This just in from Sky News:
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13279769,00.html

SPRINGER SHOW GOES AHEAD
BBC executives were tonight under guard after the controversial show Jerry Springer - The Opera was aired on BBC2.

The corporation said it had received threats from individuals who objected to the programme's "blasphemous" content.
It is believed Roly Keating, the controller of BBC2, and Jana Bennett, the director of television, are among those who have been given private security guard protection.

Well, it seems that we've survived without civilisation breaking down all around us, and all seems to be going on as before.

Excellent show, very glad that they broadcast it and I wonder if it'll boost the number of people going to the theatre/opera after seeing it? Time for an email of thanks to the BBC, I think...

Oh and I've had an idea for something related to this that you might be interested in, Tim. Expect an email tomorrow or Monday.

A quick ferret around the Christian Voice website shows that they're (a) howling mad theocrats and (b) possibly a one-man show, since few other names than Alan Green seem to show up in press releases.

More significantly, they're also suspiciously hot on gay issues, and *big* fans of the BNP's Nick Griffin. This is from the July 2004 newsletter (http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Newsletters/July_2004.pdf):

"ordinary people would probably not be quite so outraged as BBC insiders by Mr Griffin?s denunciation of Islam. Those who live in Muslim-dominated areas are well aware of the threat..."

Very, very good, and if it hadn't been for the religious nut jobs and defenders of our values, I'd probably have missed it.

What we need to do is discredit this whole 'it received x thousand complaints, so it must be bad' mentality. I suggest picking a completely innocuous programme and then organzing a campaign to get as many people as possible to complain about it - perhaps a nature programme that includes references to evolution, for example.

Tap dancing Klansmen, I haven't laughed so much for ages.

I've heard a couple of rumours that the protests outside the BBC are largely formed of members of the Peniel Pentecostal Church, which is basically a cult. Politics-watchers might remember Martin Bell standing in Brentwood & Ongar after complaints that Peniel members had infiltrated the local Conservative branch.

Manic, hope you don't mind but I've knocked together a post on Mailwatch as The Daily Mail online ran with Death Threat story today. It's all here www.bigdaddymerk.co.uk/mailwatch/index.php?p=163

Manic- I've been looking for support for the BBC airing the show (in opposition to the small-minded minority making a counter-productive splash in the press). Anyone want to sign a petition supporting the BBC?

http://www.petitiononline.com/BBCJSSUP/petition.html

The Ealing Times has put this under "War On Terror"... http://www.ealingtimes.co.uk/news/waronterror/display.var.557946.0.0.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4159217.stm

Pulled in 1.7 million last night, more than a usual televised opera does. Intrestingly enough a programme about guns & Grant Mitchell (Ultimate Force, ITV1) pulled in 5.2 million. What's the world coming to!

I'm not a Christian, but I was a very devout one as a teenager. I didn't see anything wrong with the show now, and I don't imagine I would have done back then either. I definitely liked the characterisation of God, too.

I *would* email the BBC with a support message, but I'm nervous that *all* emails they receive about Jerry Springer will be filed under "complaints" at the moment.

Has anyone seen today's Mail On Sunday front page, incidentally? It's all about Roly Keating being driven out of his "?1 million home" by protestors.

And a non-shouty-mad-crackers Christian report at http://www.indcatholicnews.com/springers.html

"Deep concerns felt by Christian communities over the proposed broadcast of Jerry Springer the Opera on BBC 2 were expressed today in a high-level meeting between church representatives and the BBC. The BBC's Director of Television, Jana Bennett, Roly Keating, Controller of BBC2 and Peter Maniura, Head of Television Classical Music and Performance met representatives of the Churches' Media Council (the ecumenical organisation of the Christian churches for media issues), Revd Joel Edwards, General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, Revd David Coffey, Free Churches Moderator, Peter Blackman Director of the Churches Media Council, Dr Jim McDonnell representing The Rt Revd Kieron Conry, Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Chairman of the Catholic Bishops' Strategic Communications Committee, and Arun Kataria representing the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester, Senior Anglican spokesman on Communications.

At the outset it was acknowledged that freedom of expression and the freedom to object peacefully are worthy of respect and of value in our society. The actions of those who had sought to make protests about the programme personal and to make them offensively were deeply deplored, as were those who had repeated inaccuracies about the programme."

[...]

And it isn't a rumour about Peniel; this from the Telegraph at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/08/nspring08.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/01/08/ixhome.html -

"Bishop Michael Reid, of the Peniel Church in Brentwood, Essex, who organised yesterday's protest, described the musical as "filth"."

Caitlin, it's difficult to see where to register support- that's why I posted that petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/BBCJSSUP/petition.html).

I've also just written in support of the programme to ofcom (http://www.offcom.org.uk/) who'll be receiving most of the complaints now that the show's aired.

I know petitions are pretty rubbish, but I really think that this is the kind of issue on which they can be made to count. If enough people knew about it, ten times the number of people who complained would sign in support of the bbc. Could ofcom or the bbc ignore that? I don't think so.

And then we could get to work on getting Pope Town aired...

(I know there are better things to get angry about than this- I really do- but it's turned out to be the straw that's broken my camelly back.

So.

Angry.)

ITV teletext news is reporting that "Christians" (I'm guessing this means Christian Voice) are, as threatened, going to launch a private prosecution for blasphemy. Now that's going to be *fun*.

There's more on the blasphemy prosecution at http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=129817868&p=yz98y8574 and yes, it is Christian Voice behind it.

It also mentions that "Since the programme went out, 317 calls were received by viewers, according to the latest figures [...] 28% appreciated the show, 16% were happy it was broadcast, 33% thought it was offensive and 23% though it should not have been broadcast." 28% of 317 is about 90 people. I'm sure between us we can rustle up that many again...

I really found it boring. Although the songs were fun, I got over the cunt fuck bitch dick singing after about 5 minutes. The shoehorning of the devil and jesus didn't make anymore satirical than it already was - and some of it was painfully over-done. The bit where jesus and satan swore at each other, with steve smoking in the middle? That must have been about 3 minutes long.

A stupid, highminded version of Bottom Live that thought it was clever by referencing opera, the bible and swearing a lot. Missed opportunity.

As a protest, someone should get a car with a *loud* stereo, find out John Beyer's home address and go park outside his house and enjoy listening to the soundtrack for an evening. See if we can drive that fucker out of his home in fear of curse words.

The highlight for me was the news coverage on ITV News just as it was being screened. A female protester was detailing how appalling the opera was, how no one should see it. And then the reporter asked how the protester had already seen it. The protester paused - and then said she hadn't. I'll wager the majority of the protesters hadn't seen even a second of it.
In fact, I think there was more swearing in the football match I attended on Saturday afternoon. QPR lost 3-0, in case you're wondering.

[conspiracy hat on] BBC license up for renewal > BBC has a lot of enemies, not least the government > Unusually large and orchastrated anti-BBC response to programme > Government now has golden opportunity to beat BBC into submission. [conspiracy hat off]

And a very good reason for those toying with voting Tory this year not to bother:

"The Conservatives also joined the attack on the screening, with deputy leader Michael Ancram saying the BBC had a duty to exercise caution."

Caution? That's almost Father Ted-esque in its wooliness. "Careful Now" "Down with this sort of thing".

Dear Christian Voice,

We note that you were offended by our transmission of Jerry Springer: The Opera on 8 January. Sorry.

If you were truly Christians, we'd advise you to do the following:

a) turn the other cheek.
b) forgive us.

Sorry again.

The BBC.

More on Peniel; according to an Indie article cited at http://www.apologeticsindex.org/p07.html, "...119 of Peniel's members joined the local Conservative Party and brought Bishop Reid's extremist views into the public arena. Among these were publicly-expressed positions that gypsies should be exterminated, that the unemployed should be allowed to starve, that homosexuals are "filthy perverts", that Muslims are "vile heathens", and that the European Union is a papist plot."

Hello, I'm a Christian. And I'm outraged.

Not by the opera, you understand, but by the fact that the trusting, unquestioning mentality promoted by the parts of modern church (whether intentional or not) has been taken advantage of by what looks like manipulation by a few agenda-led individuals and has led to otherwise rational and intelligent people abandoning all their normal critical thought processes and creating a big fuss about, well, not very much, really. The fact that it now looks like The Great Satan himself is involved just makes me even more angry. (Murdoch, that is, not the feller with the horns from downstairs).

To be fair, I don't exactly blame the people who forwarded the email to everyone in their address book, or who wrote complaints, or anything; most of them are (in my experience) just a little bit too trusting about anything that falls through their inbox proclaiming to be from authoritative Christian sources - in some ways, this is just another "Hell found in Siberia" type of thing. This sort of thing drops through my procmail filter all the time, and normally I just sigh, dig out the story on Snopes and email a refutal back. This time, though, it looks quite a lot more sinister - not an attempt to make people look foolish, but rather to manipulate the media by manufacturing an outrage out of an excitable religious community.

I'd love to have seen it, but I had a prior engagement on saturday night. I'll have a dig around teh intarweb and see if I can find an avi of it or something. A fellow godbothering friend of mine saw the stage show down in London and thought it was hysterical.

Parm: two links/leads from some recent comments at Fark.com...

http://www.lokitorrent.com/torrents-details.php?id=96288

search for "Jerry Springer Opera" on www.isohunt.com

If you have problems sourcing it, I taped it (VHS) and may have my hands on DivX version soon.

Hello
I am Christian and am really offended by this show, but that isnt ultimately what matters. This show is an offense to God. The Most High God, and the One who created all of us. While apologies can be made to Christians it is God we are accountable to. I know some may not care about reading this, but there is a God and He sent Jesus into the world to die for our sins, and He rose again from the dead on the third day. This is the same God who Christians love and serve. God is worthy of our everything. His name is Holy. His son Jesus Christ took the bullet in the head for us so that there would be a way we could get to Heaven through trusting in God. This is the message that Christians as His followers should promote. We sometimes do a poor job of this as we are sinners like everyone else but this the truth anyhow. It stands regardless of us.
This is reason enough why this show should not be broadcast. To add, Christians views ought to be respected. If this was a show berating Allah, would it be allowed? Why then should this be allowed? Where is decency and respect ? Why, when our country is making efforts to make ppl of other faiths welcome and secure without offense being caused to them, would this same country allow such a show to be broadcast- when there are Christians among their own people???

That aside, we will all have to face God on the day of Judgement and give account. It is HIM we have offended.
God bless you all
peace out