John Crist

1. I'm very selective about what celebrity Christian scandals and apostasies I comment on. It's only noteworthy when people tumble from their pedestal because people put on the pedestal in the first place. 

2. I've only seen a few clips of his routines, but he's clearly a very gifted comedian. But there's never been any correlation between talent and virtue. 

3. Success corrupts some people by providing new temptations–as well as the opportunity to act on those temptations. They may have been decent people before they became famous, and their moral downfall is the result of success.

4. In other cases, they has a trail of misconduct before they become famous, yet that remained unreported so long as they were nobodies. But once them became public figures, that exposed them to public scrutiny, and their shady past caught up with them. Their ambition was their undoing. Had they lived and died in obscurity, they might never have been found out. 

5. I don't know if he's in legal jeopardy. Assuming he dodges imprisonment, his career is irreparably damaged. Of course, you always have fans who make excuses for their idol. 

6. It's lethal for an entertainer to become unpopular. Once his audience turns against him, he's cooked. I think that's what sunk Mel Gibson's career. Likewise, as Michael Jackson's image became ever weirder and more perverted, that burned into his popularity. 

If your constituency no longer likes you, if it can't separate the charming onstage image from the offstage scoundrel, then you're finished–unless that was your image all along. Kinda like Sinatra's tough-guy, mobster persona. 

7. A dilemma for Crist's comedy schtick is that much of it involves Babylon Bee-style spoofing foibles and follies in certain pockets of evangelicalism. Christians only find that funny if they think the comedian is one of us, on our side. That the satire good-natured ribbing rather than mean-spirited. 

If, however, they find out that the comedian is a creep, then the satirical judgmentalism leaves a sour aftertaste. It's like husband-and-wife comedy teams who make fun of each other onstage. That can be amusing so long as the audience believes the couple is truly in love offstage. But if it's known that their marriage is on the rocks, and the sniping asides aren't acting but a public spillover of their mutual detestation in real life, then that hits the wrong note. It's not funny anymore.

Coming out Christian

https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Why-I-m-coming-out-as-a-Christian-on-stage-at-Edinburgh-Festival

The Meg formula

I watched the movie The Meg on Netflix. I thought it was supposed to be campy, which might have made it fun, but it was mostly serious, which made it boring. Then it got worse. Midway through the film I started rooting for the megalodon shark to eat everyone. It was a bad movie, but not bad so it's good (e.g. Plan 9 from Outer Space). Just plain bad.

However, maybe my low opinion of the film is due to being American. By contrast, the movie was a success abroad. It seemed primarily catered to the mainland Chinese. It mainly takes place in a super hi-tech underwater research center off the coast of China. Shanghai as I recall. The main scientist in charge of the lab is Chinese. The main love interest is Chinese. She has a cute little daughter. China and the Chinese are positively depicted for the most part. It looks like The Meg made approximately $145 million domestically. Its production budget was $130 million so it would've been considered a commercial failure (making "only" $15 million) had it only been distributed domestically in the US. However, The Meg made approximately $385 million internationally. So its grand total was a little over $530 million. The largest percentage of any nation in the total looks to be mainland China ($153 million). Overall The Meg did quite well commercially, largely thanks to international audiences. (Source is Box Office Mojo.)

I guess it's no surprise, but many movies now seem to be made primarily with the international market in mind. Often the Asian and especially Chinese market. Another example is the Pacific Rim series of movies. I presume the main reason is because that's where all the money and potential money is. Of course, this makes sense from a business perspective. However, what happens if (say) an American film production's business collides in significant enough ways with American values? Or even undermines American values? Suppose it becomes quite lucrative for an American studio to film and distribute communist Chinese propaganda.

Of course, this has wider implications than the entertainment industry. For instance, consider how tech companies like Google and Apple try to do business in China. In the US, these big tech companies rail against all sorts of social injustices. However, in China, these same companies tolerate human rights violations and other ethical issues as the price of doing business in China. At what point does business stop becoming "just business"? Remember when Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil"?

Deflategate Is Mostly About Entertainment, Not Morality

I have Google News set as my homepage, and the Deflategate story has been at or near the top day after day. I've seen the story getting prominent attention from the Drudge Report, USA Today, CNN, etc. Rush Limbaugh has been discussing it a lot on his radio program. There are a lot of threads about it, and those threads are getting a lot of comments at the web sites I've seen. That includes conservative political sites, where I'd expect the people involved to show more discernment. The story is getting an absurd amount of attention.

Making The Most Of Your Time, Because…

We're at that time when we get lists of the year's top ten news stories, the five most significant events in politics, the twenty most influential people, and so forth. Here's an article about the top online searches at places like Google and Yahoo. The results are pathetic, a reflection of our secular, trivial, and vulgar culture. A society that gluts itself on humor and movies while swimming in an ocean of trivialities thinks it's being mature and profound by focusing so inordinately on the death of Robin Williams. But is your life much different? Does your church do much to address these issues? When was the last time you heard a sermon that not only addresses time management, but does so with a lot of details, a lot of confrontation, a lot of rebuke, and suggestions about how to change? How are you influencing the people around you on these issues?

Operation Clambake

Here is an article about seven people who successfully left the Church of Scientology.

I notice three of the seven are Katie Holmes, Nicole Kidman, and Mimi Rogers.

What's more, all three were evidently once married to operating thetan Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. Otherwise known as Tom Cruise.

And it would appear Cruise has not married nor divorced any other person besides these three women.

Hence I surmise a potentially efficacious means by which to leave the Church of Scientology is to marry and divorce Tom Cruise.

Perhaps Cruise is an inside man for Operation Clambake. A real life IMF agent. Dropped in behind enemy lines when he parachuted from a rocket propelled DC-8 like spacecraft. Primed and ready to wage a war between worlds. To bring us across the bridge to total freedom.

Michael Jackson And Martin Hengel

When I went to my computer this morning, I saw a series of stories on the death of James Gandolfini, an actor, at the top of the Google News page. Then I saw a story about his death at Politico, a political web site. The story notes how his death is being mourned by prominent political figures, like Chris Christie. We're told that Gandolfini's "The Sopranos" series "explored the state of the American dream and the American family". We're told that the series "concluded with its breathtaking blackout ending, which left open the question whether Soprano was gunned down in a New Jersey diner as the show concluded. Many thousands of words on the Internet debated the question, which remains unresolved to this day." A Google News search under "James Gandolfini" turned up about 114,000 results, including articles at CNN, NPR, and USA Today, for example.

Quem quaerimus adjutorem nisi te, Domine?

"Tragic Worship" by Carl Trueman.