No Revelations Here

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Steven Weinberg, US physicist

We won't be watching NBC's paean to religious sensationalism tonight -- or any night in the weeks to come.

There are some hard and fast television watching rules in our house; we've declared it a Bush-Free zone, a Mel Gibson-Free zone, a Reality Show-Free zone ... and now a Revelations-Free zone.

Television news -when it bothers to live up to its purported mandate of objective presentation of events- is difficult enough to stomach. You only have to pick up a newspaper any day of the week to feel your teeth grind at the horrific crimes perpetrated upon humankind in the name of government, business, technology, progress, expedience or religion.

It's bad enough out there, why subject ourselves to people who insult our intelligence and humanity with their self-righteous, self-serving claptrap. And why waste our precious down time on "entertainment" which serves only to frustrate and anger us more.

Television can, and has, risen to the challenge of depicting the battle between good and evil with sensitivity and gravitas. If you doubt that, take another painful but supremely enlightening look at Angels in America or Roots.

There's so much genuine evil in today's world that Satan may well exist, but NBC hasn't got him and we don't want their version of him in our house.