One Million Moms, aka Seventeen Angry Dipsticks, is back! They’re still mad about Fox’s TV show “Lucifer,” like they were before, but now they have a new target: Olive Garden, which sponsors the show. If you’re not familiar with “Lucifer,” it’s based on a Neil Gaiman comic about the devil getting bored and hanging out in Los Angeles, presumably because LA is the closest thing on Earth to his home territory (just kidding, that’s Oklahoma). He goes on adventures, helps the cops (OK, that part we actually totally buy), and just generally has a grand old time. But since Lucifer himself is apparently bad ‘n evil ‘n stuff (who knew?!), One Million Moms is VERY ANGRY Olive Garden, home of the Never-Ending Diabeetus Bowl, sponsors the show, and those ladies are determined to lay a hurtin’ on the OG on social media.
I watched the pilot episode of “Lucifer” last week…and I’m here to advise my gentle readers that I survived the experience and can report that my mortal soul is still intact and (so far as I can ascertain) functional. Those of you who firmly believe I HAVE no soul will need to take a number and get in line behind the rope barrier.
At no time during or since watching “Lucifer” have I succumbed to or even experience the urge to sacrifice children, babies, ex-wives, or virgins. Nor have I had to ward off the nagging desire to cut out and eat the still-beating heart of a Republican (though one could understand how I might have struggled with that urge under different circumstances). “Lucifer” is hardly the cesspool of spiritual peril that (WAY fewer than) One Million Moms would have us believe. If anything, it’s the small-screen equivalent of cotton-candy: light, sweet, easy on the conscience, and blessedly free of heavy moral and/or spiritual dilemmas. The premise has a “Haven’t we been down this road before?” quality: Lucifer gets tired of being the Prince of Darkness ©, decides to go on holiday, and- cliché alert- heads to Los Angeles, which seems perfect, since the City of Angels is a city with no soul. Turns out that Lucifer Morningstar is just a thoughtful, complicated and misunderstood evil Dark Lord © with a good heart and a seemingly sincere desire to turn over a new leaf. Try as he might, though, he just can’t shake the expectation that he return to being the Lord of Hell.
Of course, I’m not a Christian- I don’t even believe in God- so I’m not prone to seeing threats to my faith and spiritual health under every rock and behind every door. I do have to wonder, though, about those whose faith is so weak and precarious that a mere television show would be sufficient to imperil their immortal souls by forcing them into a crisis of faith. If your faith in God is truly strong, how could a barely above average example of television eye candy be contsrued as promoting “sympathy for the Devil” (cue the Rolling Stones….)?
The series focuses on Lucifer portrayed as a good guy “who is bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell.” He resigns his throne, abandons his kingdom, and retires to Los Angeles, where he gets his kicks helping the LAPD punish criminals….
The premiere included graphic acts of violence, a nightclub featuring scantily-clad women, and a demon. The message of the show is clear. Lucifer is just misunderstood. He doesn’t want to be a bad guy, it’s God who is forcing him to play that role.
TAKE ACTION
Contact Olive Garden, who sponsored the spiritually dangerous program “Lucifer” and paid corporate dollars to promote their restaurants in association with the content of the program.
Use the information we have provided on our website, and let Olive Garden know that its advertising dollars are supporting sympathy towards the devil and glorifying Satan and that financial support should be pulled immediately.
Then again, (WAY fewer than) One Million Moms is the same group who worked themselves into a collective lather over the evil and licentiousness represented by…wait for it…Teddy Grahams. Don’t even get me started on that bit of self-righteous lunacy. They’re demanding Olive Garden pull its ads from “Lucifer” in order to prove it’s not “supporting sympathy towards the devil and glorifying Satan”…or face the holy wrath of a boycott led by (WAY fewer than) One Million Moms. I’m fascinated by the arrogance inherent in believing that Olive Garden has to prove anything at all to (WAY fewer than) One Million Moms. Who (besides their self-righteous selves) appointed them as moral guardian of all that’s good and holy?
If that demand didn’t get the attention of Fox, True Believers © took to OG’s Facebook page to vent their righteous, godly outrage. Let’s just say that said righteous, godly outrage appears to consist of absurd incoherent rants virtually free of proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. It seems righteous, godly outrage walks hand-in-hand with an 9th-grade edumication.
Just think of the good that could be done if only the good, God-fearing defenders of The One, True, and Only Faith © that make up (WAY fewer than) One Million Moms could be bothered to actually DO something positive. Instead, they sit on their hands, bitching and whining about a television show which, unless I’m missing something, NO ONE is forcing them to watch. Yet they’d quite happily force their narrow, hyper-Christian morality on all Americans, most of whom don’t share such a shaky faith with shallow roots.
Thanks but no thanks; my immortal soul is in no way imperiled by a television show that may not even make it through its first season.
If your spiritual health is so precarious that a TV program could potentially force you into a crisis of faith, your problem is SO much bigger than “Lucifer.” Methinks perhaps (WAY less than) One Million Moms is exercising some industrial-grade projection and laying an awful lot of unwarranted responsibility on a television show.
Here’s a simple solution for those so easily offended and whose deeply-held faith can be so thoroughly imperiled and compromised by a TV show: Get over yourselves. Stop thinking your tender sensibilities should be the yardstick all Americans must live by. Stop believing you have the right to demand ANYTHING from ANYONE. You’re free to your beliefs…but that’s where your freedom ends. You don’t get to make decisions about morality except insofar as something may impact you personally and directly. In the case of “Lucifer,” just do the right thing: turn off your television set and let the rest of us make our own decisions.
Speaking for humanity, I think when it comes to our immortal soul, each of us should be the captain of our own ship.
Capice?
