Final revival
“When I hopped on the No. 7 train to Shea Stadium to join several thousand people to hear what was ostensibly the 86-year-old Billy Graham’s last series of sermons, I was expecting an old-time Christian revival, but that wasn’t what I got. I was also expecting the fiery orator I grew up with as a Southern Baptist evangelical in small-town Alabama, but I didn’t exactly get that, either. …
“Graham’s sermons, for the most part, followed a narrative style in which he recounted a joke or anecdote and used the punch line to segue into an important lesson — which, in my experience as a sermon consumer (forced and voluntary), is the standard formula. But there was something strange about them, in that they offered little of substance. The revivals of my childhood and adolescence, in contrast, were raucous affairs, with blistering 45-minute sermons designed to break you down and convince you that the only way you’d ever put yourself back together again was with the aid of your lord Jesus Christ — and probably not even then.”
—Elizabeth Spiers, writing on “A spiritual three-ring circus,” June 27 in Salon at www.salon.com
Multicultural gold
“Households containing both basic cable and at least one preschooler are surely familiar with ’Dora the Explorer,’ Nickelodeon’s animated hit about a doe-eyed Latina girl who lives inside a computer. In every episode, the bilingual Dora and her trusty monkey, Boots, embark on a colorful adventure seeking out lost robots, magic wands, and valuable lessons on self-esteem. For good measure, they also throw a few Spanish vocabulary words into the mix. The show and its licensed goods … have brought in an estimated $1 billion since ’Dora’ premiered in August of 2000.
“’Dora’ is more than the next Barney — at least in terms of revenue, she’s bigger than Barney ever was. How has she managed to ensnare so many devotees in the juice-box set? Though the show is ostensibly targeted at viewers between the ages of 2 and 5, Nickelodeon understands that it is adults who control both the remote and the purse strings. …
“The network’s first smart move was using ’Dora’ to assert Nickelodeon’s multicultural bona fides. … Three-year-olds, of course, aren’t generally preoccupied with racial sensitivity, but the network was targeting parents, not kids.”
—Brendan I. Koerner, writing on “Dora the Explorer,” June 24 in Slate at www.slate.com
Forgotten history
“Yale professor David Gelernter says that ’ignorance of history is destroying our judgment.’ … The concern about historical amnesia crosses the political spectrum. Bill Moyers, the liberal PBS pundit, has said “we Americans seem to know everything about the last 24 hours but very little of the last 60 centuries or the last 60 years.’ …
“When Ronald Reagan delivered his 1989 farewell address to the nation, he noted there was “a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells,” and he would make no exception. He told his audience that the ’one that’s been on my mind for some time’ was that the country was failing to adequately teach our children the American story and what it represents in the history of the world. ’We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion, but what’s important,’ he said. ’If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.’”
—John Fund, writing on “The American Story,” June 27 in Opinion Journal at www.opinionjournal.com
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