The media’s shameful, cruel obsession with those awaiting the rapture

[struggle4progress]

Too Much Judgment
The media’s shameful, cruel obsession with those awaiting the rapture.
Tiffany Stanley
May 21, 2011 | 12:00 am

... Yesterday, references to Judgment Day made up the entire top five of Google’s Hot Searches. At The Washington Post, a story about Family Radio—the Christian broadcast network that Camping owns—was the site’s most popular item. Another piece, on the group’s followers, was the most-emailed from The New York Times. Meanwhile, Huffington Post has devoted an entire webpage to doomsday coverage ...

... Last week, when we learned that Camping was predicting the apocalypse, I was tasked with spending May 21 — the day of the Rapture — with a few of his true-believing followers ...

... But the more I looked into the story, the more it began to turn my stomach to think of spending my Saturday evening in someone’s living room, waiting for that gotcha moment when they realized it was all a lie—leaving me to file a story the next day, poking fun at their gullibility. I decided I couldn’t do it.

Yet the media coverage has continued, and now to me, the schadenfreude has turned sinister. Based on the high traffic the articles are garnering, it would seem as if many of us are intrigued voyeurs, gleeful in knowing the exact day when these people will experience their life’s greatest disappointment. We feel superior, knowing that even though they told us we were heading for death and destruction, now, they get theirs ...

http://www.tnr.com/article/88803/rapture-judgement-day-may-21-media-obsession

[WolverineDG]

1. Well, if it hadn't been for the infinite numbers of posts about it on DU

I never would have known the world was supposed to end today.

dg

[Dorian Gray]

7. This is really

the only place I've heard about it, as well.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Not enough judgment

If the media had consistently condemned the idiotic idea as a publicity stunt by a bunch of self-important fools who needed their egos boosting, then a man wouldn't have hanged himself in a Nairobi church. Or gullible marks wouldn't have given their life savings to pay for adverts.

We should never have indulged the religious claptrap.

[Igel]

4. I haven't heard why the man hanged himself in a Catholic church.

If the media don't play up such claptrap, most of those affected by it wouldn't ever hear of it. Unless you're tuned into this one guy's preaching, it's immaterial. I'd never have heard of the jerk. Or his goofy predictions.

It's rather like the Qur'aan burning. It triggered riots overseas, and deaths. But those happened only because the media reported on what was a truly insignificant event. If they hadn't reported on it, nobody overseas would ever have known. No reporting, no riots, no deaths. Then again, that would have meant no riots and deaths to report on, no outrage over the event or the response, or the responses to the responses.

[moobu2]

5. The 'Left Behind' book series has sold over 70 million copies

mostly in the USA (Left Behind lol) so this delusional rapture idea where millions of Christians suddenly vanish andn instantly reappear with baby Jesus in heaven is an idea held by a massive percentage of the U.S. Christian population. These ridiculous ideas aren't harmless either and it does deserve as much media attention as possible. It makes mainstream Christians understandably uncomfortable for some of their more obvious delusional ideas to be exposed with such attention but sooo what.

[AlecBGreen]

16. ugh

my Dad loves Tom Clancy and other writers like that and he got one of these Left Behind books to see if it was any good. I, seeing it on the bookshelf and desperate for something to read, got it down and read it. Soooo.....bad...... I mean really, really, REALLY bad writing. It was like a soap opera without any of the hot people.

[phasma ex machina]

3. Mass media loves to promote fear. nt

[aquart]

6. But they don't "get theirs." What nonsense.

All they get is life going on, same as the rest of us.

If they got theirs, they would be experiencing a very stern lecture from Satan on the sin of pride.

[AlecBGreen]

17. heh, good point

nt

[cleanhippie]

8. What a crock. If religion didn't put itself in the spotlight every single day....

this would have passed barely noticed. Instead, we are inundated by religion at EVERY turn.


Payback is a bitch.

[Silent3]

9. Rapture predictions are the rare case where religious dogma is put to the test

So much else about religion deals with invisible spirits and things that can only be revealed after death, often served up with a heaping pile of scorn and judgement toward those who won't believe the dogma.

Maybe it can get a bit mean-spirited, but it's awfully damn satisfying, and a well-earned "I told you so!", to be able to say, "Look! That stuff you expected me to believe, that you judged me harshly for not believing, was BULLSHIT!"

We can only hope that a few smart people will catch on that there's just as much bullshit in the stuff that's more conveniently spared direct scrutiny, often spared that scrutiny by design.

[Silent3]

10. If the Rapture makes the top five Google searches...

...that indicates a lot of people find this subject interesting and entertaining. I don't think you can claim that this interest is all due to one-sided media hype. It's a feedback loop.

The Rapturists themselves spent a lot of money on advertising their cause, via things like giant billboards in prominent locations. That makes it a legit story to report on, not something the media would have or should have studiously ignored. I don't think it took much reporting of this story for the story to catch on like wildfire in the public's imagination.

[customerserviceguy]

11. These silly eschatological things have happened before

But, that was in the days before the Internet. Once upon a time, the only things people were allowed to know (outside of gossip) all went through a small group of people called "editors". They would simply report that Comet Kohotek (or whatever) had simply passed, and nothing happened.

Today, things take on a life of their own. No old-fashioned editor would have ever run ANY stories about Barack Obama being born in Kenya. But when enough people can turn a stupid urban myth, as we used to call them, into a big story, then even those who are still old-fashioned editors can run an "Obama releases his birth certificate" story above the fold.

It's a two-edged sword, this freedom of the Internet. Things cannot be buried any more, but not everything that "good" people generally want to keep shielded will stay that way.

Every new advance in the ability of ordinary people to access information has threatened religion, from the ability to read, to the printing press, to the public library, to the radio/TV era, and now the Internet. It seems that religion always manages to adapt to efforts to educate people out of it.

[onager]

12. I first heard about it on their own billboard.

Which they rather tastelessly put up in Northridge, CA, a Los Angeles suburb in the San Fernando Valley. As in "Northridge Quake," the big shaker in January 1994. FTR, epicentered about 2 miles from my house.

I disagree with that reporter. This kind of foolishness needs to be mocked more, not less. I only feel sorry for any dependents of these idiots, the kids and elderly parents who'll be eating cat food because the "responsible adults" in the household spent all their money to prop up Harold Camping's already monstrously bloated ego.

I also didn't see too many news stories about Camping's net worth. One story that did mention it said $72 million. Wonder if some of his now-penniless followers will try suing him to recover the money they spent on his buses and billboards?

[dimbear]

13. I don't follow the reasoning. These people wanted to be abused;

they got what they wanted abusewise; no foul.

[darkstar3]

14. Camping got what he wanted, a media circus,

and that is the only reason to lament how much this has been covered. Well, that, and the fact that they didn't turn Camping into a laughing stock on national television because they were too busy hiking their ratings using his bullshit.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

15. If you chose to make an ass of yourself in front of the entire world, you've only yourself to blame.

:nopity:

[Nay]

18. It's not shameful or cruel, or obsessive, to report on and then expose

the idiocy of such things as people awaiting rapture. The only bad thing about the reporting is that many more idiots were drawn into it because they heard it on the news.

Ms. Stanley would be wise to remember that those poor people awaiting rapture in their living rooms also believed that she, and the whole rest of the world outside of a core of true believers, were going to get their comeuppance and DIE and GO TO HELL by October, after months of fires, earthquakes, agony, etc., etc. And they were happy it was all going to happen just that way.

Motto? Don't waste a lot of pity on someone who wants you dead and in hell.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

19. I have no respect for these people at all and very little sympathy

They believed in something that was not only stupid, but also judgmental and demeaning. These people thought they were going to be swept up to heaven while I was tortured, beaten, burned and in agony for 1,000 years. I have no sympathy for stupid people who ignored warnings about the stupidity of their actions, especially those who were almost gleeful about the pain and torment that their Lord and Savior were going to inflict on people like me.

If the word itself wasn't a religious construct, I'd call these sorts of people "evil". The torture fetishes they harbor are just sickening. Sympathy? No. Respect? Fuck NO. It's time for them to revisit reality and maybe take a good hard look at themselves.

My only hope is that this experience will help these people take a rational look at their silly beliefs. I'm not holding my breath.