Waybuloo is the way to hell, apparently

WHILE stay­ing with the par­ents back in May I got to watch a lot of kids’ TV with little Siân. Some of it’s good (Oliver, Grandpa’s Gal­lery), some not good (Siân, I’d chuck myself in front of a bus for you, but Fire­man Sam is awful). But one show in par­tic­u­lar caught my atten­tion and proved to be 20 minutes of great telly: Way­bu­loo.

Way­bu­loo (bear with me here) is what the Tele­tu­b­bies would have been if a) they’d had CGI and b) weren’t shite. The show fol­lows four char­ac­ters called Pip­lings as they explore and inter­act with their envir­on­ment. It’s col­our­ful, gentle, calm­ing, and, accord­ing to the CBee­bies site, “is unique in its explor­a­tion of emo­tions and rela­tion­ships, tak­ing chil­dren on a jour­ney through stor­ies of co-operation, friend­ship and enjoy­ment”. Mooka loves it.

So it pretty much comes as no sur­prise that Chris­tian groups are opposed to the show.

See, part of the pro­gramme involves the Pip­ling char­ac­ters prac­tising “yogo”, a form of yoga designed spe­cially for the pro­gramme by a pae­di­at­ri­cian so that chil­dren and their par­ents can get involved with what’s on the screen.

Chris­ti­ans - who appar­ently spend all their time find­ing things to be pissed off about - have taken aim at a show aimed at kids aged six and under. Way to make yourselves look even more like whiny little bitches than you already do. This is what Wiki­pe­dia says about this totally man­u­fac­tured con­tro­versy:

Way­bu­loo has faced cri­ti­cism from some Chris­tian com­munit­ies, who argue that the pro­gramme includes reli­gious aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism such as med­it­a­tion and enlight­en­ment, and deem that it is unsuit­able to teach young chil­dren that hap­pi­ness can be gained from these meth­ods.

Per­son­ally I’d have thought teach­ing little chil­dren about hap­pi­ness would be OK no mat­ter what the method used. As for aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism, I didn’t notice any and was frankly aston­ished that someone could draw such a con­clu­sion. To me, yogo just looked like a fun activ­ity for kids and a way to get them engrossed in the pro­gramme. But then again I don’t spend my life see­ing things through a fil­ter of bigotry. Well, except when it comes to red­necks, douchebags, chavs, tools, Repub­lic­ans, and the eff­ing Kar­dashi­ans. But that’s not bigotry, that’s just com­mon sense.

On another site the web­mas­ter has this to say:

I wish that the BBC would be so keen to pro­mote whole­some Chris­tian val­ues to our young ones. The only true joy that can be achieved in this life, is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Hap­pi­ness is a super­fi­cial, fleet­ing emo­tion, only Christ can give an ever­last­ing true Joy. There is cer­tainly noth­ing wrong with hug­ging and phys­ical expres­sions of our love to our chil­dren, but do we really need an east­ern philo­sophy to teach us to do this? If we do, then it is a sad day indeed!

Hap­pi­ness is “super­fi­cial”? The author starts his post by say­ing how much he loves his grandkids, but sorry young­sters - you’re just a fleet­ing source of hap­pi­ness. Some magical hippy who was nailed to a tree means more to your grandad than you do*.

But wait. Let’s be fair. Maybe they have a point. So let’s see the kinds of “whole­some Chris­tian val­ues” I could teach my not-quite-two-year-old niece if I was to pick up a bible and give her some les­sons from it.

First off, let’s start with this:

If a man also lie with man­kind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have com­mit­ted an abom­in­a­tion: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them. (Levit­i­cus 20:13)

So, Siân, there you are. Chris­tian les­son #1: hate gays and wish them dead. Fol­low this one and you’ll go a long way in Nazi Ger­many and the Amer­ican Mid­w­est.

Here’s another whole­some les­son:

Happy [shall he be], that taketh and dash­eth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalms 137:9)

Want to be happy, Mooka? Then kill some kids. Appar­ently it’s the Chris­tian ver­sion of Prozac. I won­der how Mr “only Christ can give an ever­last­ing true Joy” above would feel if someone murdered his grand­chil­dren, because accord­ing to the bible he should be pretty OK with it.

Mov­ing on, here’s another teach­ing you could fol­low:

And we took all his cit­ies at that time, and utterly des­troyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain. (Deu­ter­o­nomy 2:34)

The les­son here? Well, the Sixth Com­mand­ment says some­thing about “thou shalt not kill” but it’s per­fectly OK if those being killed are dif­fer­ent to you. Brown, per­haps. And not believ­ing the same myth you do. And liv­ing in a coun­try with lots of oil. But any­way…

Siân, you’re a girl. Sorry about that, because accord­ing to the bible:

But I suf­fer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp author­ity over the man, but to be in silence. (1 Timothy 2:12)

Bet­ter get used to liv­ing in silence, and obey­ing men’s every com­mands, and basic­ally ignor­ing every pro­gres­sion in women’s rights ever made. Accord­ing to good ol’ Timothy, you’re basic­ally to STFU and do whatever you’re told.

So, Sian, you’re sit­ting com­fort­ably, no doubt try­ing to eat the TV remote, and nan hears me read­ing you this:

Yet she mul­ti­plied her whore­doms, in call­ing to remem­brance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the har­lot in the land of Egypt. For she doted upon their para­mours, whose flesh [is as] the flesh of asses, and whose issue [is like] the issue of horses. (Ezekiel 23: 19-21)

Won­der how long I’d last before she ripped my head off and drop-kicked it over the hedge? More to the point, I won­der how Chris­tian par­ents deal with what is, basic­ally, hard­core porn? After all it’s the word of God, and who are they to edit or alter it?

In a sim­ilar vein:

And Cain knew his wife; and she con­ceived, and bare Enoch: and he buil­ded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. (Ezekiel 23: 19-21)

Now I’m no bib­lical scholar but weren’t the only people in exist­ence at the time Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel? So where does Cain’s wife come from? Unless… he shagged his mum? So you see, Siân, incest is appar­ently per­fectly OK with Chris­ti­ans. Espe­cially the ones in Ken­tucky.

But there are some perks to Chris­tian­ity, Siân. Such as slavery:

Both thy bond­men, and thy bond­maids, which thou shalt have, [shall be] of the hea­then that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bond­men and bond­maids. Moreover of the chil­dren of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their fam­il­ies that [are] with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your pos­ses­sion. (Levit­i­cus 25:44, 25:45)

Hey, God con­dones slavery! Even that of chil­dren! Is he from Alabama? But Siân, remem­ber that your slaves can only be hea­thens. Or, as they’re called these days, “fans of Way­bu­loo or any­one who doesn’t think like us”.

Finally, my little Mooka, there’s this good whole­some Chris­tian teach­ing:

If any [man] come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and chil­dren, and brethren, and sis­ters, yea, and his own life also, he can­not be my dis­ciple. (Luke 14:26)

Remem­ber: the only way to really love Jesus is to hate your fam­ily. I know it’s harsh but, as you seem­ingly can only find true hap­pi­ness through the bless­ings of some mys­tical space hippy, you have to hate mum, dad, nan, grandad, me, Ev, and any future sib­lings. Oh, and you have to hate your­self. Believe me, it’s not dif­fi­cult, you just have to become a journ­al­ist. But I’m sure it’s worth it. After all, as that nice man said, ordin­ary hap­pi­ness is only fleet­ing.

Quick note: I’m indebted to The Dark Bible, a site which has painstak­ingly gathered all the nas­ti­est bits of the bible in one place to point out that it’s really not the book of happy spark­ling love which Chris­ti­ans claim it is and is, in fact, pretty fuck­ing nasty. I’d never read the bible to Siân as quite frankly it’s abhor­rent, ridicu­lous, obscene, big­oted, full of the kind of viol­ence that most Chris­ti­ans claim to oppose and any­way indoc­trin­at­ing kids is what the Nazis did. And its one basic teach­ing, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them like­wise”, is just com­mon bloody sense. Besides, Where The Wild Things Are is much more believ­able and has a much bet­ter life les­son. I’d also like to point out that if any Chris­ti­ans are feel­ing per­se­cuted by this post, I am an equal-opportunity hater: I hate all reli­gions equally.

*If you visit this site, be sure to check out the “Chris­tian Per­se­cu­tion” sec­tion. It has 323 entries which deal not with the Chris­ti­ans’ per­se­cu­tion of pretty much every­one else for the past 2,000 years, but with the per­ceived per­se­cu­tion of Chris­ti­ans by every­one else. As I said: whiny little bitches.