Top 10 reasons HBO censored Gene Robinson
I heard the opening of the inaugural concert live on NPR and then watched the rebroadcast on HBO--no invocation by gay bishop Gene Robinson. More details and a link to write HBO here at JoeMyGod's blog, but while we wait for HBO to explain, here are my top ten reasons the invocation was not broadcast:
1. HBO sound system cannot broadcast gay voices.
2. Program ran over schedule, so HBO went back in their time machine and cut the beginning of the live broadcast.
3. Appearance of a gay men's chorus went way over HBO's 'gay quota' for the event.
4. HBO is a family-friendly network that does not carry offensive material like frontal nudity, profanity, or bishops.
5. Ellen DeGeneres was jealous.
6. Dumbledore was jealous.
7. HBO was warned that terrorists were watching for a signal that America wasgay weak.
8. Rick Warren was jealous.
9. Everyone knows all gays are atheists.
10. Sarah Palin used her special anti-Russian spyware to block the signal.
1-19-09
UPDATE: NPR, who interviewed Robinson earlier today (audio here), blames HBO, claiming that they were dependent on HBO for their audio feed. Meanwhile HBO is blaming the inauguration committee, who claim it was a mixup (e.g. here on Huffington Post).
7 p.m. Now the PIC has apologized and will include clips of the invocation in tomorrow's ceremonies, according to Atlantic.
8 p.m. The Gray Lady weighs in.
1. HBO sound system cannot broadcast gay voices.
2. Program ran over schedule, so HBO went back in their time machine and cut the beginning of the live broadcast.
3. Appearance of a gay men's chorus went way over HBO's 'gay quota' for the event.
4. HBO is a family-friendly network that does not carry offensive material like frontal nudity, profanity, or bishops.
5. Ellen DeGeneres was jealous.
6. Dumbledore was jealous.
7. HBO was warned that terrorists were watching for a signal that America was
8. Rick Warren was jealous.
9. Everyone knows all gays are atheists.
10. Sarah Palin used her special anti-Russian spyware to block the signal.
1-19-09
UPDATE: NPR, who interviewed Robinson earlier today (audio here), blames HBO, claiming that they were dependent on HBO for their audio feed. Meanwhile HBO is blaming the inauguration committee, who claim it was a mixup (e.g. here on Huffington Post).
7 p.m. Now the PIC has apologized and will include clips of the invocation in tomorrow's ceremonies, according to Atlantic.
8 p.m. The Gray Lady weighs in.
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I missed the cries of outrage from our ever willing to play-the-poor-victim right-wingnuts. It wasn't enough to have Warren for the actual inauguration, they had to throw a fit over the gay bishop?
Here is the prayer he offered and HBO didn't show:
January 19, 2009 12:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for posting the prayer. There is now a discussion going on Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/18/225053/491/697/685788
January 19, 2009 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
HBO has already told AfterElton the decision wasn't theirs. It's hard to believe a corporate executive, but HBO might be telling the truth this time.
Consider this. SOMEBODY scheduled Robinson to appear at 2:25 & SOMEBODY scheduled the HBO broadcast to begin at 2:30 & SOMEBODY scheduled the Obamas & Bidens to show up at 2:52. Not likely that that SOMEBODY was an HBO director.
The Constant Weader @ www.RealityChex.com
January 19, 2009 6:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, see my update in the later post.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/nka/2009/01/update-on-the-robinson-story.php
Video of the invocation is available here:
http://www.dallasvoice.com/instant-tea/2009/01/19/hbo-doesnt-air-robinsons-prayer/
January 19, 2009 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it a stretch to find a conspiracy here?
That was a beautiful prayer, by the way.
January 19, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
That sucks. Robinson is an episcopalian bishop.
Here's some lists of people who were raised as episcopalian/anglicans. It includes a whole lot of presidents including George Washington, GHW Bush, FDR and Teddy Roosevelt. There's no excuse for this.
* Dean Acheson - U.S. Secretary of State (1949-53)
* Douglas Adams - popular comedic science fiction author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (devout Anglican until age 18, then agnostic, then atheist)
* James Agee - influential film critic
* Spiro Agnew - U.S. Vice-President under Nixon
* Edward Albee - playwright
* Eric Ambler - influential British spy novel author
* Chester A. Arthur - 21st U.S. President
* Gerald Ford - 38th U.S. President
* Fred Astaire - popular movie star and dancer
* Charles Babbage - influential mathematician whose theories were instrumental in development of computers
* Francis Bacon - influential scientific philosopher
* Tallulah Bankhead - movie star (identified herself as a "high Episcopalian agnostic")
* James Blish - acclaimed science fiction writer; author of A Case of Conscience; etc.
* Humphrey Bogart - movie star (lapsed)
* Bono - lead singer for Irish rock band U2; humanitarian
* Robert Boyle - father of modern chemistry
* Marion Zimmer Bradley - fantasy writer; The Mists of Avalon; etc.
* William Henry Bragg - Nobel Prize-winning physicist known for his work on X-ray diffraction
* Margaret Wise Brown - influential children's book author: Goodnight Moon; The Runaway Bunny; etc. (non-churchgoer; Presbyterian father; Episcopalian mother)
* George H. W. Bush - 41st U.S. President
* Charlie Chaplin - great silent film star, comedian, director; "The Little Tramp" (lapsed, agnostic)
* George M. Dallas - Vice-President under Pres. Polk
* Charles Darwin - father of evolutionary biology
* Bette Davis - movie star (mostly lapsed Episcopalian/Baptist family background)
* Richard Dawkins - influential evolutionary biologist (lapsed)
* Cecil B. DeMille - movie director, The Ten Commandments, etc.
* Philip K. Dick - acclaimed science fiction writer; movie adaptations of his work include Blade Runner; Total Recall; Minority Report; Paycheck; Impostor
* Marie Dressler - Academy Award-winning actress
* T.S. Eliot - poet
* Benjamin Franklin - a leading American Founding Father (raised Episcopalian; Deist)
* Hannibal Goodwin - perfected application of photographic emulsion to a roll of film, a key development in film technology that allowed motion pictures to be made
* Judy Garland - movie star
* Lillian Gish - movie star
* Cary Grant - movie star (lapsed)
* William Henry Harrison - 9th U.S. President
* Olivia de Havilland - Best Actress Academy Awards for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949)
* Thomas A. Hendricks - U.S. Vice-President under Cleveland
* Robert Hooke - English scientist; formulated the law of elasticity; proposed a wave theory of light
* Thomas Jefferson - 3rd U.S. President (raised Episcopalian; Deist)
* Edward Jenner - medical scientist who made vaccination for smallpox
* William Thomson, Lord Kelvin - important thermodynamics physicist
* C.S. Lewis - author, novelist, theologian, philosopher; Mere Christianity; The Chronicles of Narnia; etc. (born into Church of Ireland)
* John Locke - philosopher
* James Madison - 4th U.S. President
* Guglielmo Marconi - inventor of the radio
* James E. McGreevey - first openly GLBT U.S. governor (New Jersey); resigned after gay adultery/nepotism/security scandal
* Victor McLaglen - Best Actor Academy Award for The Informer, 1935 (Anglican)
* Harriet Miers - White House general counsel; nominated by Pres. Bush to be on U.S. Supreme Court (never confirmed)
* James Monroe - 5th U.S. President
* Van Morrison - singer (Church of Ireland)
* Nevill Mott - Nobel Prize-winning physicist; explained the effect of light on a photographic emulsion
* Georgia O'Keeffe - famous American painter (nominal)
* Laurence Olivier - movie star (agnostic, but a dedicated Anglican)
* John Ostrander - comic book writer
* Franklin Pierce - 14th U.S. President
* Sidney Poitier - movie star (Anglican while young)
* Norman Rockwell - famous American painter (lapsed Episcopalian)
* Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 32nd U.S. President
* Theodore Roosevelt - 26th U.S. President (Dutch Reformed, but attended Episcopalian congregation)
* Dante Gabriel Rossetti - famous painter
* George Bernard Shaw - influential Irish playwright; received Nobel Price in Literature; founder of the Fabian Society (raised in Church of Ireland; later atheist, then mystic)
* Cordwainer Smith - science fiction writer
* David Souter - U.S. Supreme Court justice since 1990
* John Steinbeck - prominent American novelist (The Grapes of Wrath; etc.)
* Laurence Sterne - influential author in 1700s; wrote Tristram Shandy (clergyman in Church of Ireland)
* Zachary Taylor - 12th U.S. President
* Alfred Lord Tennyson - influential writer
* Joseph J. Thomson - Nobel Laureate in Physics, discoverer of the electron, founder of the field of atomic physics
* John Tyler - 10 U.S. President
* Matthew Tindal - philosopher of deism
* Henry A. Wallace - U.S. Vice-President under F.D. Roosevelt
* George Washington - 1st U.S. President
* Oscar Wilde - influential Irish playwright, novelist, poet, story writer (raised in Church of Ireland; deathbed conversion to Catholicism)
* Tennessee Williams - playwright
* William Butler Yeats - W.B. Yeats was an influential Irish poet; received Novel Prize for Literature (Church of Ireland)
Some additional U.S. Senators who were Episcopalians:
Ted Stevens - Alaska
Barry Goldwater - Arizona
John McCain - Arizona (1987-)
Blanche Lincoln - Arkansas
Prescott Bush - Connecticut (1952-63)
Bill Nelson - Florida
Saxby Chambliss - Georgia
Evan Bayh - Indiana
William Dodd Hathaway - Maine (1973-79)
Millard E. Tydings - Maryland (1927-51)
Charles Mathias - Maryland (1969-87)
Stuart Symington - Missouri (1953-76)
Chuck Hagel - Nebraska
Jim Exon - Nebraska (1979-97)
James W. Wadsworth, Jr. - New York (1915-27)
Robert A. Taft - Ohio 1939-53
Robert Latham Owen - Oklahoma (1907-25)
Lincoln Chafee - Rhode Island
Claiborne Pell - Rhode Island (1961-97)
John H. Chafee - Rhode Island (1976-99)
Kay Bailey Hutchison - Texas
Phil Gramm - Texas (1985-2002)
John Warner - Virginia
Harry F. Byrd - Virginia (1933-65)
Harry F. Byrd, Jr. - Virginia (1965-83)
Chuck Robb - Virginia (1989-2001)
Brock Adams - Washington (1987-93)
Alan Simpson - Wyoming (1979-97)
Pete Williams - New Jersey/ABSCAM scandal
Some additional U.S. Representatives who were Episcopalians:
Bill Alexander - Arkansas (1969-93)
Bill McCollum - Florida (1981-2001)
Jack W. Buechner - Missouri (1987-91)
Jo Bonner - Alabama 1st
Don Young - Alaska (1973-)
John Shadegg - Arizona 3rd
Sam Farr - California 17th
Rob Simmons - Connecticut 2nd
Adam Putnam - Florida 12th
Dan Miller - Florida 13th (1993-2003)
Ander Crenshaw - Florida 4th
John Mica - Florida 7th
Jack Kingston - Georgia 1st
David McIntosh - Indiana 2nd (1995-2001)
Jim Leach - Iowa 2nd
Bob Livingston - Louisiana 1st (1977-99)
Charles Boustany - Louisiana 7th (2005-)
James Symington - Missouri 2nd (1969-77)
Rodney Frelinghuysen - New Jersey 11th
Robert E. Andrews - New Jersey 1st
Randy Kuhl - New York 29th (2005-)
Cass Ballenger - North Carolina 10th
Ralph Regula - Ohio 16th
Chris Bell - Texas 25th
Jeb Hensarling - Texas 5th
James McDermott - Washington 7th
Jim Sensenbrenner - Wisconsin 5th (1979-)
Judy Biggert - Illinois 13th
Brian Kerns - Indiana 7th (2001-2002)
Some additional U.S. Governors who were Episcopalians:
Hiram Johnson (1866-1945) - Governor and Senator from California
Fife Symington - Arizona (1991-97)
George Deukmejian - California (1983-91)
Charles L. Terry, Jr. - Delaware (1965-69)
Pete du Pont - Delaware (1977-85)
Bill Weld - Massachusetts (1991-97)
Kenny Guinn - Nevada
Mark Sanford - South Carolina
Carroll Campbell - South Carolina (1987-95)
Thomas A. Riggs - Territorial Alaska (1918-21)
Bob Wise - West Virginia
Dave Freudenthal - Wyoming
Stanley K. Hathaway - Wyoming (1967-75)
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justices who were Episcopalians:
John Jay
John Marshall
Salmon P. Chase
Melville W. Fuller
Morrison R. Waite
Harlan F. Stone
Additional U.S. Supreme Court Justices who were Episcopalians:
Alfred Moore
Benjamin R. Curtis
Bushrod Washington
Byron R. White
David H. Souter
Edward T. Sanford
George Sutherland
Horace H. Lurton
James F. Byrnes
James Iredell
James Wilson
John A. Campbell
John Rutledge
Owen J. Roberts
Peter V. Daniel
Philip P. Barbour
Potter Stewart
Robert H. Jackson
Rufus W. Peckham
Samuel Chase
Sandra Day O'Connor
Stephen J. Field
Thomas Johnson
Thurgood Marshall
Ward Hunt
William H. Moody
Willis Van Devanter
January 19, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Harrumph! I thought I just missed it 'cause I tuned in late.
It bothers me that CNN and especially MSNBC didn't show it either... I can buy HBO's timing excuse but both CNN and MSNBC were covering this stuff wall-to-wall. Their exclusion of the Invocation was clearly intentional.
January 19, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
If this means they will not cover Warren, to be fair, then I guess I would be okay with it.
Was the "outrage" at Robinson getting the invocation on the other side as significant as the outrage regarding Warren? We never really heard anything about that.
January 19, 2009 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is such a powerful time for African Americans that I doubt you're going to get much interest in this controversy and it's probably counterproductive to try to do that, but that doesn't mean it should be forgotten either.
Obama appears to be first and last a politician and I don't expect him to deliver diddly for progressives unless we make it politically necessary for him to do so. He's going to have some close votes ahead. He should not take us for granted. He may need to be sent a message and all groups that he is dissing may need to get together to send it. For example, I heard David Gregory say he's going to continue the Bush policy in Iraq, end of story. Ending the war is another joke on us, I guess.
January 19, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
OY, HBO is not to blame. The Presidential Inaugural Committee scheduled Gene Robinson before the HBO airing was set to begin. It's kind of ridiculous to claim HBO is trying to be uncontroversial by not showing Gene Robinson when they make money based on cutting edge programming.
January 19, 2009 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
why would the inaugural committee do that?? /s
January 19, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
When are "gays" going to be called for their narcissistic hypocrisy? --
1. Make constant public issue of being "gay,"
2. Then bitch, whine, and hand-wring when OTHERS make an issue of their being "gay" -- and calling it "homophobia" and "discrimination".
January 19, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you're implying that Robinson is a narcissistic hypocrite, you are SO off the mark with Robinson. This is a fine man, dare I say a holy man, who just happens to be gay. He wasn't nominated by his diocese to be bishop because he's gay; he was nominated because his diocese loves him and decided that he was the shepherd they wanted to lead them. It's others who make the issue about his being gay.
That said, he would be a very poor religious leader were he not to speak out against society's crimes against the LGBT community. The sad reality is that people are discriminated against, beaten, and even killed, not because they're just like the people taking those actions but because they are different from them.
Those differences include race, gender, religion, and, yes, sexuality that is not heterosexual-vanilla. If and when the LGBT community starts straight bashing, I will condemn them as I condemn those who harm the groups Robinson invoked in his prayer. Until that time, I'm glad that he reminded his listeners that there is injustice in this country that should not be ignored.
Where's the narcissistic hypocrisy there?
January 19, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
What difference does it make? If HBO was able to broadcast the prayer, how would it have helped gay rights? Would there have been an announcement that the bishop was gay followed by a discussion about the importance of that moment? And since the prayer was not shown, how did it hurt the gay rights movement? I seriously question the intelligence of anyone who thinks this was a conspiracy.
January 19, 2009 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah well I was raised an episcopalian and last I heard it was still one of the biggest denominations in the country. They just dissed one of our bishops. If they put that self promoting wanker Warren on in prime time and there's gonna be burning churches all over New England!
January 19, 2009 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have also talked about it on the LGBT community Bimingle.com, we all give our support to Obama,We need the bishop. It's our world.
January 19, 2009 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink