A new homosexual website, ChurchOuting.org, is intent on publicly disclosing who the gay priests are in the Archdiocese of Washington. The goal of this outing is to intimidate gay priests, as well as heterosexual priests who may be “romantically involved,” into voicing objections to the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage.

This initiative is the work of Phil Attey, self-described as “Liberal-Gay-Ardent Obama Supporter”; he was active in the Obama Pride Metro-DC campaign. According to one news report, “Attey is going to approach priests he thinks are gay, and warn them that they better stop lobbying against gay people, seeing how gay they are…or…else?”

Catholic priests are also being pressured to sign the “Declaration of Religious Support for Marriage Equality,” a statement by Clergy United for Marriage Equality. The statement, while it is not one we support, is respectfully written. Accordingly, we will write to members of the Steering Committee of this group asking them to dissociate themselves from this attempted hijacking of their effort.

The Catholic League is prepared to assist any priest in the Archdiocese of Washington who is the victim of harassment, intimidation or stalking. Whatever resources the priest needs, we will see to it that he is served. If radical gay activists want a showdown with the Catholic League, we will not disappoint them.

Does The Washington Post really think that the death and destruction of 9/11 "could" be right, or "could" be wrong?

Liberals cannot stand it when the national media won’t simply declare contentious debates over and their viewpoint settled truth. Take, for example, the allegedly inevitable impending destruction of global warming. It is the left’s position that the media should conclude one side is right and the other wrong. Conservatives should be ignored when they object. But that’s a debate over the future. It’s grotesque for an American newspaper to publish a "news analysis" that stares 9/11 in the face and said it "could" be a matter of right and wrong.

The Post’s analyst was reporter Barton Gellman, the author of a hostile biography of Dick Cheney (so he does have some definite feelings about who’s evil, after all.) He began by noting the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM for short) would make for "riveting drama." Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed on PBS it would not be a "show trial," but Gellman echoed the headline: "both sides hope to use the case to define Sept. 11 as a parable of right and wrong."

One might dismiss the willful moral ignorance as a simple journalistic endorsement of anything done by Holder and President Obama. But it sends a clear signal of the differences between the Bush era and the Obama era, and the media’s obvious preference for the latter. Liberal journalists always admonished President Bush for his "arrogance" and "certitude," and this is what they meant: he remained certain that the Americans who died on 9/11 were victimized, and were denied their civil liberties in the most complete and horrific way.

Liberals, on the other hand, have such a talent for finding moral "complexities" that they wind up showing more outrage for the fact that KSM was waterboarded than for the fact that KSM successfully plotted the death of 3,000 Americans. While liberals beat their breasts at the outrageous prospect of KSM being tried by a military commission, most Americans would prefer hustling KSM to the top of the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty and throwing him off.

Putting KSM on trial in a courtroom just blocks from his "accomplishment" is a decision that Holder and Obama made not in the interests of justice, but in the interests of flashiness, showing "the eyes of the world" in the most attention-grabbing, and increasingly tiresome way possible, that they are in no way comparable to Bush.

Liberals find "world opinion" to be a much more desirable and cosmopolitan standard than the worldview of simple-minded Americans. In the Post, Gellman quoted Georgetown law professor David Cole, without even calling him a "liberal," let alone what he should really be called, a radical defender of the civil liberties of terrorists. Cole argued that this trial marks a "sea change," that the sentencing will be "seen around the world as legitimate and not fixed," since the "world" thinks military commissions would be fixed.

Journalists don’t seem to consider whether "the world" is qualified to judge America as right or wrong, when "the world" is full of thuggish regimes that aren’t a fraction as punctilious as Americans are about the rule of law. Should the butchers of Tiananmen Square get to judge us? Should the Russians get to complain after their consolidation of power in the wake of the 2004 Beslan school massacre by radical Islamists? How about most of Europe, Great Britain and a handful of others excepted, that has redefined moral cowardice in the face of radical Islam? They should judge us, too?

Why can’t our media have enough respect for facts and for their fellow countrymen that we can all see a mass-murderer like KSM as a much greater villain than say, our naked-pyramid builders at Abu Ghraib? Will our media show 9/11 footage during this trial near Ground Zero with as much repetitive ardor as they bombarded us with Abu Ghraib clips in 2004?

It’s much more likely that they’ll wonder, in that wonderfully neutral way of theirs, whether Americans or terrorists will "control the narrative." And then we can get back to real problems, like the plight of the kangaroo rat.

Well, there’s one veterinarian who deserves pause for recognition. His name was Nels Konnerup. He recently passed away at age 92.

Born in Everett, Washington on December 4, 1916, Konnerup was shaped by the crucible of the Great Depression. He survived it the old-fashioned, American way: faith and family, himself and his parents, hard work, rugged individualism. For the remainder of his life, he would lament Americans’ slow surrender of responsibility from the self to the federal government.

Konnerup put himself through college at Washington State University. His subsequent contributions were numerous, with a resume of rich distinctions, including uniquely valuable service during the Cold War.

While many players fought for freedom during the Cold War—ambassadors and admirals, soldiers and secretaries of defense—Konnerup served the way he knew best: veterinary medicine. Circling the globe at a rate of 50,000 miles per year, he developed remarkable methods for pest control that saved the crucial livestock that fed billions from Asia to Africa to Central America.

In China from 1946-47, Konnerup boosted Chiang Kai-Shek’s attempts to prevent Mao Tse-Tung from transforming the world’s most populous nation into a giant killing field. He arrived with thousands of doses of vaccine for Rinderpest, a cattle disease with very high mortality. He quickly discovered a fatal problem missed by the bureaucrats in Washington: the lack of refrigeration at Chinese villages and farms. On the spot, Konnerup developed a clever method for preservation and delivery of the vaccine, applying a “rabbit-adapted attenuated vaccine,” which he had been employing in Australia. It worked. He established a vaccine production laboratory in Nanking.

Unfortunately, other factors eventually triumphed in China, as Mao emerged victorious. The communists kicked out Konnerup and his colleagues—but kept his vaccine. Of course, they implemented something far more destructive than Rinderpest: Mao’s Sinification of Marxism. Through collectivism and wealth redistribution—a triumph of ignorance that was the antithesis of Nels Konnerup’s creativity—Red China exterminated tens of millions of human beings. Communism slaughtered what Rinderpest could not—by leaps and bounds.

Konnerup went elsewhere, serving the U.S. government in several capacities. He was a secret weapon in ensuring that Marshall Plan aid to Europe, once delivered, was not eaten by flies and ticks. Think about it: American aid saved a starving post-World War II Europe. At the political and diplomatic level, it was the product of President Harry Truman, of Secretary of State George Marshall, of an isolationist Republican Congress that stepped to the plate and cut a badly needed check to our allies; all of this not only fed Western Europe but kept it out of the throes of Soviet communism.

And yet, once that vital aid was underway, it would have died if the livestock it sought to replete was destroyed by disease. Here, too, Nels Konnerup did what he did best: He had responsibility for the health of over 60,000 head of livestock destined to Europe by steamship. No small task—but one he pulled off.

After that, Konnerup served Douglas MacArthur and the U.S. military government in Japan. Like MacArthur, he also went to the Philippines; there, he helped resolve the malnutrition wreaked by rodent damage. Both Japan and the Philippines were crucial Cold War allies.

In retirement, Konnerup kept his fertile mind busy. He wrote letters to editors and columnists who raised his ire. Somewhat of a curmudgeon, among his pet peeves was the junk science and “flawed sophism” of un-scrutinizing “self-proclaimed and self-anointed environmentalists.” He was a man of real science and real environmentalism, not given to the bandwagon. He had little patience for the latest “crisis/emergency” treaty destined to shut down an industry or economy. He was skeptical of the newest claims of Armageddon by partisan politicians, amateur environmentalists, and assorted “nefarious nabobs.”

“Let there be integrity in definitions!” urged a frustrated Nels Konnerup.

Alas, an aging Konnerup continued to battle the eternal, insatiable progressive push for centralization and federal-government dependency that had vexed him since the 1930s. A eulogist at his funeral said: “Nels looked forward to the afterlife … because he expected to see FDR after he died, and gleefully anticipated poking him in the backside with his pitch fork.”

Nels Konnerup died where he began: in his native Washington state. There was no statue erected, no statement from the White House, no obituary in the New York Times, no CNN headline. There were, however, a lot of people, from Berlin to Beijing, who owed their health to this unheralded veteran of the veterinarian sciences, who showed that there are many ways to fight the good fight and serve your Maker.

The four-storey Good Shepherd Maronite Diocesan Pastoral Center under construction at Mount Carmel in northern Israel is intended for use as a place for residential retreats, conferences, counseling services and gatherings for young people of different religions.

Due to open by the end of 2011 and in receipt of major funding from organizations including Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the initiative will provide the first diocesan-wide center for the Holy Land’s Maronite-rite Catholics, who number 12,000 in total.

In an interview with ACN, Maronite Archbishop Paul Sayah of Haifa and the Holy Land said the main aim of the project was to help renew the confidence of Maronites and other Christians and dissuade them from emigrating.

Describing the pastoral centre as “the backbone of our pastoral infrastructure,” Archbishop Sayah said, “We have experienced over the years many Christians wanting to emigrate. They feel they are not valued. We have to make sure that they feel they have a role to play as well as opportunities for educational and spiritual formation. The Good Shepherd Centre aims to do just that.”

The archbishop went on to say that the complex had received the strong backing of the Druze, a religious group derived from Islam, who are the majority population in Isfya, the village where the center is being built. Archbishop Sayah said, “The Mayor of Isfya – a Druze – is very keen on having the center. A number of Druze leaders in the area have signed a document in support of the project. We have told them that the center will be available for them to use.”

The initiative aims to promote Christian-Druze relations, which hit a new low in February, 2005, in Mughar, also in northern Israel. A dispute in the town in the Galilee region led the Druze to go on the rampage, causing half the Christian population to run for their lives. Many have since returned, but some problems remain.

Archbishop Sayah stressed the importance of encouraging the Christians’ sense of self-worth. He said, “It is no use our just preaching at our Christian community. We have to educate and develop them so that they can have good relationships with people of other religions. Otherwise our community will not survive.

The plan, which has already received $22,400 from Aid to the Church in Need with the expectation of more to come, includes two dormitories, supervisors’ rooms, a refectory, a chapel, a conference room, a room for the bishop and rooms for counseling.

The archbishop said much of the funding is now in place for the initiative, which will cost nearly $2 million, but he added that more support is urgently needed. He said, “We are keeping costs down as much as possible. In getting the work done, we are involving our own communities, which has the advantage of being cheaper than getting outside help as well as providing local employment and generating support from the very people the center is there to help.

Maronites are one of the smaller Catholic communities in a region whose Christian population has been decimated by emigration, especially in the West Bank. According to figures released in May by Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Latin-rite Patriarch of Jerusalem, Christians in Palestine today number barely 50,000, whereas in 1948 they were 20 percent of the total population.

Pope Benedict XVI has called on Aid to the Church in Need to prioritize support for Christians in the Middle East, noting that in some regions the “local Churches are… threatened in their very existence.”

Both of these maxims were proven again by the CW show “Gossip Girl” with a group-sex plot. Its November 9 episode depicted three friends completing a list that was supposedly printed in their college newspaper: “The 15 Things Every College Student Must Do Before Graduating.” Number 11 was “Have a Threesome.” And so they did.

One of the “liberated” college women in this three’s-a-crowd spectacle was actress Hilary Duff, who earned millions as a teenager as the star of “Lizzie McGuire” on the Disney Channel and in Disney movies. Millions of impressionable children idolized her. They still do – except that she’s a different kind of role model now.

Fans of the pornification of TV – the ones who joked that this plotline was a “public service” – were disappointed by what CW aired. There was some girl-on-girl kissing, and the threesome in bed at episode’s end. But the naughtiness was much more implied than actual. Fear not! The CW immediately announced plans to extend the threesome theme into a second week. Maybe – to some, hopefully – the “flashbacks” will be sleazier.

But that might not happen. It could all be part of a continuous pattern for CW and “Gossip Girl,” where the promotions are nastier than the actual show. For example, CW’s print ads for “Gossip Girl” last year featured a topless girl in a pool making out with a boy, but in the on-air episode, she was wearing a bikini.

Declarations of a ratings bonanza for this plotline are also stretching it. CW ran around touting a ratings victory for the threesome episode. The press release boasted: “The CW basks in the afterglow of its most watched Monday of the season.” Really? The total viewership for this episode was 2.37 million. Last year, this show was averaging 2.6 million. You do the math. And to put the numbers in perspective, in the same time slot, ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” was drawing 17 million viewers.

But the “Gossip Girl” scandal isn’t just about winning the ratings battle. It’s about corporate executives who will try anything to get a rinky-dink network out of the basement, with absolutely no concern for the damage its tawdry storylines will do to the viewer who is 12. The show is rated TV-14, suggesting threesome plots are acceptable for high-schoolers, and that’s an insult by itself. But CW’s own press release in September touted that “Gossip Girl” won in the ratings among women ages 12-34, and that when the show was paired with “One Tree Hill,” these shows finished first with females 12-34 and teenaged girls.

Grade-schoolers love TV about junior-high students, and junior-high students watch high-school shows. It follows that teenaged girls should love a show about college life. That’s certainly what the CW executives have always hoped. So they run a show with the explicit message that a threesome is something “every college student should do before graduating,” knowing it will most affect, and titillate, young teens.

Idiots in Hollywood seem completely impervious to shame on this plotline. When they discussed it on the Joy Behar Show on CNN’s Headline News channel, actress Aisha Tyler just snapped. “Let me just break a piece of news to everybody here. If you don’t know, teenagers have sex,” she lectured. “And if you hide it, and you ignore it, and you fake it and act like your kid is not doing it, you are doing them and yourself a disservice because kids have sex.”

This idiot added: “These are the tools — use it as a teaching moment.” But CW isn’t making this scandal to create a “tool” for parents. They’re the ones doing us a disservice.

Aside from being a brat, Dr. Tyler is uninformed. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that fewer than half of all high school students have had sex: 47.8 percent as of 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control, down from 54.1 percent in 1991.

Somehow the concerned parents are winning on the trend line, despite Hollywood’s most strenuous efforts to sleaze up the public airwaves, with Lizzie McGuire lustily kissing a girl. That’s certainly not an argument for letting Hollywood go unchallenged, even if a parent might smile when a network like CW flops so badly.

Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, a source close to the Bishops’ Conference of Venezuela said a number of policies put in place by President Hugo Chavez are causing widespread anxiety.

According to the well-placed source who asked not to be named, tension has increased following the president’s decision to confiscate leading financial institutions and businesses around the Maracaibo Lake connected with the oil industry. The source reported that six weeks ago, in a densely populated area of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, a district council leader announced plans to seize several Church-run schools as well.

Government figures stated at the time that the initiative was part of a drive to protect historic buildings of national importance, but Church figures fear that it is the first step in a thorough-going confiscation program affecting Church property across the country.

The source said, “As regards the future, no one knows, but he could confiscate churches, schools, and other ecclesiastical buildings.” The source continued, saying, “He might try to eliminate the work of the Church – it used to receive yearly subsidies from the government, but these have been reduced over the last eight years. In particular this has had an effect on Church schools.”

President Chavez also announced a year ago plans to confiscate golf courses across the country. The source told ACN, “Golf is seen as an elite occupation by the president, which has led on to his decision to seize the land.”

Since Hugo Chavez’s election as president in 1998 there has been growing tension between the Church and the government. The Bishops’ Conference of Venezuela has been alarmed by President Chavez’ brand of socialism, which the clergy see as opposed to the country’s culture and values.

Recent reports state that President Chavez is behind a 15-year project to gradually integrate Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador so that they operate as a single political entity, running according to a socialist model.

At the same time, the government has taken offence at a Bishop’s Conference statement last July about the rise of violence in Venezuela. Some reports suggest that the number of deaths of young people is rising every week.

The source told ACN, “The ministers and government again see this as an attack against politicians without thinking that the bishops are giving a red light to these problems in the country.”

The source added: “Chavez depicts the church as an enemy of 21^st century socialism whenever it is critical of the government, without seeing that the Catholic Church is just trying to make its voice heard when there is injustice.

However, opposition to the Church is growing and in the city of Los Teques, near Caracas, one parish priest has had to endure “loud speakers with music outside to drown out the preaching.”

Other priests have also been threatened for preaching against the reforms of Chavez.

The source went on to tell ACN that rather than passively accepting the state’s position people should be allowed to dialogue with it and criticize it when necessary.

“It is important that people think and analyze each situation where Hugo Chavez is implementing his brand of socialism. It is not conducive to the dignity of life,” the source said. “The normal Catholics should generate not only critical analysis, but offer answers from the social teaching of the Church.”

Aid to the Church in Need has noted with great concern the increasing threats to the Church in Venezuela since President Chavez took power.

By late afternoon, it emerged that the shooter’s name was Major Nidal Malik Hasan. But that night, CBS and NBC completely avoided mentioning that the shooter was a Muslim. ABC’s Charles Gibson suggested he was a “Muslim convert,” which wasn’t right, but at least he wasn’t playing hide-and-seek with the facts. ABC reporter Martha Raddatz spoke for the media in choosing this tidbit: “As for the suspect, Nidal Hasan, as one officer’s wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’”

The coverage grew more factual the next morning, with all the networks noting Hasan was Muslim, and that he shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) as he opened fire. ABC’s Diane Sawyer, though, repeated Raddatz: “We heard Martha Raddatz say last night that the wife of a soldier said ‘I wish his name had been Smith,’ so no one would have a reflexive question about that.”

A reflexive question, as in “If a Muslim extremist attacks an Army base shouting ‘Allahu akbar!’ while spraying semi-automatic fire, killing and wounding dozens, is it terrorism?” Ms. Sawyer had nothing to worry about. Here’s how her colleagues covered it.

THEME: The shooting wasn’t just tragic because it killed patriotic Americans who were serving their country. The shooting was “much worse” because it gins up fear-mongering right-wingers.

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “I cringe that he’s a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he’s probably just a nut case. But with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going and it just — I mean these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.”

THEME: In the Age of Obama (as opposed to those Bush years), American can be expected to behave after terrorist attacks and not overreact.

From USA Today: “‘We haven’t heard of anything violent, which is a good thing,’ said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group. ‘It shows our society has matured in how it responds to these incidents.’”

THEME: Let’s not be too quick to judge these Muslims. After all, we have our Christian nut cases, too.

A Boston Globe op-ed by Harvard professor Harvey Cox: “If some seem ready to die for faith, others are ready to kill for it, gunning down abortion doctors in church, hijacking planes, and exploding bombs at weddings.” On CBS, Bob Schieffer energetically sought full moral equivalence: “And you know Islam doesn’t have a majority – or the Christian religion has its full, you know, full helping of nuts, too.”

THEME: Blame someone other than the shooter for shooting.

Schieffer grew much more annoying, suggesting that this killing was all the Army’s fault, that “this shows the Army still does not take protecting soldiers’ mental health as seriously as it does training them to shoot.” It was the Army’s fault for not seeing that this was a radical Muslim who could be a danger to others. This kind of arrogance – sitting on a throne of 20-20 hindsight and demeaning our military – explains why the media’s favorability ratings have gone into the toilet.

If the Army had removed Hasan before his mass murder, Bob Schieffer and the other anchors would have been standing shoulder to shoulder with the ACLU people and the CAIR crowd suggesting anti-Muslim bigotry. These anchormen thought the Constitution was being shredded when the Bush administration attempted to intercept messages between bad guys here and al-Qaeda abroad. That was unhealthy “domestic spying.” They have forfeited their right to question the military now. In their idealistic vision, we would have all remained ignorant of Hasan’s phone calls, and completely vulnerable to his rampages.

Even now, some media liberals were astonishing in the aftermath of this Islamic terrorism – and that is precisely what it was. Jaws dropped at the idiocy of Chris Matthews on MSNBC when he proclaimed, “Apparently, he tried to contact al-Qaeda. Is that the point at which you say, ‘This guy is dangerous?’ That’s not a crime to call up al-Qaeda, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?”

Answer to the well-paid idiot: Before he kills Americans on a military base.

In response to Maine’s natural marriage victory last Tuesday, “gay” activists have directly threatened to retaliate with “terrorism” and the “killing” of Christians on the popular homosexual activist “JoeMyGod” Weblog. Liberty Counsel notified the FBI which is investigating the matter. As of this morning, the offending blog entry had been removed. (captured version of post will be available at www.americansfortruth.com).

Matt Barber, Liberty Counsel’s Director of Cultural Affairs, issued a statement shortly after Maine’s marriage victory (posted with additional commentary at AmericansForTruth.com). In reaction to that statement, blog poster “ColdCountry” wrote: “Will someone please give me a gun?” Poster “Fritz” warned: “What I fear is that once gay and lesbian people give up hope of achieving equality through nonviolent means, there will be radicals who will begin to hunt down haters… All it will take is a small group of radical zealots who are willing to kill for their cause.”

In reply to Fritz, “tex” posted: “Fritz….you say this like it’s a bad thing? Maybe a bit of well organized terrorism is just what we need.”

“This happens in all cases where people are oppressed and lack representation,” continued Fritz. “We will have gay and lesbian people strapping bombs to their chests and blowing up churches. All it will take is one or two more losses like this. If marriage equality is taken away in one of the landmark states, we will see domestic terrorism arise very quickly. … In 1991, I witnessed gay and lesbian activists setting fire to buildings and beating people with baseball bats in Los Angeles.”

At that “tex” reiterated: “Still not seeing this as a bad thing Fritz … [African gay activists] didn’t gain their civil rights through being passive.”

In addition to Barber, pro-family leaders Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth and Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage were specifically named targets.

Meanwhile, Michael Heath, former director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, was targeted by a direct death threat shortly after the passage of Question 1 last week. An anonymous caller telephoned the League, warning: “I am calling about Mr. Mike Heath, the Executive of your Christian Civic League of Maine.  He thinks that gay people should have our rights revoked that we already have. Well I can tell him this – I’m a gay guy who owns guns, and he’s my next target.” Law enforcement was immediately notified.

Matt Barber commented: “All potential threats of terrorism and murder are very serious business. As we learned just last week, there are ideologically driven terrorists who walk among us. After passage of Proposition 8 in California we saw that many homosexual activists are capable of threats, vandalism and even violence. Those who either threaten or attempt to incite terrorism must be immediately brought to justice. Churches and Christian leaders around the country need to be on high alert. These threats of homosexual activist terrorism must be taken very seriously.”

Perhaps the best branding of them all was, and is Hallmark, with its Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. When that movie airs you just know it’s a quality movie, because that’s all Hallmark will produce.

On today’s TV shows, it’s all changed. Today’s sponsors run in large packs and appear to make no attempt to monitor shows and have no expectation of being held accountable for the “art” they’ve enabled. In fact, they insist they not be held accountable for that which they sponsor. They are the unsponsors.

So it is refreshing to learn that Microsoft has backed out of a deal to be the sole sponsor of a commercial-free special on November 8 called “Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show.” For a change, Microsoft executives attended the special’s taping on October 16, where “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane and comedienne Alex Borstein (the voice of “Family Guy” matriarch Lois Griffin) would pitch the debut of Windows 7 software to the audience.

There was only one problem: MacFarlane’s repellent sense of humor and complete lack of taste. Variety reported Microsoft may have walked away since there were “riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene, and incest.” They added that the animated portions of “Almost Live Comedy Show” were the tamest parts of the show. “It was the live-action segments (such as one in which MacFarlane and Borstein play Latino housekeepers) that probably raised the most eyebrows.” The Los Angeles Times said those characters were housekeepers for Miley Cyrus, and they were scorching the Disney teen star. Microsoft sent MacFarlane and Fox chieftains several notes expressing their concern over the show’s contents, but ultimately decided just to wave a white flag and drop out.

It’s a safe bet that Seth MacFarlane wasn’t going to genuflect for anybody. After all, Fox is so indulgent of this spoiled Peter Pan that his live special and his incessantly vile cartoons are the entire Sunday night lineup. The only thing missing was an entire “Fox News Sunday” devoted to “Family Guy” plugs; maybe also a couple of shamelessly promotional NFL halftime shows, complete with wardrobe malfunctions.

To be sure, Microsoft put out a strange statement: “We initially chose to participate in the Seth and Alex variety show based on the audience composition and creative humor of ‘Family Guy,’ but after reviewing an early version of the variety show, it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand.”

Variety suggested Microsoft “may have been optimistic” in “believing that MacFarlane and Borstein wouldn’t be as raunchy in live performance as their animated alter egos are on ‘Family Guy.’” But Microsoft’s statement embraced the “creative humor” of the cartoon. That’s an understatement: Microsoft has spent close to $5 million on commercials in “Family Guy” both on Fox and on TBS and Cartoon Network, which carry reruns of the show.

So Microsoft is both supportive and offended by the same show?

It’s fair to conclude that Microsoft found it safe to buy ads on “Family Guy” when it was but one of 12 advertisers of the show. Now it would have to stand alone, the sole sponsor.

This doesn’t mean that Microsoft didn’t retain the rest of its deal with Murdoch properties, including Fox Sports, FX, Hulu, FoxSports.com on MSN, even a 12-week college tour sponsored by Fox Licensing and Merchandising — featuring events such as “Family Guy”-themed movie nights. Microsoft’s statement suggested they didn’t want any hard feelings for stepping away from what the “talent” was producing: “We continue to have a good partnership with Fox, Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein and are working with them in other areas. We continue to believe in the value of brand integrations and partnerships between brands, media companies and talent.”

As for the live special, with all the incest and Holocaust and Latino-housekeeper-for-Miley-Cyrus jokes presumably intact, Fox did find another sponsor, right there in Hollywood. It’s Warner Brothers, seeking to promote the Christmas Day debut of its new movie version of “Sherlock Holmes.”

It’s quite amazing to see how low Warner Brothers can go: from the makers of Bugs Bunny to the enablers of Holocaust and incest jokes on prime-time Sunday night TV.