This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Jan 3
I am ashamed of the article I am about to write. Yes, we are starting the year off on a high note. But I saw something on my Google newsfeed that I have to comment on, and it pains me to tell you that I am going to write on the Lifetime Network.
Now, before I go on, I need you to know that I do not watch Lifetime on TV. I know that someone out there must watch that channel because it continues to plague the airwaves. The reason that I do not watch the Lifetime channel is because I am a man and no one, and I mean no one, hates men more than the Lifetime channel. They only have two shows. Either it is a quirky and cute woman who has a crush on a man who looks more like a girl than she does, or it is about a perfect, and in every way superior, woman victimized by some menacing man. Sorry, I probably should have warned you about spoilers.
Anyway, apparently, there is some controversy at the Lifetime channel, and Google ran a story about that controversy. The two women featured in this article were Lacey Chabert and Candace Cameron Bure. I had never heard of Lacey and have no idea who she is. Candace was the older sister from Full House, a cheesy sitcom from the 1990s. I also happen to know that Candace is married to Kirk Cameron, who also stared in a cheesy 1990’s sitcom that I can’t remember the name of and don’t care enough to look it up.
The controversy came when Lifetime stepped outside the box of their normal programming (see my previous observation) and ran a story about a quirky and cute man who had a crush on another man. Candace, along with her husband Kirk, are very prominent Christians, and decided she did not want to support the Lifetime network if that was the direction they were going. She left Lifetime to go to another network to make cheesy movies about quirky and cute women who….you get the picture.
The other woman in the article, Lacey, did not say a single word about Cameron. They are not feuding, and they are not in controversy. The only difference is that Cameron left the network over this new direction and Lacey was ok with it. That’s it.
Do I think that Lifetime featuring gay characters are going to popularize that lifestyle choice and turn generations gay? No, I do not. Do I think that Lifetime featuring gay characters will matter? No, not that either. Will I now refuse to watch Lifetime if they feature gay characters? Sure, any excuse to not watch works for me.
So why write this article? Because I was annoyed to death by the news story. Kudos to the writer of the article, it was pretty objective. It did not take one actresses side over the other. It was really a straightforward presentation of what happened. However, here is why I am writing; the picture they used to promote the article. Optics are everything when you are online. In the header there were pictures taken at different times of both Lacey and Cameron. Lacey is smiling and looked very quirky and cute, whereas the picture of Cameron looks like she is about to burst into tears. You cannot tell me with all of the promotional stuff they do for these Lifetime movies that they didn’t have quirky and cute pictures of Cameron. Why did they choose a still from one of the shows where she looks so emotional?
I do not place any blame on Lifetime, Cameron, Lacey, or even the author of the article. This was a subtle slight from whoever is aggregating pictures for the Google headlines. It promotes clear bias, and if you just saw the headline and the picture, you would think that this is a far bigger deal than it is. Image is everything, and it is clear to me that someone there had an image they wanted to promote. It is frustrating to say the least.
I guess the happy conclusion to this article is that I will just have to return to never thinking about the Lifetime channel again.