#514: L. Brent Bozell III

I cannot help but draw attention to Malcolm Bowden even though he is British, but this entry’s concern is one of the major movers in the delusion and persecution complex movement. L. Brent Bozell III is a conservative Christian and self-proclaimed media watchdog, and founder of the Parents Television Council (PTC) and the Media Research Center. He also writes commentaries for Creators Syndicate and appears on various TV shows (mostly on Fox, since he has a semi-official policy of not appearing together with filthy liberals).

The PTC (the current president of which is one Tim Winter) aims to ensure that nothing entertaining, such as Family Guy, will be shown on television so that parents can safely use the television as a way of raising their kids without having to pay that much attention (they actually have a real beef with Family Guy, American Dad, Cleveland Show, Bob’s Burgers, Simpsons (this complaint must be one of the most idiotic in the history of the Universe), and so on, which are consistently deemed to be the ”worst TV shows of the week”). PTC’s main strategy is to get their fans to flood the FCC with complaints, sometimes adorned with Bible verses. A good commentary on their practices can be found here (warning: this links to Huffpo).

The aim of the MRC (a.k.a. ”Conservative Movement Cultural Complaints Division”) is officially to ”bring balance in the media”, which generally means complaining that media doesn’t always completely disregard all facts and accuracy in order to favor the reality-independent perspectives that the batshit bigot Bozell favors, and that they dare criticize fair and balanced conservatives such as Jerry Falwell. As a hardcore religious rightwing organization MRC is ardent proponent of homophobia. You can see Bozell’s tasteful critique of Chaz Bono here. Here’s his take on Glee, which basically complaints that people who bully homosexuals are not depicted as heroes. And here is his declaration that Lady Gaga and Conan O’Brien the two biggest ”losers” of 2011 for their “eagerness to shred traditional values.”

In private life Bozell is an ardent Catholic who has denounced The Da Vinci Code as ”viciously anti-catholic”. But then again, that is pretty much his description of anything he doesn’t immediately fancy (in addition to it – in particular the media – not being sufficiently anti-Islam). In that respect he has for instance thrown his weight in with professional hooter Bill Donohue to denounce Penn and Teller and garbledly attack Obama for being officially anti-Christian and (not the least) anti-Christmas because certain stores in the US, out of purely free-market-related concerns, sell cards saying ”Happy Holiday” rather than ”Merry Christmas”.

There’s a decent Brent Bozell resource here.

Diagnosis: Bill Donohue wannabe, and that’s not a particularly good state to be in. His ideal with respect to cultural matters appears to be somewhere in the vicinity of Oliver Cromwell’s ideas. Though he is less extreme than Tony Perkins or Brian Fischer, and he is against the death penalty, Bozell is generally angry, fanatic, mad, and loud, and appears to have some influence.