Jesus and Mickey Mouse are Brothers

Marsha made a killer shrimp stir fry with black bean sauce tonight -- which, if you don't know her, is sorta as suprising as finding Liberace at a Nevada brothel. She even used the wok, which I think is now the first piece of cookware she's ever touched. I kid...sorta, but the shrimp rocked.

Anyway, I'm standing there at the sink cleaning up (the person who doesn't cook does the dishes) and I turn on my Tivoli Henry Klos Radio (amazing) to listen to KLON/KJAZ. I like to listen to Jazz, Blues and Classical when I cook/clean, it somehow fits well with those kind of tasks. Probably why they always play slow, jazzy numbers in movies when some guy's scrubbing the floor of a bar after closing time and some loser's still there talking to the bartender about his long-lost love.

So when I turn on the radio, do I get sweet jazz? Bouncy Blues? Moody Classical? No. I get jabber. It's pledge week on all public stations in America and suddenly I'm peppered with some annoying, nasally-challenged lady and a chipper little-league announcer wanna-be repeating their toll-free number over and over again.

I scrub the wok in concentric circles, like my friend Jon has told me to do, as they repeat that annoying number to the point I want to call them up, find out where they are and rip the microphones out of their hands. What research monkey told them that a person would want to contribute after hearing someone repeat things over and over. Stop already!

So I turn the radio dial (yes, it has a dial...cool) and let it fall on some station that seems to have a bouncy beat. A little pop-py but it's getting the wok clean, so I leave it on. The song finishes while I'm on the knives and suddenly a bright and happy 20-something girl comes on. Reminds me of what I imagine girls in Oklahoma or Illinois or Nebraska sound like. A sorta "this is America" feeling. Sears. True Value Hardware. Dodge. Ice Cream.

Then she announces their slogan " Safe for the whole family." And then the rest: The Fish KFSHand all of sudden she's talking about becoming a Praise Pusher and somehow, in some weird way, I'm still intrigued.

And then it hits me. Christian Rock has become the Mickey Mouse Club of our era. Before you get upset, I'm not talking about Jesus or God (I never understood the difference -- sometimes Jesus is God and then other times God is God, who's who? It's like having two guys named Ray in a room -- "You mean me?"). I'm not even talking about religion. What I mean is that the culture of God and the group of people who socialize around that culture, especially Christian culture, is very close on the genetic tree to what Disney represented in the '50s -- Family, Safety, Love, Respect. Jesus is the new Mickey.

It's even more blatant than that. On "The Fish," they advertise trips to Disneyland and DVD re-releases of Bambi.

Now all of this is not such a bad thing -- there's nothing wrong was spreading love and responsibility, but you've got to wonder how bad our common culture and media options have become in their quest for commercial success. Just how much crap are we putting out there?

And what would Jesus make? Or Mickey?