Agents Of Agita: In Place Of A Rumination

     I’ve been told, by more than one busybody in a lab coat medical practitioner, that I must learn to restrain my tendency to anger. It’s not good for me, they say. My blood pressure is already dangerously high, they say. I could stroke out without even the hint of a warning, they say. Do you think they have any idea how it infuriates me to hear that?

     But seriously, Gentle Reader, the world may be “so full of a number of things / That we should all be as happy as kings,” but it’s also full of irritations and worse. (Besides, just how happy are kings? Did Stevenson wish that on us out of knowledge or ignorance?) Some of those irritations take the form of other human beings, the kind I’m tempted to call “oxygen thieves,” “brain donors,” “wastes of perfectly good protoplasm,” and worst of all: “...persons.”

     Here are a few from today’s crop:

     First, we have the usually sensible Curt Schilling, orating to the effect that “public service is about being a leader.” Among high-flown utterances from celebrities, this is one of the most irritating I know. If public servant Smith is a “leader,” what does that make the rest of us? Followers, right? Thanks but no thanks.

     Indeed, the notion that elected and appointed officials are somehow responsible for “leading” the rest of us is exceptionally pernicious, responsible for a great part of America’s current maladies. Servants serve those who have chosen them. They don’t “lead.” We private persons have our own agendas, believe it or not.

     Second, we have this travesty:

     Producers of the Christian film "I'm Not Ashamed" have been embroiled in a battle with YouTube after the video sharing site took down their film's trailer with no explanation.

     The video site has since reinstated the trailer, but those closest to the film say the months of being kept off the video sharing site have damaged the publicity for the movie.

     "It’s 11 months we’ve been fighting this battle," "I'm Not Ashamed" co-writer Bodie Thoene told FOX411. "They actually took down the trailer and would not permit it to be put up."

     Thoene added, "[YouTube] would not give any explanation, no explanation whatsoever, why they... [took it down]...we’ve lost 11 months of being able to use social media freely. We feel it’s an interference with our freedom of expression."

     One of the film's producers, Nise Davies, told us, "The only reason I even knew [the trailer had been taken down] was because I had a whole bunch of panicked actors messaging me...it was just gone. It was shocking."

     According to the Hollywood Reporter, YouTube put the video back up this week after being contacted by the news organization.

     YouTube told FOX411, "With the massive volume of videos on our platform, sometimes we make the wrong call on content that is flagged by our community. When this is brought to our attention, we review the content and take appropriate action, including restoring videos or channels that were mistakenly removed."

     That it happened to a trailer for an explicitly Christian movie should surprise no one. The vicious idiot who flagged it as “offensive” probably giggled as he did so. Considering the risqué nature of many of the clips YouTube hosts to which no one objects, the malice behind the act is obvious. That, of course, doesn’t exculpate YouTube’s management for passively, cheerfully blocking the video and never explaining their action to the film’s producers.

     Here’s the trailer, which I’ve also downloaded in case it should be suppressed once again:

     The movie itself will be released to the theatres on October 16. That’s two weeks from now, which brings me to my third irritation, closely related to the second. Have a gander at this bit of the movie’s IMBD.com listing:

     Message Boards

Recent Posts

This movie shouln't be made travis-a-douglas1994

This is the first time a trailer made me angry lildraco

This is so *beeped* up! mickster29

The persons whose comments are linked above cannot have seen the movie. They cannot have read its script. Yet in their lack of knowledge they feel justified in denouncing it. Similar helpings of venom have been poured on the “God’s Not Dead” movies, in nearly every case by persons who would never dream of viewing them. (David Limbaugh’s valuable book Persecution documents many comparable examples.) That says quite a lot about the anti-Christian animus rampant in the U.S. today – an animus these...persons (damn! I did try to control it) maintain self-righteously while stoutly denying that widespread anti-Christian sentiment exists!

     Great God in heaven! If Christians were as exercised by the antics of militant atheists as the latter are at the modest artistic efforts of the former, we’d have a full-scale war on our hands. That we don’t is testimony to the determination of American Christians to obey the Redeemer’s exhortation to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” [Matthew 5:44]

     I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt over my relatively modest achievements in that regard. But only a twinge. Perhaps that should trouble me.

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     You might get the idea from the foregoing that I’m in a bad mood. Actually, I’m in a rather good mood, for a number of reasons. First, I’m just back from Mass, which always lifts my spirits. Second, yesterday I paid all my bills, set aside the small fortune that will be demanded of me in December for property taxes, and found that I have a little money left over for the Frivolity Fund. And third, we’ll soon be heading out to visit some newish friends who’ve invited us to stay with them for a weekend.

     Oh, there are a few clouds in the sky. Aren’t there always? The political ones you already know about. Economic and social troubles are sure to strike when control of the Internet “goes international.” And I have all the usual aches, pains, strains, and chilblains of a man reluctantly edging into his “golden years.” Still, there is much to be grateful for, and it has been said, and truly, that gratitude is the secret to happiness.

     Now if only the CSO would learn to rinse the dishes before leaving them in the sink, the cats would stop stealing the dishtowels, and Rufus would quit !@#$%^&* drooling all over my clean trousers...

     Strike that. May God bless and keep you all!