{"id":6,"date":"2010-06-14T08:29:31","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T08:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html"},"modified":"2010-06-14T08:29:31","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T08:29:31","slug":"at-least-fake-integrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html","title":{"rendered":"At least fake Integrity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--StartFragment--><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>Remember when good moral character was at least<br \/>\ncontrived and manufactured by our celebrities via their P.R. people? If you<br \/>\nwere an alcoholic for example you had the courtesy to unleash your<br \/>\nuncontrollable rage at home where it only affected <i>your<\/i> kids, but your fans were left to believe in your screen image.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>That is before celebrities kids got cell-phones<br \/>\nwith video capabilities in order to film the rampage and sell it to the rags<br \/>\nsince celebrity kids have been taught all publicity is career enhancement, just<br \/>\nspell my name right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>That is what our personality\/celebrity driven<br \/>\nsociety has decayed into. Drug addiction, believe it or not, didn&#8217;t used to be<br \/>\nconsidered an upside to ones career and being sent to rehab wasn&#8217;t a great<br \/>\nopportunity for a photo op or a reality show. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>I miss the times when our celebrities were<br \/>\nexpected to at least give a nod toward integrity by faking it. Can you believe<br \/>\nwe actually lived in a time where celebrities who were having affairs hid it<br \/>\nfrom the public so as not to ruin their career?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>That&#8217;s right, the public expected them to act<br \/>\nwith morals and if you didn&#8217;t, you didn&#8217;t get to flaunt it, you were outta<br \/>\nwork. Now celebrities are running out of options when it comes to manufacturing<br \/>\nillicit behavior in order to appear newsworthy. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>They even make stuff up to garner press. Who<br \/>\nwould have conceived there was untapped profit waiting for you just by becoming<br \/>\ngay for a few months? It works; ask Anne Heche or Lindsey Lohan!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>Even more inconceivable was back in the day the<br \/>\npress kept sins hidden so as not to make money off of others indiscretion. Babe<br \/>\nRuth was a womanizing philanderer and nobody said a word. Can you imagine the<br \/>\nmileage a newspaper or magazine would get out of breaking the truth behind<br \/>\npresident John F. <span>&nbsp;<\/span>Kennedy&#8217;s<br \/>\ndalliances? The dude went hunting dames and taxpayers subsidized it. No wonder post-modernists<br \/>\nstill lionize him, virility passes for character in their relativistic world<br \/>\nand it&#8217;s the closest thing that has passed for testosterone by a liberal leader<br \/>\nin decades. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>But the real issue to be analyzed is what is<br \/>\nmore pathetic, that we used to hide our sins to create the illusion of moral<br \/>\nmores or the fact that not only do we now publish them, the public doesn&#8217;t even<br \/>\ngive a crap. The reason we as a culture used to hide our sins was to create an<br \/>\nenvironment of cultural norms that as a society <b>everyone<\/b> expected to abide by. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>People in the past were not less deviant than<br \/>\npeople today but you had to pay a price for it, it was called shame. Shame<br \/>\nactually worked as a societal deterrent by not necessarily instigating<br \/>\ncharacter but by reminding each of us what was expected of us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>Divorce used to be considered shameful and that <i>alone<\/i> could actually deter it. People<br \/>\nwere forced to count the cost of their marriage decision and it actually made<br \/>\nthem think twice before taking the easy way out and choosing not to honor their<br \/>\nvows. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>Sadly political correctness instituted a no<br \/>\nshame policy when it came to sin so as not to make the sinner have to &#8220;feel<br \/>\nbad&#8221;. Of course the feeling bad was the whole point. Relativism of course<br \/>\nteaches that there are no bad decisions, just different ones. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>The only thing one is made to feel bad about now<br \/>\nis if you make someone <i>else<\/i> feel bad.<br \/>\nActually I can&#8217;t blame celebrities for behaving like children. Society has<br \/>\nlionized them and they in turn have made it clear they are &#8220;artists&#8221; and as<br \/>\nsuch owe the children that look up to them&#8230;nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%\"><span>Dang I could of used this back when I was in<br \/>\nelementary school and smarted off to teachers. Obviously their anger toward me<br \/>\nwas a clear case of antisocial-phobia, designed to stifle my creativity. I<br \/>\nwasn&#8217;t disruptive, or hyper or out of control; I was just practicing to become<br \/>\na celebrity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember when good moral character was at least contrived and manufactured by our celebrities via their P.R. people? If you were an alcoholic for example you had the courtesy to unleash your uncontrollable rage at home where it only affected your kids, but your fans were left to believe in your screen image. &nbsp; That&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-movies","category-news-and-current-events","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>At least fake Integrity - God&#039;s Comic<\/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\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At least fake Integrity - God&#039;s Comic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Remember when good moral character was at least contrived and manufactured by our celebrities via their P.R. people? 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If you were an alcoholic for example you had the courtesy to unleash your uncontrollable rage at home where it only affected your kids, but your fans were left to believe in your screen image. &nbsp; That&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html","og_site_name":"God&#039;s Comic","article_published_time":"2010-06-14T08:29:31+00:00","author":"Brad Stine","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html","name":"At least fake Integrity - God&#039;s Comic","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-06-14T08:29:31+00:00","dateModified":"2010-06-14T08:29:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#\/schema\/person\/243d86fd9261f0ca95264b80e71e80e9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2010\/06\/at-least-fake-integrity.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"At least fake Integrity"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/","name":"God&#039;s Comic","description":"God&#039;s Comic - Brad Stine","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#\/schema\/person\/243d86fd9261f0ca95264b80e71e80e9","name":"Brad Stine","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/870\/870f4e7ff5414a60daaefcce61009a6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/870\/870f4e7ff5414a60daaefcce61009a6cx96.jpg","caption":"Brad Stine"},"description":"\"Brad Stine is on a mission \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a mission to free us all from the chains of political correctness and prevent our eventual \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwussification.' From his Nashville stronghold, Stine is mounting his crusade against these hypocrisies, all of which are explored in his highly anticipated 4th album\/DVD, aptly titled \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWUSSIFICATION!' \"You know what offends me?... Offended people,\" says Stine. A staunch supporter of first amendment rights and foe of political correctness, Stine asserts that rights should be universally applied. \"In a country with guaranteed rights to freedom of religion, its citizens are constantly trying to make faith in public spheres illegal, I am offended by that contradiction and want to talk about it as a comic.\" The strength of his conviction about our freedoms can be found in many places on WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from \"Merry Christmas Too!\" (the right to celebrate religion) to \"At Least We're Not France!\" (the responsibility to take action as a country) to \"Spank\" (the ability to discipline our children the way we see fit). What would cause the wussification of Brad Stine? \"I hope that nothing ever wussifies me to deny my own personal beliefs,\" he says. \"Brainwashed wussies have been taught that standing up for yourself and defending your personal point of view makes you a close-minded hate monger.\" Stine stops short of defending his point of view as the ONLY one, adding \"...one must also be respectful of dissenting belief while supporting their own.\" He is, after all, an inclusive figure who trains his comedy to attack ideas, not the people who embrace them. Stine's faith forces him to acknowledge the respect and dignity of all\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 even the wussies with whom he disagrees! Stine models his approach to comedy after legendary practitioners that he has known and loved over the years. Despite George Carlin's disdain for theistic beliefs, he has been a big influence on Stine. \"I always enjoyed Carlin for turning the tables on culture. He is an excellent writer that has endured for decades.\" More current comedic touchstones are Brian Reagan, Paula Poundstone, Jim Gaffigan and Monty Python, among others. Fear not, true believers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with his brand new album, Brad Stine is here to save the world from WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one politically-correct, offended person at a time!\"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/author\/bstine"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}