Good Christian Fun

One of my more recent guilty pleasures is listening to the podcast Good Christian Fun (I'm not sure if you should italicize podcast titles, so I'll err on the side of caution). Featuring regular hosts Kevin T. Porter and Caroline Ely, along with a rotating cast of guest stars, GCF takes us on a weekly trip down the always weird and sometimes wonderful world of Christian pop culture.

Each week features a separate musical album, movie, or TV show that is explicitly Christian in nature, introduces the topic, and then talks about it for 45 minutes or so. The hook of the show is excellent, as it's nice fodder for people like me, who have a nostalgic attachment to some of the content, having grown up in the church, but would also likely be fascinating for those outside, who nonetheless will find the existence of such an extensive selection of pop culture from a completely separate culture of interest.

Kevin and Caroline are genuinely very funny people, with Kevin being a professional comedian, and Caroline just being naturally funny (I suppose now that she's podcasting, she can be considered a professional comedian as well, but she does have a day job). Each episode is filled with many laughs, and I find myself loving many of their running gags that have developed over the show's history. Some of my favorites are introducing each guest while Amy Grant's "Sing Your Praise to the Lord" plays in the background, having Hilary Clinton ask listeners to "Pokemon Go to the polls" for their weekly audience polls, and playing a tiny excerpt of Steven Curtis Chapman's "Dive" when they are getting ready to discuss their weekly topic. There are probably ten of these that will feel like hilarious old friends every time, and it's a sign of their good comedic sense that these are so well crafted.

The episodes tend to go as the guest host does, with some being better than others. None have been horrible to date, but some have been notably hilarious, so it's nice to get to see Kevin and Caroline play off another person each week.

Since it's improvised comedy for an hour and a half or so, there are plenty of jokes that fall flat, sort of like watching a dry run of Mystery Science Theater 3000. But on the whole, the show thrives despite the challenging format, showing the talents of the hosts.

My complaints about the show are few and far between, but the primary one that comes up over and over again is the tremendous degree to which the hosts have adopted a rather extreme form of social justice ideology or "woke" culture to analyze the works each week. This isn't the same as saying that the hosts completely ignore the artistic merits (or lack thereof) of the films, music, or TV shows that they discuss on the program, but it does seem like their planet never orbits far from the sun of social justice.

To be clear, I'm actually fairly sympathetic to social justice culture, and think that it's generally pretty valuable. I think that social justice type of people generally provide an important check upon individuals by making us ask questions about how what we say and do (or don't say or do) impacts others, particularly those who don't look like us or have remarkably different values than us. My main problem with some social justice kind of people are when they embrace their views as some kind of identity, and that the core of that identity seems to feature 1) an ever expanding checklist of words that they should not say and 2) a kind of prideful and uncritical humility in the damage that they have done in their lives, as exemplified by the most tepid and milquetoast kind of offenses.

For example, I went through a great deal of effort to transcribe an extended section from their most recent episode, feature Kevin, Caroline, and guest host Alice Wetterlund.

KTP: Yeah, we’re all woke baes.

AW: Woke bae is problematic, though. Probably for, you haven’t heard anything…

KTP: Is that true?

AW:  Yeah apparently, and I’m not shaking my head at this because…

KTP: Oh no…

AW: I disagree, I’m shaking my head because it’s a shame how much I’ve said it.

KTP: To me! We’ve said it to each other!

AW: Yeah, and now I’m helping you out with this knowledge that this is not. It’s just not great. Because people have overused it too much, and I’m not going to be able to articulate exactly why, but it has served now as an excuse, an umbrella, like “I’m fine, because I say this!”, and like a lot of people refer to themselves tongue in cheek in that way, which we do, you know. But I think that publicly, in a public setting like a podcast, I think that it’s grating for some people.

KTP: Well, then let me bury the term with the following. I’m going to do an impression, and you tell me who it is. “Only you, can prevent racism, sexism, and homophobia.”

CE: Uhhh….

KTP: It’s Wokey the Bear.

AW: That’s a perfect end to it. And that ends it…There’ll be new terms, don’t worry. Don’t worry, we have to learn so many new terms. And that’s part of it.

CE: I’m glad it was an appropriation problem.

AW: Me too. RIP woke bae.

KTP: I apologize to anyone I offended.

AW: Hey, but this is what’s cool about you. And I really appreciate is that we all, as white people…we need to be able to understand that we’re going to make mistakes in our effort to be more aware, and to learn how we can be more helpful and better people. And it’s like we’re going to make mistakes in that journey if we’re open to participating, it’s just not going to be perfect. So, you know, the ability to go, oh, that’s not cool with people? I’d rather stop saying it, and I’m sorry, moving on, instead of arguing why it’s ok because you feel guilty.

CE: And I think a central part of being white is being very clunky and awkward with any other culture.

KTP: And that’s usually the worst price we pay.

AW: Ain’t that the truth? Can I say ain’t?

CE: Oh Jesus, we’re bad.

This, to me, is social justice at its least helpful, when it focuses on these myopic and vaguely defined threats to no one who can be identified, and its adherents cave into groveling apology almost immediately. Kevin, with a history of referring to Alice as his "woke bae", apparently some kind of kindred spirit in social justice beliefs, uses the term. Up until now, he was of the opinion that both of them enjoyed using the term. He is then told that the term is now "problematic" (a favorite word of the show), for reasons that Alice explains she can't articulate. Caroline is then "glad it was an appropriation problem", whatever that means. Kevin then immediately caves, despite this extremely vacuous explanation, apologizes to everyone he's offended (we're still not sure who this group is), and cracks a pretty stupid joke.  Alice then proceeds to congratulate Kevin on his virtuous flight from this vaguely offensive term, they all denigrate themselves for being white, and move on with the show.

I'm just not sure who is supposed to be offended by the admittedly grammatically incomprehensible term "woke bae", and I'm fairly certain that none of the hosts do either. It actually makes me wonder if some troll on the internet began a movement that he was offended at the term "woke bae", and it was uncritically accepted by at least some sad saps. But even if it doesn't, it's a little troubling to me that the identity of the hosts are so fully built up around this frequently useful ideology that they find themselves seemingly unable to provide any sort of critical examination of whether or not the term is problematic, why it is, who's offended, and for what reasons. 

So anyway, I really wish that they would take some time to critically examine their ideology, apply it where useful, but mostly stick to their strengths. These social justice segments of the show, which probably take up a solid 1/3 of the actual criticism of the works they review, come across as poorly thought out and self-imposed guilt that doesn't actually come from any sense of real guilt or shame, but rather a rote parroting of a set of beliefs that work more like a painting in that it never moves when you look at it, and less like glasses that help you see things more accurately.

I'd recommend that you check it out, and wonder if anyone else out their finds these silly social justice ramblings as tiresome as I do.

-TRO