In discussing television programming's "staggering growth", largely coming from "the seemingly endless budget lines that help produce new shows for streaming services” like HBO and Netflix, Mohler says that "we always need to remind ourselves that programming is not really to entertain us, it is to entertain us in order to send advertising to us. That's what pays the bills." Does Dr. Mohler know what a streaming service is? Has he ever subscribed to Netflix? These are generally services that provide programming for a fee with no ads. That is how they manage to raise the big bucks -- from millions of paying subscribers.
As for the NY Times ad about truth (“The truth is hard. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important than ever.”) Dr. Mohler gives barely a hint that he comprehends what the ad is really about. Standing up for truth has a special meaning now, when the very concept of truth is under attack by our own president, who lies constantly with careless abandon while attacking responsible reporting as "fake news", and the mainstream media as "the enemy of the American people", while Fox News and a large faction of the Republican party play along, undermining trust in the press and in the very idea that there is really a difference between truth and falsehood -- that it is not all just a matter of opinion and partisanship and who speaks the loudest or with the most confidence, or what we want the truth to be. Add to all this an actual Russian campaign to pollute our public discourse with lies, and reputable media like the NY Times find themselves in a fight to defend not only their traditional role as purveyors of truth, but to defend the very idea of truth itself.
And what did Dr. Mohler have to say about the Times "He said. She said." ad?
He said. She said.I don't know about you, but I found that inspiring. Life-affirming. Truth-affirming. But once again Mohler described it, as he had the speeches at the Golden Globes about the #metoo movement , as "virtue signalling". That is snide and cynical. When Mohler speaks with admiration of a moral exemplar, is he also just virtue signalling -- showing that he's a good guy because he takes the side of the right? I suspect he wouldn't admit that, and I wouldn't accuse him of it. What we've witnessed in the last few months -- a moral campaign against sexual assault and harassment and for the recognition of the inviolable dignity of women, in which formerly silent victims have found their voice -- is, I would think, not only a heartening development for secular people, but for all decent people, including Christians. But I don't recall Dr. Mohler having a single positive thing to say about it.
He said. She said.
He said. She said.
He said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said.
Perhaps he hasn't because the #metoo movement is, in a way, part of what Mohler calls "the sexual revolution" or "the moral revolution". He is committed to the proposition that sexual morality based on personal freedom and autonomy can't work. Whatever the new development in this ongoing revolution is, he says it is impossible, it is self-contradictory, it will only lead to chaos. The new morality, he has claimed, is not "resilient". But here we are. We have men and women who determine for themselves the relationships, sexual or otherwise, they wish to enter, and now abusers of this freedom, usually men exploiting their positions of power, are being punished and stigmatized. Moral rules are being made clearer and stronger. Secular society is showing how it's done, how a moral order is shaped and reinforced, not by quoting scripture, but by brave people standing up and saying, "I was wronged. I stand in solidarity with my sisters and we will no longer stand for this." Meanwhile evangelicals, having supported Roy Moore or mumbled their reservations into their beards at the last moment, sit on the sidelines and have nothing to say except snide comments about "virtue signalling".
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