{"id":2208,"date":"2006-05-09T10:08:26","date_gmt":"2006-05-09T10:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/on-protests.html"},"modified":"2006-05-09T10:08:26","modified_gmt":"2006-05-09T10:08:26","slug":"on-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/on-protests.html","title":{"rendered":"On protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve heard, here and there, of folks planning to picket The Da Vinci Code.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Ron Howard says "Thanks!"<\/p>\n

A protest serves no purpose but to help the protesters feel as if they are doing something, and to build PR for the film – and exactly<\/em> the kind of PR that the filmmakers want, in which a conflict is immediately established and visually concretized in the public’s mind: between beleagured artists combatting censorship and fanatical yahoos. <\/p>\n

Not, in my opinion, time well spent. It’s not that it leaves a damaging perception – it’s that it truly accomplishes nothing – or is counterproductive.<\/em> No one will be discouraged from seeing the film. Some will become even more interested as a result. <\/p>\n

There is a lot going on – a lot of positive action being taken by churches. Just do a news search for "Da Vinci Code" and "response" and you’ll turn up news items about seminars and sermons series being presented in churches of all types across the country. My feeling is that the "Othercott" technique just might bear some fruit – but we won’t know that for a couple of weeks. <\/p>\n

It’s not the worst thing in the world, of course, and it is totally well-meaning. But you’ll have to work pretty hard to convince me that standing in front a movie theater with signs proclaiming "Blasphemy" is going to a)prompt anyone to change their mind, turn around and go to another film or b) encourage people to explore the truth of Christianity in any deeper way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve heard, here and there, of folks planning to picket The Da Vinci Code. Ron Howard says "Thanks!" A protest serves no purpose but to help the protesters feel as if they are doing something, and to build PR for the film – and exactly the kind of PR that the filmmakers want, in which…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOn protests - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/on-protests.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On protests - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve heard, here and there, of folks planning to picket The Da Vinci Code. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}