{"id":100,"date":"2010-10-30T23:54:42","date_gmt":"2010-10-30T23:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/10\/wisdom-for-our-time-courtesy-of-jon-stewart-and-ron-howard.html"},"modified":"2010-10-30T23:54:42","modified_gmt":"2010-10-30T23:54:42","slug":"wisdom-for-our-time-courtesy-of-jon-stewart-and-ron-howard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/10\/wisdom-for-our-time-courtesy-of-jon-stewart-and-ron-howard.html","title":{"rendered":"Wisdom for our troubled times, courtesy of Jon Stewart and Ron Howard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of noteworthy quotes from over the weekend.<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;<\/i><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><i>The country&#8217;s 24-hour<br \/>\n[news cycle] did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them<br \/>\nthat much harder. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. <\/i><\/span><i>There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and Theocrats. But those are<br \/>\ntitles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to<br \/>\ndistinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan<br \/>\nWilliams or Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people, but to the<br \/>\nracists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate.&#8221;<\/i><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"> &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theblaze.com\/stories\/jon-stewart-takes-on-those-who-cant-distinguish-between-racists-tea-partiers-bigots-williams-sanchez\/\"><i>Daily Show<\/i> host Jon Stewart at Saturday&#8217;s Rally to Restore Sanity<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><i>&#8220;I believe in sensitivity but not censorship,&#8221;<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/ron-howard-refuses-remove-%E2%80%98gay%E2%80%99-33818\">director Ron Howard explaining why he&#8217;s decided not to remove a rather innocuous &#8220;gay&#8221; joke from his new film <i>The Dilemma<\/i> (due out Jan. 14).<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Both men speak to the importance of common sense and discernment. <\/p>\n<p>To Stewart&#8217;s point, we&#8217;d all do well to chill and stop labeling everyone we disagree with as evil. It&#8217;s only a distraction from confronting actual evil.<\/p>\n<p>To Howard&#8217;s point, we&#8217;d also all do well (whether gay, straight, black, white, Muslim, Jewish or Catholic) to learn to recognize the difference between a harmless joke and one that is truly meant in a mean way. There&#8217;s also a difference between standing up to defend yourself from an attack and becoming a bully yourself.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of noteworthy quotes from over the weekend. &#8220;The country&#8217;s 24-hour [news cycle] did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and Theocrats. But those are titles that must be earned. You must have&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,1,2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-current-events","category-media","category-movies","category-television"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wisdom for our troubled times, courtesy of Jon Stewart and Ron Howard - Catholics Media and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/10\/wisdom-for-our-time-courtesy-of-jon-stewart-and-ron-howard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wisdom for our troubled times, courtesy of Jon Stewart and Ron Howard - Catholics Media and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A couple of noteworthy quotes from over the weekend. &#8220;The country&#8217;s 24-hour [news cycle] did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and Theocrats. But those are titles that must be earned. You must have&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/10\/wisdom-for-our-time-courtesy-of-jon-stewart-and-ron-howard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholics Media and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-30T23:54:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John W. 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There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and Theocrats. But those are titles that must be earned. You must have&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/10\/wisdom-for-our-time-courtesy-of-jon-stewart-and-ron-howard.html","og_site_name":"Catholics Media and Culture","article_published_time":"2010-10-30T23:54:42+00:00","author":"John W. 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Kennedy","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","caption":"John W. Kennedy"},"description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations &amp; Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}