The newly formed Citizens Against Religious Bigotry launched a pre-emptive strike against Comedy Central today. The coalition formally announced its opposition to “JC,” a new animated comedy in the planning stages at the network.

Comedy Central’s own statement on the show describes it as the story of “JC (Jesus Christ) wanting to escape his father’s enormous shadow and to live life in NYC as a regular guy … meanwhile his all-powerful yet apathetic father would rather be playing video games than listening to JC recount his life in the city.”

The group held a teleconference earlier today to urge advertisers not to support inflammatory programming and let it be known the show won’t go through the production process without a stiff fight.

Media Research Center president Brent Bozell says the project is “designed to mock and ridicule” Christianity.

“This is a deliberate attempt by Comedy Central to be as offensive as they can,” Bozell says, adding a petition aimed at stopping the show before it begins drew 93,000 signatures in just one week. “You don’t have to be Christian to be offended by this.”

Bozell says the network’s “glaring” double standard regarding the treatment of religion has been apparent for quite some time. (more…)

In recent days and weeks three major news stories have broke here online, at Fox News or the Washington Times; everywhere but the mainstream media. Worse still, as the stories unfolded, the media willfully ignored them until, much to their embarrassment, they were forced to give grudging coverage only after official action — in the form of a resignation (Van Jones), reassignment (the NEA) or dismissal (ACORN) — occurred that could no longer be ignored.

Mainstream news outlets have been caught off guard before, but they used to play catch up. Today they play “hide the ball.” For as long as I’ve been politically aware the media’s been biased, but willfully ignoring a major national news story at great cost to their credibility and relevance is a new low. So what changed?

Ironically enough, scrutiny and accountability is the cause of much of the media’s increasingly disgraceful behavior. (more…)