Nicole Greenfield: Conservative media activist Brent Bozell III’s diatribe at Townhall.com yesterday is the latest installment in the ongoing argument over censorship and religious content in television and film. Back in July, Anne Morse at the conservative Weekly Standard was one of many to express outrage over a PG rating for the church-made film Facing the Giants, a story of a football coach who overcomes fear and failure. Bozell’s concern now is over VeggieTales, a straight-to-video Christian children’s series in which computer animated vegetables act out Bible lessons that will become part of NBC’s Saturday morning lineup this fall — minus the explicit religious references. He complains that “NBC has taken the very essence of ‘Veggie Tales’ — and ripped it out. It’s like ‘Gunsmoke’ without the guns, or ‘Monday Night Football’ without the football.” But if we read creator Phil Vischer’s opinions or take a look at Heather Hendershot’s examination of the show in her book Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture, we come to see that Bozell’s anger isn’t as justifiable as he makes it out to be.

According to a recent blog on his website, Vischer says that although he wasn’t surprised when NBC asked him to edit out the Bible verses at the end of each episode, as the company’s editorial requests became more demanding, he started to feel a bit uncomfortable. But instead of losing his temper, he opted to see the benefit of airing a Christian-based series on a major television network. “The new stuff we’re coming up with is really fun,” he wrote, “and at least some new kids will meet Bob and Larry on NBC, and maybe wander into Wal-Mart and buy a video with all the God still in. So it could be better, but overall it’s not a total loss.” Vischer’s optimism about VeggieTales‘ crossover potential stands in direct opposition to Bozell’s persecution narrative and ultimately serves to weaken his claims of discrimination.

In Heather Hendershot’s analysis, she compares VeggieTales to McGee and Me, another straight-to-video series about an eleven-year-old Christian boy which was created by Focus on the Family. McGee and Me has “hung onto explicitly evangelical messages” she writes, whereas VeggieTales “seeks a wider market and thus has a tempered, ambiguously ‘religious’ message.” It is for this exact reason that VeggieTales, not McGee and Me, is currently airing on NBC.

She goes on to argue that because of its lack of reference to Jesus and the salvation message, VeggieTales has conceded to the secular marketplace and traded in Sunday morning values for Saturday morning ones. But the Christians she interviewed don’t find this problematic. One woman asked, “Why must a Christian message be literal and unsubtle? Messages about love and forgiveness could certainly be interpreted as ‘Christian.'” Vischer agrees: “If you want your kids to be more sarcastic, more aggressive, more disrespectful, there are plenty of shows to teach them that…But what if you want your kids to be more forgiving or kind? That’s what motivated us.”

Either Brent Bozell III hasn’t thought hard enough about this or he just has a chip on his shoulder. Probably both. NBC has in no way ripped the essence of VeggieTales out. My suggestion is that before he starts crying “no fair” over First Amendment rights, he take a step back and actually read about, listen to or watch what he’s ranting about. I turned my TV on at 10:30 this morning and I can tell you that Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato were full of Sunday morning values wrapped in Saturday morning packaging.

Nicole Greenfield is a graduate student in NYU’s Religious Studies Program and the managing editor of The Revealer.