­pris­ing and will take a while to sink in. And just like Wal-Mart, that will bring some good and some bad along with it.

What hap­pens when the pri­ma­ry leader of the Amer­i­can gigachurch laps­es into stu­pid­i­ty, heresy, or moral fail­ure? How does that affect Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca?

This isn’t an unre­al­is­tic con­cern — evan­gel­i­cal­ism has a his­to­ry of each of these blun­ders. And the high­er-pro­file a per­son is the more prone they seem to be to falling into one or more of these.

• Stu­pid­i­ty: pub­lic dis­plays of igno­rance, par­tic­u­lar­ly on polit­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic issues
• Heresy: say­ing things about Jesus or the Bible that just aren’t true
• Moral Fail­ure: finan­cial impro­pri­ety or sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, for exam­ple

As things stand now, when Joe Preach­er on tele­vi­sion has a moral blowout that church is destroyed but the rest of us rock on, sad­dened but unaf­fect­ed.

Imag­ine a sin­gle church which con­tains 35% of all evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca (and a hand­ful in Eng­land and Aus­tralia) hav­ing the same blowout. It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

That’s bad enough, but what I real­ly wor­ry about is the lack of ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty such an arrange­ment would bring about. Evan­gel­i­cals are already prone to sheep-like behav­ior, but at least we cur­rent­ly hang out in dif­fer­ent flocks.

When we cre­ate an evan­gel­i­cal pope who has far more direct influ­ence over his orga­ni­za­tion than the Pope has over the Catholic church, we will lose some­thing vibrant and vital about evan­gel­i­cal­ism. If we’re not care­ful, we’ll lose a vital part of the gains of the Ref­or­ma­tion.

LifeChurch (and the entire mul­ti-site move­ment) have a lot to offer and are doing some won­der­ful things. On the whole, I have high praise for them.

But it is not unqual­i­fied praise.

Yes­ter­day I men­tioned some of my least-favorite enter­tain­ment, today is the oppo­site-enter­tain­ment I adore.

Radio: Den­nis Prager is the man. He’s smart, rea­son­able, and thinks out loud in an inter­est­ing way. If your local radio does­n’t car­ry him then it’s your loss. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ira Fla­tow and Hugh Hewitt.

Tele­vi­sion: Myth­busters is clear­ly the best show in the his­to­ry of some­thing. I just can’t decide whether it’s the best show in the his­to­ry of the uni­verse or the best show in the his­to­ry of tele­vi­sion. Hon­or­able men­tions: Dog the Boun­ty Hunter, 24.

Books: Steven Brust is one of the great­est authors of our gen­er­a­tion. If you like nov­els about assas­sins with sar­cas­tic lizards, that is. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ter­ry Pratch­ett, C. S. Fried­man

Music: Rich Mullins rocks the free world. Or rocked the free world. Or what­ev­er. He’s dead but his music con­tin­ues to inspire me. Hon­or­able men­tions: U2, Men With­out Hats

Social net­work­ing sites like the Face­book often ask you to list your favorite books, movies, and music. I under­stand the rea­son­ing they’re using, but some­times I won­der about what peo­ple real­ly dis­like.

Lest ye won­der the same about me, here’s my list of enter­tain­ment I could do with­out:

• In radio, I could do with­out Fresh Air with Ter­ry Gross. I just don’t like her inter­views. She’s got a won­der­ful rep­u­ta­tion and so I’m sure she’s great at what she does, but I just don’t con­nect with her. And I LOVE talk radio.
• On tele­vi­sion, I could do with­out Project Run­way. Paula loves this real­i­ty show, but I just don’t get it. Most fash­ion is ugly any­way — nobody real­ly likes it except for those in the fash­ion indus­try. Even the super­mod­els who demo the out­fits don’t wear that stuff when they don’t have to.
• In the world of let­ters, I could do with­out the books by Bri­an Her­bert. Frank Her­bert’s son has been writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion nov­els just like his dad did. One prob­lem: he’s not his dad.
• And in the world of music, I could do with­out hip hop. I know it’s hip (by def­i­n­i­tion — see name) and all the kids are dig­gin’ it, but it just does­n’t do it for me. I can appre­ci­ate the bizarre genius that goes into craft­ing the rhymes and that are rockin’ our times, but Dr. Seuss retired that genre years ago. Every­thing else is pure­ly deriv­a­tive.

So that’s my anti-pro­file. You may now judge me by the things I don’t like.