Interesting. Yet another "The Times, They Are A-Changin’," moment for liberal (or Dutch) baby-boomers...because lots of their "sons and daughters" do see, and particularly when they have sons and daughters of their own, that the choice offered really is between Hilton-culture and Jesus-culture.

And Pelosi (saavily not going by her husband’s name--she’s promoting a documentary film) poses another brilliant dichotomy-of-our-times, belief in God and His Providence v. belief in the Self and the Market, echoing(sorry to be so predictable)a line from Chantal Delsol’s Unlearned Lessons of the 20th Century : "If man wants to do more than just count, he must believe."

Her film on evangelicals looks interesting, too. The now-disgraced Rev. Haggard was a major subject, and she was simultaneously deceived by his manner and dimly aware that something was amiss with it. Pelosi also confesses to being bored with church...even as she insists her kid will be raised in it, and does a film on church-goers.

Carl: Good for Ms. Pelosi. Even if an artist reports the cultural haze......hazily....so long as its true to the subject, it’s a service. There’s simply no *need* (not to mention *ability*) to comprehend things immediately and perfectly. That she captured both the attraction AND the "a-miss-ness" of Rev. Haggard is praiseworthy.
"Bored with church"? Join the {not-so-lonely} crowd. Bring back awful beauty to worship! Again, Ms. Pelosi’s antennae seem to be fully functioning.....
I’d pay NOW to listen to a conversation between Grandma Pelosi (aka Nancy) and her grandchild.....twenty years hence. Let’s hope that Grandma is profoundly disconcerted......

That is crazy. Is that really the choice here - Paris Hilton or Jesus? Having grown up with a problem father who badgered his family with his evangelical Christianity (fortunately my mom didn’t go with him!), I have to say I’d like to vote "neither!"

One thing that’s crazy about this O’Reilly "culture war" crap is the assumption that Christians aren’t watching Paris’s reality show, buying her CD and perfume and whatever else, and watching her porn video, repeatedly!

Another thing is that attachment to church or religion doesn’t ensure that a person won’t become a self-centered creep who doesn’t worship capitalism - the "free market!" - nearly as much as they do Jesus. It’s such a FALSE CHOICE that’s being presented here. Some of the nicest people I’ve ever known were in the church that my father dragged us to. But so were some of the nastiest. And vice-versa, of course. But it’s the silly false choice aspect that I reject. I say "No thanks!" to the Bible thumpers, and my mostly secular family (including daughters) and I say "No thanks!" to Paris Hilton, too. As we’re not big on pop culture, it’s really not a hard thing to do!

Rita, fair enough about the false choice, at least by the way you’ve presented it in terms of a person’s own choices. What I mean by affirming that the choice is ultimately between PH or Jesus is in terms of the whole culture, over a long period of time. That is, PH shows us where we’re going, what is going to become harder and harder to resist, IF we secularize in the manner many a liberal hopes for. The number of liberals who take it for granted that more-or-less orthodox Christian belief is going to remain part of the American landscape for the foreseeable future, and that that’s okay, is a dwindling number, although you might have the honor of belonging to it. Of course, for all I know you’re some kind of moderate or conservative politically.

But now I have to go watch my Paris Hilton video, and you, by your theory of global-total-hypocrisy, have to tend to your secret online stock-market trading in particularly unscrupulous corporations. But seriously, pick up the book Equality by Default by Catholic frenchman Beneton, if you want to see why secularism really does push us into the market-dominated territory in which the likes of PH thrive.