The producers of “Glee” decided to address religion. A gay atheist was treated with sympathy for his victim status, the victimizer being Christianity, especially Catholicism. Judaism was treated with kid gloves and Islam got a pass. In other words, it was the usual Hollywood stuff.

The show revolved around a football player who sees an image of Jesus in his grilled cheese sandwich, labeling it “Grilled Cheesus.” Throughout the show the audience was treated to such lines as “I think God is kind of like Santa Claus for adults. Otherwise, God’s kind of a jerk, isn’t he?”; “Asking someone to believe in a fantasy [religion]…however comforting, isn’t a moral thing to do. It’s cruel.” References to Catholicism included mocking quips about “Sweet Holy Mother of God Academy.”

The pivotal remark, which set the tone, was made by the gay atheist: “The reason I don’t go to church is because most churches don’t think very much of gay people. Or women. Or science.”

The lines mouthed by the characters are a reflection of what Hollywood script writers and producers believe. Back in 1986, S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter wrote a landmark book, The Media Elite. The three social scientists, not affiliated with conservative causes, found that the media elite had nothing in common with most Americans on the subject of religion: while 94 percent of Americans identified themselves as religious, only 50 percent of the media elite did. Even more striking, while 86 percent of the public said religion was important to them, 86 percent of the media elite said they seldom or never attend church. Studies since have shown that nothing much has changed.

Homosexuality and atheism are all the rage these days with the cultural elite. As “Glee” showed last night, so is ripping on Christians.

Contact Fox’s VP for Communications: gaude.paez@fox.com

So why in the world does the tone of news coverage suggest all kinds of political problems…for conservatives, as if they were the collapsing majority in this campaign?

The media elites sound like they’re resigned to the idea that a lot of Democrats are going to be unemployed in November. Their coverage seems designed now to stanch the bleeding, to devote their coverage to close races where they can bash conservative challengers in the hope of turning the tide there.

On the first Monday in October, ABC “Good Morning America” reporter Jonathan Karl was alarming the masses about Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, insisting he was at war with history and the mainstream of politics. “In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Alaska’s Joe Miller talked about rolling back the power of the federal government further than Republicans have talked about for more than 70 years.” “Should the federal government be requiring a minimum wage?” Karl asked. Miller said no, that should be left to the states. But really: is there any chance that the Senate in 2011 will  repeal a federal minimum wage? ABC doesn’t really care. They’re trying to scare voters about conservative positions. Karl continued: “Miller and other Tea Party candidates also favor eliminating the Department of Education. Some want to pull the U.S. out of the UN.” Horrors. Are these likely to happen (as much as this writer would like)? It doesn’t matter. Halloween’s coming early.

Karl proceeded to announce it was somehow newsworthy that ABC had a supposedly damaging audio clip of Sharron Angle saying she can arrange a meeting with top Senate Republicans when she comes to Washington. That is “news” only if the reporter assumes she’s an extremist who’s political poison to every other Republican she touches.

Over on CBS News, Jeff Greenfield flagrantly offered tips to the Democrats, including this advice: “Convince the voters that this election is a choice, with ads that argue the Republicans are just too extreme.” This was followed by an actual campaign ad: “Sharron Angle, and she’s just too extreme.” National news stories and local negative ads go hand in hand.

You don’t have to be a Tea Party candidate to have mud thrown in your face. On NBC, reporter Chuck Todd focused on how the California governor’s race took a “nasty turn” when moderate Republican Meg Whitman blamed Jerry Brown for the allegation that she knowingly hired (or retained) an illegal-alien maid.

Like the other national reporters who jumped on this non-story with both feet, Todd couldn’t find any time to note that the accuser’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, has donated to liberal Democrats from Barbara Boxer to Hillary Clinton to Dennis Kucinich – and Jerry Brown. National reporters couldn’t mention that Allred pulled this same trick on Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for governor ofCalifornia in 2003, when a stunt double accused the movie star of sexual harassment. Her lawsuit then was dismissed. But winning the lawsuit or even finding the truth wasn’t the point; beating Republicans was the point.

The media somehow deem that Democrats (a) should not be identified as Democrats when they try to ruin a Republican, and that (b) no one should remind the public that this partisan ambulance has been chased before.

Then on Tuesday, the Unwelcome Wagon was yanked along again. ABC began “Good Morning America” with George Stephanopoulos asking “Is the Tea Party Losing Traction? Our new poll says the answer may be yes, as the movement’s most famous candidate releases this ad.” All three network morning shows highlighted conservative Christine O’Donnell proclaiming in an ad “I’m not a witch.”

NBC’s “Today” offered an interview with Carl Paladino, the surprise Tea Party winner in the New York governor’s race. But it was only a setting for co-host Matt Lauer to assault Paladino as too brash a practitioner of “gutter politics,” insisting he wouldn’t be able to govern New York because they need a “bridge builder.” (Do you recall Matt Lauer ever asking uber-brash liberal Democrat Eliot Spitzer about being too harsh?)

The bias is so thick out there you can step in it. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that all this biased sludge obscures the real picture of a wave election. When networks like NBC are mortified that a man they would typically ignore like Carl Paladino might just deny Andrew Cuomo his daddy’s mantle in New York, that means the polls are really, terribly bad out there for Democrats.

On his CNN show last night, Larry King opened a segment with Wanda Sykes, Kathy Griffin, Tim Gunn, Lance Bass and others on five recent suicides committed by young gay men. Throughout the hour, the guests blamed the suicides on religion, Christianity receiving the bulk of the blame. No one was more explicit than Kathy Griffin. Saying, “we really want people to connect the dots,” she confidently asserted “that’s why I believe there’s a connection between Prop 8, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, and now the string of teen suicides.” She added that “a lot of the so-called religious leaders play into it.”

These people need a reality check. First, in most of the suicides it is far from clear that anti-gay bullying was the cause. Though it appears that Seth Walsh hung himself after being bullied, the reason the police did not press criminal charges is because the boys never “expected an outcome such as this.” According to several reports, the Rutgers student who jumped off a bridge was non-plussed after he learned that his gay tryst was surreptitiously taped by his roommate and shown online; not long before he killed himself, he even wrote on a gay chat site that his roommate was “a pretty decent” guy. Reportedly, Asher Brown’s family says their boy was “picked on because of his size, his religion [he was a Buddhist who recently converted to Christianity] and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes.” Raymond Chase’s brother told ABC News that his suicide “was not brought on by bullying.” In the case of Indiana’s Billy Lucas, both the coroner and the school district said there “is no evidence bullying led up to the suicide.”

All of these deaths are tragic, but it is factually wrong to say that all were the result of anti-gay bullying. Worse, it is libelous to suggest that because Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) is opposed to homosexuality that somehow it should be held responsible for whatever bullying did go on. Indeed, to suggest culpability is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to stifle religious speech.

Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala’s comments come barely three months ahead of Sudan’s all-important referendum on possible secession of South Sudan to form a separate country in its own right.

In a statement to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Bishop Hiiboro described how South Sudan is under threat of renewed violence amid signs of a breakdown in preparations for the vote, due in early January.

The Bishop of Tombura-Yambio, on South Sudan’s border with the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, wrote that he would like to “ring the alarm bell regarding the situation in the Sudan.”

Writing amid reports of his diocese being terrorized by Uganda-based rebels the Lord’s Resistance Army, the bishop added: “There is a real and imminent threat to the security of the people of Sudan and indeed the whole region.”

Bishop Hiiboro outlined concerns that the referendum may prompt disaster.

He stressed that as ‘guarantors’ of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement which ended Sudan’s 20-year civil war, the international community was duty-bound to intervene to prevent renewed violence.

The bishop wrote: “If it goes well, the referendum will bring peace to a country which has suffered almost five decades of brutal civil war… but if not then Sudan will descend into violence and instability which will affect the whole region.”

He added: “The CPA guarantors – especially the UK, EU, USA, UN and the whole international community – need to demonstrate a renewed political will and commitment to enhance their engagement not just until the referendum but throughout the coming months and years of transition.”

Bishop Hiiboro and other bishops have repeatedly warned of Sudanese politicians’ lack of commitment to agreed CPA pre-referendum guidelines – especially voter registration, involvement of diverse political factions and groups and raising awareness among the people about the vote and its implications.

It comes amid fears that, rather than working towards a long-term peace accord, some political groups and factions are preparing for war, thereby risking a return to the civil war that killed more than 2.5 million people.

Bishop Hiiboro writes: “Opportunities to encourage success or prepare adequately for failure are rapidly dwindling. There is no time to waste.”

The bishop is expected to spell out his concerns to a number of Catholic charities, government officials and Church leaders in the months ahead.

In his message to ACN, Bishop Hiiboro also re-iterated long-held fears of his fellow Christians that a continuation of a united Sudan – with continuing political direction from President Omar al Bashir’s Khartoum-based Islamist regime – would herald a return to intimidation and persecution of non-Muslims.

He wrote: “We have been witnesses of acts of unimaginable violence and contempt for mankind.”

“How can we talk about a peaceful referendum without recalling with concern the persistent persecution of Christians which the Sudan has experienced? Have not the brutal facts not crushed any commitment to voting for a united Sudan.”

The bishop went on to praise the benefactors of Catholic charities, including Aid to the Church in Need, saying he would like thank “Aid to the Church in Need and all her kind benefactors for the enormous support you have ever offered to the suffering masses of the Sudan. “

“Thank you and God bless each and every one of you.”

In today’s New York Times, there are several related articles on the subject of politics and religion. All feature the way white New York politicians stumped for themselves or others from African-American churches yesterday. What happened at the Brown Memorial Baptist Church was stunning: the pastor, Rev. Clinton M. Miller, literally asked those in the pews to vote for gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo. Neither the reporters nor the editorial board of the Times registered any objections.

Yesterday, CNN reported on the Red Mass that took place on Sunday at Washington, D.C.’s Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle; it is an annual service for lawyers. There were no endorsements from Archbishop Donald Wuerl, nor was the pulpit extended to any politician or office seeker, but it was attended by several Roman Catholic Supreme Court Justices. Yet this was enough for CNN’s Belief Blog to say that the Red Mass “has drawn criticism for what some see as an unhealthy mix of politics, law and religion.” The some, obviously, include the CNN reporter, and, of course, Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The split reaction of these cultural elites is driven by two forces: politics and race. The elites get upset at even the slightest intersection of conservative politics and religion, and they are particularly incensed when white clergy members are involved. But when the black clergy push for liberal candidates—offering the pulpit and instructing the congregants whom to vote for—that’s quite okay.

It would be great to see how the elites would react if a black minister were to endorse a white conservative, or if a white priest were to endorse a black liberal. Surely it would confuse them. That they don’t see their own duplicity in such matters is revealing.

It is such a simple question.

What would you do if you knew that the child standing next to you on the sidewalk was about to dart out into traffic? You would stop her, of course.

It is a better question to ask than “What should I have done?”

We are asking that question at Catholic Relief Services these days because of the situation in Sudan. A referendum on possible independence for southern Sudan is scheduled for January 9. In two decades of violence before the signing of a 2005 peace accord—which included provisions for this referendum—some 2 million people died; another 4 million were forced from their homes.

Many fear—in fact, some are certain—that this referendum will not be a well-run vote that will allow the southern Sudanese to choose their future: that instead, Sudan will return to the kind of bloodbaths too often seen in its history. Sudan borders 9 other countries and there is the real possibility that its problems could spill over to those neighbors.

So, what would you do?

Our answer is working to see that this referendum comes off peacefully and with integrity, that its results are respected, that the southern Sudanese are allowed to choose their own destiny.

In addition to our widespread humanitarian work in Sudan, we have made a sizable and sustained commitment to the important work of keeping the peace and building trust in the run-up to the referendum.

The Catholic Church and other religious organizations are the most respected institutions in the communities of southern Sudan. People there look to the Church for their basic needs, for food and health care and education. At a tumultuous time like these months before the referendum, they also turn to the Church for information that they can trust. Our staff works primarily through our Church partners in trying to build and sustain the peace.

As many of you know, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda affected CRS deeply. We realized that it was not enough to help people with food and shelter and their economic needs, that we needed to deal with the issues of justice and divisiveness that can lead to such violence. That was the beginning of our peacebuilding efforts. Sudan is the biggest test to date of that new direction.

I do not want to mislead you. There is a very good chance that we will not succeed. The fissures in Sudan are deep and well-formed. The presence of oil and its promise of riches in land disputed by the north and south multiply the problems. The tensions they create are not easily dissipated.

But that does not mean we do not have to face up to the question: “What would you do?” And answer it by saying, “Everything we can.”

So what can you do?

Pray for the people of Sudan at this crucial time in their history. Learn as much as you can about the challenges they face. Our website dedicated to this cause is a good place to start: www.PeaceinSudan.org. Join the many who are speaking up, calling on governments and organizations around the world to let the Sudanese people know that we stand with them, to let those in power know that the world expects and demands a fair vote. And donate to help support CRS’ work in Sudan.

Do those things and you will not have to face the question, “What should I have done?”

Thank you for your continued support and your prayers.

This increase has happened within little more than 10 years since the Franciscans of the Emmanuel first got started in the West African country.

Speaking to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Franciscan Brother Denis-Antoine explained that of the order’s 75 members, about 60 are now based in Cameroon.

Br. Denis-Antoine described how the order began in the African nation in 1999 after a diocesan priest from Nkongsamba city, west Cameroon, read about the Franciscans of the Emmanuel in a newspaper and requested that they help a group of parishioners wanting to live out the spirituality of St. Francis.

The brother, who explained that the order was set up in Montreal, Canada, in 1985, said, “At the request of the [diocesan] bishop, we came and started to form a fraternity of lay members. With time, the groups have expanded, established themselves and multiplied.”

Soon several of the young lay members asked to become friars.

He continued, “So in 2005, I came with a young lay brother from Canada to Cameroon to start the foundation of this first house of formation.”

During his interview, held at ACN’s international headquarters in Germany, he said, “With the help of benefactors, including ACN, the brothers built the friary with 18 bedrooms and the facilities for the community and its mission.”

Since then, the community has grown in Nkongsamba and there are now 17 friars in formation on their way to becoming consecrated members, and eight are already professed.

The young brothers are being trained to take up responsibilities in health care, catechesis, agriculture and farming.

At the request of the bishop, the Franciscans of the Emmanuel also set up a Spiritual Center which hosts retreats and formation sessions for groups from across Cameroon.

ACN provided support for both the Franciscans of the Emmanuel’s first friary in Cameroon and the Spiritual Center.

As well as being involved in parish work, especially youth and prison chaplaincy, the community ministers to the poorest members of society.

Br. Denis-Antoine described how the order’s work has expanded into the neighboring Dioceses of Bafoussam and Douala.

In Douala, the order recently started a local lay fraternity, mostly consisting of young adults, and there are plans to open a friary next year.

Explaining their mission in this area, Br. Denis-Antoine said, “They will help with our regular mission and they will also take charge of an existing orphanage of 30 children which needs managing and supervising.”

The Franciscans have also been working towards setting up a dispensary and maternity house in one of Douala’s poor neighborhoods.

Br. Denis-Antoine said, “The main message that we want to leave to you is that we are there, present with the people, hoping to give them this testimony of the life of the Gospel in the footsteps of our father, St. Francis.”

He also said, “Our fraternities of lay members are involved in solidarity with the poor and destitute in order to improve their situation.”

“This is why we believe that a spiritual commitment to the evangelical life has a deep social impact, especially in the life of the individuals who make this choice, but also in the life of the society.”

The brother went on to offer ‘heartfelt gratitude’ for ACN’s help. He said, “Being a Franciscan community, we are poor and in real need for financial support, like that provided by ACN, for the good accomplishment of our Franciscan mission in the Church.”

“Thanks to ACN and all the benefactors for the previous help received and for listening to this new call for support, giving us the opportunity to be your hands and heart to the people of Africa.”

Prominently displayed is a piece by Martin Kippenberger, Zuerst die Fuesse (Feet First). This work, which first appeared in 1990, substitutes a frog for Jesus on the Cross; the crucified amphibian is holding a mug of beer and an egg.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this issue today:

The work of Condo is amateurish and Dali’s is representative of his usual edginess. But Kippenberger’s crosses the line. No wonder Pope Benedict XVI was angry when he learned of it two years ago. On August 7, 2008, he wrote a letter to Franz Pahl, the regional official in Italy where the sculpture was being displayed at a Bolzano museum, saying it “injured the religious feeling of many people who see in the Cross the symbol of the love of God and of our salvation, which deserves recognition and religious devotion.” Pahl agreed and went on a hunger strike to protest it.

The pope was too gentle. Kippenberger’s art is degrading, insulting and grossly offensive. But the German artist, who died in 1997, is not around to defend himself. However, Lisa Dennison is. It was her idea to organize this exhibition.

Sotheby’s needs to explain why they are featuring Kippenberger’s assault on Christian sensibilities. Hopefully, they will spare us the tired refrain that art is in the eye of the beholder. In fact, art is always partly, but never [merely], in the eye of the beholder. That’s why Wagner’s compositions are never played in Israel.

Contact Sotheby’s media official: Lauren.Gioia@Sothebys.com

The announced topic was education, but Lauer also turned to politics, and that’s where the NBC host just regurgitated the current liberal complaint: Obama is apparently too calm and not tough enough toward Republicans. Lauer noted Obama’s recent declaration that “The Republicans, they’re treating me like a dog.” He didn’t ask for proof for that bizarre and whiny claim. He underlined it like it was the gospel truth.

Then he begged for ratcheting up the “rigor” in Obama’s attacks on opponents: “Former President Clinton said he doesn’t think the Democrats, and you included, have been rigorous enough in pushing back against some of the Republican attacks. Over these next five weeks, Mr. President, do you intend to change your tone or your emotion in terms of your pushing back?”

(Try to imagine NBC welcoming Jim DeMint or Newt Gingrich to the studio and Lauer saying suggestively “Some think your tone has been too timid in attacking Democrats. Do you intend to ratchet up your attacks as the election nears?”)

The biggest myth in the Obama arsenal is that Obama is some kind of blissfully bipartisan mediator not prone to mean-spirited messaging. It should be obvious to anyone with ears that he was a hardball-throwing liberal throughout the presidential campaign, and he’s grown even more partisan since he won and the Democrats took over everything.

The president has to be shocked when he hears this too-wimpy complaint. He gently replied that anyone who’s “heard me speak around the country over the last several months” would know he’s declared “a very sharp difference with the Republicans” – even as he admits he’s hammering them at every turn. In his Saturday radio address two days previous, Obama accused the GOP of wanting to cut taxes for the super-rich and “cut the middle class loose to fend for itself.” He called the new Pledge for America document “an echo of a disastrous decade we can’t afford to relive.”

Obama’s real problem is his atrocious record. Much of that “disastrous decade” featured an unemployment rate between 4 and 6 percent, which right now sounds like a dream. The president unspools crazy anti-GOP lines like this one to Lauer: “They proposed $4 trillion worth of tax cuts and $16 billion in spending cuts.” Lauer didn’t follow up with any notion that (a) the trillions in “tax cuts” aren’t actually “cuts,” but keeping the current tax rates the same. Then there’s (b), the Republicans propose to peel spending back to Fiscal Year 2008 levels, which is — if they ever accomplished it — many multiples of  “$16 billion in spending cuts.”

Network anchors buy (and sell) every silly thing the Democrats have to say on fiscal issues, including the mind-boggling whopper that adding millions of people to federally-funded health insurance under ObamaCare is going to reduce the deficit.

But that wasn’t the only question where Lauer worried out loud to Obama that his mythical status is falling apart. Lauer referred to the other recent NBC hour of free air time to Obama, on CNBC, where the discouraged Barack supporter said she was tired of defending him.

An incredulous Lauer suggested she was feeling “in some way you have lost touch with the struggles of the average person on the street. I say it with some sense of irony, because you began your career in public service as a community organizer. That is all about getting in touch with people on the street. So how can this criticism now be coming up of a guy who started out as a community organizer?”

Obama correctly suggested that this discouraged woman, Velma Hart, is still an enthusiastic supporter, but like many liberals, she’s in disbelief that Obama’s socialism didn’t work. She told Michelle Singletary of The Washington Post: “I guess I started to believe, on some small level, that he had a magic wand. Maybe in that respect my question was somewhat unfair.” She also told the Post she would have hugged him if he told her that recovery was coming, but “Right now, you’re expecting too much from me.”

The liberals at NBC Universal want to hug Obama, too, with all the free air time he wants. But first, they want him to put his every ounce of civility aside and pick up the mud bucket. Liberals can’t maintain control of Washington without casting the conservatives as the incoming embodiment of all evil.

Since Jay Leno is so hung up on priestly misconduct, we thought he might want to switch gears a little and try dumping on public school teachers. After all, that’s where sexual misconduct is rampant these days. To this end, we are sending him some great script material, hot off the press.

There is a wonderfully rich story in the news about a New York City public school teacher who was just awarded tenure, even though she has a history of working as a prostitute and school administrators knew about it. Oh, yes, her punishment was to be reassigned to a desk job, one of the favored ways of “passing the trash.” That’s what happens when it costs over $200,000 to pay for an appeal in New York.

If Leno thinks this is anecdotal, we have reams of data that we can share with him, and not just about cases in New York. A few years ago, Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, who did the most authoritative work on this subject, estimated that the degree of sexual abuse in the public schools was 100 times greater than in the Catholic Church. Moreover, while this problem is almost non-existent in the Church today, it is at record-high levels in the public schools.

We’re providing Leno with the script. Now let’s see if he has the guts to use it.

Contact Leno’s executive producer: Debbie.vickers@nbc.com