Television Is The Liturgy of Capitalism

The trouble with commenting on Walter Brueggemann's lectures is that so many excellent points are made in the course of even one that are so worthy of reflection and calling to attention that it's hard to choose.  Add to that the need to transcribe what was said.  Here is a passage from the Q&As after the lecture posted below that has special relevance to what I've posted the past few days, as transcribed nearly verbatim by me.   The context is a long response to a woman who is a pastor commenting on the sins of the church in relation to violence against women. It's not an easy answer or a short one, it's better than that.

Television is the liturgy of capitalism.  Television is saturated with violence.  I think the most offensive ad I've seen during the baseball playoffs is Rob Lowe selling Direct TV and making fun of poor, ignorant people that still have cable.   That's violence against poor people.  Saying they're not really worthy consumer citizens.  And there ought to be an avalanche of protest to the people who pay for those kinds of ads.  I know that the focus [of the question] was the beating up of women but the seedbed for that violence is everywhere about entitled privileged people having the right to impose their privilege and their values on more vulnerable people  It's obscene.   Or did you see the obscene Cadillac ad during the Olympics and this very smug guy said “*Myehh... poor people, because they take a month off for vacation… well, we Cadillac owners work all the time,”  the inference clearly was that poor people in the United States don't have Cadillacs because they don't work as hard as I do.  We have to call out the whole violence system…. 

The context is in the frequently difficult texts of the Prophets in which even God is criticized - or, rather, complained bitterly to, from Brueggemann's context of the importance of a covenental relationship between God and the people of Israel.  Extending that understanding to all of the world through the teachings of Jesus and the early Christians.   But it's best to listen to him, yourself.

Fidelity and the Seduction of Certitude