| Wreck'em Subject: Attack on the reputations of the sack-clad comedians who discussed "'Bort Hunts" a year or two ago. TUES 3-16-99
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Mail....or by fax: (515) 286-2511. By Internet: letters@news.dmreg.com. Please include your complete name, address and daytime telephone number. Because of space limitations, letters may be shortened. APPRECIATE WHATEVER YOU FEEL LED TO SAY FOR THE CAUSE OF LIFE AND THE BABIES (AND THEN TO SEE IF THEY HAVE THE COURAGE TO PRINT IT!) FOLLOWING IS MY OWN ARTICLE ON MY WEBSITE, PANEWS.ORG. I DO NOT PLAN TO RESPOND DIRECTLY TO THE DES MOINES REGISTER, BECAUSE I CAN'T SAY ANYTHING IN 50-100 WORDS. IF YOU CAN, PLEASE DO SO. THANKS --DAVE Uncle Ed. Responds to Media Uncoverage March 16, 1999 AD Uncle Ed. Sez: The other day (specifically, March 14, 1999 AD) while thumbing through "The Newspaper Iowa Wraps Depends In", I involuntarily shuddered as my eyes slammed against the picture of Wreck 'em Basu on a smeared section that was starting to smell bad. Normally I just spray her article for vermin and then dispose of it safely. Poor Wreck-'em just doesn't understand a lot of very basic facts of life. Such as the sovereignty of God. And she is quite determined that no one teach her, either. I know this from an earlier time she interviewed me, after which I watched what she did with the facts I provided. (Actually her name is spelled "Rekha". But that spelling is as humorless as she is, and I didn't want that to have to spoil this article. Actually I feel that in limiting myself to "Wreck 'em", I showed restraint.) But this time the headline really intrigued me. It said: "GOING TOO FAR WITH FREE SPEECH" Why, naturally, I was excited. Could it possibly be? Had Wreck-'em actually been reached by her conscience? Was she actually going to confess? Just one of many possible subjects for confession that sprang into my mind was when she sarcastically crowned conservative newspaper columnist Cal Thomas, but two days earlier, as "the arbiter of morality", for portraying Monica Lewinsky as a "slut", etc, rather than "understanding" her as a woman who hasn't done anything not paraded before her on TV all the time. The poor dear is simply "a product of our culture", goes the Wreck-'em theory. Not my culture, lady. You can claim it as proudly as you like. I would think that if you want a test of who is an "arbiter of morals" in this little cast of characters before us, you would look for someone who steers the definition of morality a new direction, and then calls upon others to follow. How can you say, of a man who says nothing that hordes have not already said for millenniums, that he is some sort of "leader" making profound decisions about the course of the morals movement? Although Cal Thomas doesn't say it as openly as I do, the only "arbiter of morality" he respects is God. He feels confident in what he says only to the extent that he thinks he is in agreement with what God says. When it comes to morals, there isn't an original thought in Cal Thomas' mind. But now Wreck-'em. Now there's an original moral thinker for you. I think that is fairly avant-garde ethics, to say one is innocent, deserving "to be understood" as an alternative to being condemned, if the crimes one commits are merely a caving in to the worst temptations laid before us! And in Wreck-'em we find a lass not too shy to ask the world to follow her! Yes, I think there is an "arbiter of morals" on this stage. And it isn't Cal Thomas. "Surely this is what she will confess", I thought. "Surely she cannot go two entire days without recoiling from 'Going too far with free speech', in her Cal Thomas smear. So surely this is what her article today is about!" With great anticipation I read her lead sentence: "At 10 PM last tuesday, Holly Kilborn was flipping TV channels when she landed on something that at first looked funny." What a letdown. Wreck-'em wasn't going to talk about her own abuses of free speech at all. She was just going to climb all over everybody else for what she does more than anybody else. Just the usual fare, for Wreck-'em. But at least this time Wreck-'em was going to talk about a mutual enemy: TV smut. I was astonished last year when TCI took MTV off for scheduling reasons, but when party-timers protested, and parents counter-protested, objecting on moral grounds, TCI sided with the party-timers and put it back on! I have been astonished in the past at the determination of TCI to air Dirty-Old-Man channels, despite Christian protest! But could Wreck-'em possibly share my concern? Wreck-'em wrote: "But very quickly Kilborn went from curious to disgusted to sickened and outraged. "Made crudely, with a hand-held camera, the video on the public access channel (Channel 15) showed five people sitting around a living room with paper plates or bags concealing their faces and talking (and laughing) about a form of hunting." Hey wait a minute, I thought. That sounds like MY show she's talking about! (If you discount her lack of sensitivity for talented camera handling.) "Prolife Humor", I called that particular show. I regard the show, in its entirety, as one of the most important shows I have done. But wait, didn't Wreck-'em say her friend tuned in at 10 PM? Why, the show started at 9:30! She missed the whole long introduction I gave to that particular segment. I took about 40 minutes to explain the context, and the allusions made during the segment. Actually if she tuned in during this scene, she tuned in somewhat after 10. I guess I would expect godless liberals, and even some Christians unfamiliar with the issues, to be "disgusted, sickened, and outraged" by the segment she tuned in during, without the long introduction. That's why I provided the long introduction. That's the classical problem of Christians in a Satan-driven media. They give you 5 seconds to tell your story, and they pick which 5 seconds, of your one-hour interview driven by hostile leading questions, they are going to show. There is a lot of truth that just won't fit in 5 seconds. So what do we do, stop trying to tell the truth? Or keep on telling the truth as well as God grants us the ability, and pray those who care about learning the truth will figure out they need to dig deeper than a newspaper? Wreck-'em wrote, "'I thought they were talking about boars,' said Kilborn, 25, a Des Moines resident, who was horrified by the graphic references to blood and torture, using steel traps to break legs, strangulation deaths, skinning and mutilating and slicing the back of the spine with a scissors." This lady is ruthless! SHE'S MAKING ME LOOK AS PERVERTED AS CAL THOMAS! How can my reputation survive such an association? "And then Kilborn realized it was people they were talking about. People they called 'borts' which was code for abortion doctors." Interesting choice of words. "People", she calls them. Of course, the whole issue got started because the "Supreme", it calls itself, "Court", in a ruling about as credible as declaring the sun to be black, said unborn babies aren't "persons". Well, naturally, if you are able to tell yourself that unborn babies aren't persons, while their killers are, guess who is going to win, in your little world? I can never expect sympathy from people able to tell themselves such a thing. Of course they will rant and rave at positions like mine, and all the more so, to the extent my positions are truly and openly founded on the Bible. It is only from people who realize babies are innocent persons, and that their killers are persons determined to continue killing until they are stopped by force, that I might expect a little sympathy. Did you notice the similarity between the measures which the sack-clad "hunters" joked they would use against "'borts", (after their lobbying efforts succeeded in legalizing it, they clarified), and the measures which 'borts don't just joke about, but actually use, against innocent unborn babies? The scissors? The broken legs? The skinning alive? The comedy sketch really was quite hilarious. But I will never expect you to think so, if you (1) believe babies are not people, and that their killers are innocent; or if you (2) are worried what people, whose thinking is that confused, will think of you. Wreck-'em continues, "'I just started shaking', said Kilborn. 'I was horrified. I could not believe what I was hearing or seeing.'" "What Kilborn was seeing was a segment of "The Uncle Ed Show", which has aired twice a week on public access TV since about 1994. It's produced by David Leach of Des Moines, who made news two years ago for reprinting in his newsletter, 'Prayer & Action', instructions for making bombs from household items to destroy abortion clinics. He also aired them on the show." Not that ridiculous charge again! I'll bet everyone in town has forgotten that nutty story, except for Wreck-'em, and Planned Barrenhood's anti-baby baroness Jail-'em 'till June. I was just about as criminal as reporters covering the Oklahoma bombing, who told the world where to find the recipe for making bombs out of fertilizer. Except that I told a relatively few people the relatively inoffensive nature, compared with government literature available at surplus stores, of an anonymous prolife booklet which Janet Reno's grand jury had actually been confiscating from prolife witnesses for an entire year! TV-13 boiled this down to: "This book tells you how to build bombs! And the scary thing is, anyone can buy one!" In a subsequent Uncle Ed. Show, I showed pages of a U.S. Army manual, which had been "declassified" decades ago and sold by the millions, to show how innocuous the silly little "Army of God Manual" was by comparison. You can imagine what TV-13 and "The Newspaper for Iowa Depends" did with THAT one. They portrayed me as daring to reveal military secrets, and boy, I was just pushing that "free speech envelope" right off the edge! Some kid even complained to the City Council. So the city lawyer got up and ranted against my show. But she had to admit the details of bomb recipes were not legible on the show. I just flashed through pages quickly, to show their general content. Councilman Tom Vlassis finally pointed out that I didn't give any information that wasn't readily available elsewhere. He said, May 6, 1996: "The information is available, my understanding of what was on the program, and I didn't see it, my understanding was that there was a government pamphlet that told exactly where to get the materials. This is put out by our government! "But for this, and I fully understand what you're saying, but I would have a hard time asking this council to get involved in something, censorship and violation of constitutional rights." (Because the City Council would then have to arrest the U.S. Government.) Despite Vlassis' perspective, the council actually authorized its entire legal department to cooperate with the entire TCI legal department (the numbers of attorneys in the two departments were actually provided, to show they had enough resources!) to figure out how to take my show off the air! That has been nearly three years ago! Now, I will not be presumptuous and assume they are not still working on my case. But I think it is not too forward to point out that if they had a very strong case, they would not have waited this long to contact me. Here's more Wreck-'em: "From the name and the innocent intro shots (a kid with a balloon, a band), you might think you were watching a knockoff of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." "But then you hear things like this: "'They're hanging in terror and eventually they're choked to death.' 'We plan to grind them into sausage and give them to missions, politicians' dinners, and send some to China.'" You do remember, don't you, news headlines about unborn babies served for soup in China? You remember, surely, the protests that began over a decade ago over American cosmetics companies using "fetal tissue" to make your skin look beautiful? Surely you have not stopped up your ears to the history of friendship between Margaret Sanger, founder of Banned Parenthood, and Adolph Hitler? To the history of abortion under Nazism? To even the like legal approach of declaring Jews "non-persons", which made the production of lamp shades out of their skin "safe and legal"? You know all these things. But try to explain that to poor, unhappy, humorless Wreck-'em! "'This is a relatively new sport. We expect it to catch on soon.' "'We're planning to recycle bort blood as we kill them.' "'We love to mount the...heads on our walls. People say,'Look at the points on that man's ears'..." "'Make lampshades with the skin.' "'Free spike nails with each expedition you sign up for. Call 555-kill-a-bort.'" "Humor, Leach calls it." Well, at least here she acknowledges that I call it "humor". But Wreck-'em forgets herself three paragraphs later, where she portrays me as literally "planning cold-blooded murders of health-care professionals"! Part of that 40-minute introduction to the "'Bort Hunt" sketch was an interview with Henry Felisone, who during the '60's, before he was a Christian, worked for people like Abbie Hoffman. Felisone said Hoffman was hilarious. He could have made it as a stand-up comic. But then raving liberals "came to power, and became humorless. That always happens to people who come to power." Part of the rest of the introduction was interviews with people who have been tortured by police for trying to protect babies. It showed some of their jokes about what they had experienced, and their discussion of how they could joke about their own suffering, and how humor is sometimes an effective vehicle for truth. And how it is the truth itself, not its packaging, that really makes killers and their supporters angry. "In the last 10 years, anti-abortion terrorism has resulted in seven murders, 38 bombings, 146 cases of arson and 733 cases of vandalism. Last October, it claimed Dr. Barnett Slepain, an Amherst, N.Y., obstetrician." Notice how reporters who trot out these statistics never compare them with the numbers of innocent babies tortured to death. "Kilborn, who works in publishing and says she's 'riding the fence' on the abortion issue, wrote to TCI in protest." I understand how you can "ride the fence" on whether women should wear bonnets in church. But abortion? What more facts does she need to have before her?! I have to question the sincerity of someone who tries to tell you they are "riding the fence" on the most profound evil in the world today! If they are "riding the fence" on abortion, how heartily are they embracing much less heinous crimes, like child prostitution or bank robbery or running drugs?! "'I am absolutely horrified that this program is on all-access cable television,' she said. 'Never mind your views of abortion -- these people weren't talking about abortion. They were planning cold-blooded murders of health-care professionals.'" There's that statement I warned you about. No one was doing any "planning". The most they were doing was "dead-panning". But how can you expect anyone to comprehend this distinction, who thinks you can leave "your views of abortion" outside, as you meditate on the phrase "cold-blood murders of health-care professionals"? What is cold-blooded about giving your life to stop a man who kills 40 babies a day? What kind of "health care" is it which abandons a woman to bleed to death rather than promptly call one of those embarrassing ambulances? Since when has the career of abortionist been regarded, within the context of health care, as very "professional"? How do real health care professionals feel about sharing their job description with abortionists? What about the "cold-blooded murders" by self-proclaimed "health care professionals"? At least common murderers regard their victims as "people"! Not so abortionists! How much more cold-blooded can it be to kill not just one, not just a thousand, but ten thousand innocent babies, and not even regard your victims as people, or what you have done as murder?! How much more cold-blooded can you be, than to not even regard slain babies as people, or the killing of them as murder?! "Differences in opinion and politics should be open for debate in the media, but the perpetuation of terrorist agendas have no place on television during prime time," she said. Well, it's nice that she agrees debate in the media is OK. But if it is perception like hers that governs what sort of debate "perpetuates terrorist agendas", and if bureaucrats like her are ever hired to enforce it, there won't be much debate left in any media. And if that happens in America, it won't be the first time it has happened in the world. "She wasn't the only one calling to complain Wednesday. Jane Colacecchi-Padilla called it 'the single most offensive program I have ever seen on television.'" Where does Wreck-'em manage to find so many losers? Here she has gone and found TWO women, out of a mere 300,000 metropolitan area, who agree with her! That is phenomenal! "On Thursday, Debora Blume, TCI of Iowa's communications director, Mike Giampietro, general manager of TCI of Central Iowa, and I sat down to watch the show at their studio. They hadn't seen it yet. "Blume and I felt sick. Giampietro said he wouldn't want his 3-year-old or 11-year-old watching it. "They're checking with lawyers, but they think their hands are tied. The same episode was to air again Saturday at 4 PM. The best they could do was maybe move it to a later time slot." I wonder how many video games Giampietro has bought for his 3-year-old and 11-year-old wherein they actually practice killing people? The folks at TCI are nice folks. They've never said an unkind word to me. That doesn't necessarily mean they like my show -- after all, these are the same folks who defend MTV and Dirty Old Man channels -- but you just have to understand that when you are the middleman between parties to a controversy, you are going to do your best to be polite to both sides. You are going to try to sound agreeable to whoever happens to be ranting and raving in front of you. I wouldn't care about my 3-year-old or 11-year-old watching my show, either! The Uncle Ed. Show is not geared to children. It is typically a heavy-thinking show about complicated aspects of boring things like laws and court actions. It is difficult to imagine very many children watching for long. "TCI's rules (crafted around federal cable TV law) prevent censorship or editorial control over any public-access user unless there's obscene or indecent material. But who's going to judge that? Not TCI, says Blume. Not the city, says city legal staff. And not the Federal Communications Commission, says a spokesman there. A judge or jury could, but someone would have to take Leach to court. Three years ago after Leach's bomb-making show, someone appealed to the Des Moines City Council, but nothing happened." So Wreck-'em is appealing to the whole metro area. C'mon, won't someone step forward to sue this guy? Why not herself? She's got the venom for it. No, I don't want to goad her to do it. But she makes it sound as if my show is so vulnerable to court action that almost anyone can take me to civil court and win. Look, I'm a poor, weak little crybaby that wonders, every time the phone calls and I hear a friend's voice, if my friend is going to say "I read Wreck-'em's article about you and I don't want to associate with you any more." So no, I have no desire to be defiant in the face of the threat of overwhelming legal action. I care what happens to me. But I care about the Truth, Who is the Son of God (John 14:6), more than I care what happens to me. I cling tightly to God's offer to act as my lawyer. (Isaiah 9:6) Meanwhile, if you are going to be the one to sue me, keep in mind that Wreck-'em lied a little bit when she said "nothing happened" when a young kid "appealed to the Des Moines City Council". Plenty happened. The entire city legal department was authorized to cooperate with the entire TCI legal staff, to try to take me off the air. It was after that that nothing happened. So if you want to build a case against me, you will have to think faster than all of them could. Not that I'm saying you can't! But please, I'm just a tired old trumpet player. Please, why don't you pick on someone who matters? Like Wreck-'em? "Most of us think of the First Amendment as sacred for its protection of unpopular speech. But even speech has its limits. In February, an Internet Web site that created "wanted" posters for doctors who perform abortions, and checked their names off when they were killed, was shut down after its operators lost a $107 million lawsuit." Wreck-'em here betrays the extent of her journalistic skills by believing what she wants from newspapers, without checking out anything or even carefully reading the articles. The website operators weren't even defendants in the lawsuit which so many newspapers said they lost! All the judge had jurisdiction to do was tell the defendants not to contribute to the website any more! Yes, Neal Horsley's website was knocked off the web. But not because of the lawsuit, as Wreck-'em implies. It was simply because his server didn't want the negative association any more. Horsley is gearing up to become his own server, so no server will have to worry about associating with him any more. "'The Uncle Ed Show' literally gives new meaning to the term obscene." Here comes that great Arbiter of Morals again, redefining "obscene" not as the Playboy Channel, not as MTV, not as HBO, not as Younkers' full page brazier ads in "The Newspaper Iowa Wraps Depends In", not as the 20 foot statue of a bare-breasted woman holding up her bosoms, as children file past to admire the pretty flowers on the south grounds of the State Capitol, and certainly not as her own incendiary hate-journalism: but as the Uncle Ed. Show! And after enacting her redefinition of the word "obscene", she commands, nay expects, the world to follow along! "Though it's a little hard to believe this is what anyone had in mind when public-access TV first cropped up some 20 years ago to empower communities, Leach seems to have found a tightrope across the law. "But you have to wonder what kind of converts he's winning this way: people who value life, or those with morbidly twisted minds? Religious people, or those who distort the name of religion to spew hate and violence? "Anyone who's genuinely pro-life would be revolted. As to the abortion-rights community, it probably couldn't have made up a more effective way to discredit its foes." Who does Wreck-'em know who is "genuinely pro-life", to have any inkling of what revolts them? Wreck-'em knows very well that when Cable Access was first developed, there was plenty of talk about the extremes of programming that might result. Not that I acknowledge my own work as extreme. Plenty of others talk about the Bible. Plenty of others talk about politics. The only extremely unusual thing I do is talk about them both, as if one were relevant to the other. And among the many issues I thus address, one is the powder keg of abortion, and particularly the issue of what God says about how far men should go to prevent abortion. I address it because I believe one does not "take a stand" for the Bible, if one is not willing to "take a stand" at the risk of criticism. And just as physical armies gather where the enemy seems most likely to break through, even so in spiritual battle, an issue where people most strongly resist the Authority of God seems to be the most important for Christians to defend. OK, I'm extreme. Notice her phrase, "those who distort the name of religion to spew hate and violence". That's a phrase liberals use a lot. When you analyze their context to try to figure out who they're talking about, it usually turns out to be Bible believers. The context before us is no exception. Obviously she excludes from her "religious" tent anyone who proclaims, as the Bible proclaims, that abortion is murder. So if the "religious" in her tent reject the Bible for their authority, what "Bible" do you suppose they acknowledge? Ah! Could it be that Bible which that Great Arbiter of Morals, Wreck-'em Basu, is publishing, an editorial at a time? So even Planned Barrenhood could not have thought of a better plan, than my show, to discredit its foes? Well then, if that is what my show is doing, why is Wreck-'um tampering with that dream-come-true for pro-murderers like her? This is like Democrats telling Republicans, during impeachment, "If you keep hammering on our leader's wickedness, the people will stop liking you and will vote you out of office." This was not just an occasional barb delivered with a smirk, but was a constant drumbeat delivered with righteous indignation! If they really believed that, why did they try so hard to stop the Republicans from losing the next election? Could Wreck-'em's reckless attack on this answered prayer for baby killers indicate she actually believes my show, "Prolife Humor", is an effective tool for God? Wreck-'em does not say anything to indicate that her Moral Definition of "people who value life" includes people who value the lives of unborn babies. Wreck-'em does openly urge us to value the lives of those who torture to death unborn babies. Her alternative category to "people who value life", (viz. "people who love abortionists") is "people with morbidly twisted minds". I'm just curious about something. Maybe there is someone out there who has the stomach to read more of Wreck-'em than I can. About one article every two years is my limit. Has Wreck-'em ever written about anyone she loves? Is there any indication that she, indeed, loves anybody? If you have an article of hers on your refrigerator that indicates such a thing, could you please send me a copy? I would really like to see it. I just don't have the strength to wade through all the rest to find it. Personal note to Wreck-'em: I haven't written you off as unredeemably corrupt. The Bible says (1 Timothy 1:12-16) the greatest sinner in the whole world was not you, after all, but Saul, but even he repented and became Paul the Apostle, and I like him a lot. I'm not saying I feel any assurance that you will submit, in time, to that eternal Arbiter of Morals, God, but I have no reason to assume you will not, and I do long for your fellowship in the Lord some day. Note to everyone else: If you want to see a copy of show Wreck-'em says is such a gift to abortionists, send $20 for a copy of not just that one hour-long show, but of six entire great shows. REGISTER COLUMNIST REKHA BASU can be reached at basur@news.dmreg.com or (515)284-8208. |