Jesus Camp. RA RA RA!!

Browsing through the local Blockbuster store, the movie "Jesus Camp" popped out at me. Now, a little background about myself: I love to watch and listen to things that I hate. I watch things like Nancy Grace or listen to right wing A.M. radio on long drives. These programs make me laugh. So naturally a documentary about kids going to brainwashing camp in North Dakota (my hometurf, by the way) sounded pretty awesome to me.

And it was awesome, in a way that made me want to take a cold shower. "Jesus Camp" is a documentary on the entanglement of the Evangelical church and the political right. It shows these kids being endoctrinated at an early age. Obviously there is film editing going on which heightens the drama, but even with this knowledge it is hard to ignore how crazy these people are. I found myself loathing the woman in charge of the church group. It seemed like there was a contradictory answer to everything that she said. I wanted to shake the shit out of her through the television screen. I wanted to call her up and argue the points that disprove her logic.

But then I realized I'm just sitting on my couch, stewing. Why do we love to consume things that we hate? I once heard a saying that the average person who likes Howard Stern listens for ten minutes, while the average person who hates Howard Stern listens for an hour. I'm a pretty argumentative person, perhaps this is it. Or perhaps we watch because it is powerfully engaging to "strongly dislike" someone else's point of view. It's like a drug. Disproving someone else's point takes quick thinking and engagement of our brains. Maybe these programs give us a sense that we are definitely right and that makes us feel good. Programs like Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace, Judge Judy, Maury, Rock of Love, Shot of Love, or any program on VH1 or MTV for that matter, are the new drug dealers of the cable television age. They make us feel good about ourselves, but make us sit on our asses while they administer themselves to us. We could have been learning a new skill, but instead we hit the cable crack pipe instead.

In the end the people we hate for their "stupid" opinions are the ones who win. Afterall, we are subscribing. It looks good to the advertisers. We turn the people that we hate into millionaires.