Morning news shows are the absolute best. Whether they’re f*cking chickens or missing bridge implosions, they always have a looseness to them that tells viewers, “Give us a break, the B team here has three hours to fill.”

That may help explain why this old clip from “Good Morning Mississippi” exists. It’s just three young dudes rocking what appears to be some approximation of hip-hop dancing to what sounds like Christian rock’s approximation of hip-hop music. It is positively HYPNOTIC. And just when I thought it was a looped video of the same moves that would never end, they actually dance out a pantomime of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (see the 2:20 mark). I bet those dudes get mad trim to abstain from.

At the end of the video, there’s some unnecessary editorializing from the YouTube uploader. It’s like, dude, you don’t need to lecture us about Mississippi’s education system. I mean, here’s the website for “Good Morning Mississippi.” If the local ABC affiliate is getting its coding from the Geocities graveyard, I can probably connect the dots myself.

[The Clearly Dope]

Oh, Janine Turner. She was such a lovely footnote to the ’90s: she had a charming role in a successful TV show (brassy pilot Maggie O’Connell in “Northern Exposure”), and she played the love interest in one of the less-sucky Sylvester Stallone movies of the decade (Cliffhanger). And while she returned to respectable television in one season of “Friday Night Lights,” this is what’s become of her since: a poor man’s Lisa Rinna shilling for something called “Christoga.”

What’s Christoga, you ask? It’s Christian yoga (“yoga-filled body, Christ-filled soul”), and it’s a necessary development because regular yoga secretly spreads blasphemous Hindu teachings.

I guess it goes without saying that she’s part of the Tea Party movement, huh? Great. It’s getting impossible to enjoy a little ’90s nostalgia without some wacko broad opening the door for a political flame war. I guess I’ll toss Janine over here in the crazy pile with Victoria Jackson and Christine O’Donnell.

The chalkboard gag from last night’s “Simpsons” episode is actually generating some buzz on the Internet, which is more than I can say about any episode of “The Simpsons” in the last seven or eight years. It refers, of course, to the ongoing circle of intimidation/fear/censorship that’s been going on over at Comedy Central with “South Park’s” satire of religious icons.

“In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind,” South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote on their Web site. “We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.” [Raw Story]

Anyway, I’ve never liked it when “South Park” or “The Simpsons” or “Family Guy” tried to poke fun at each other, so a little show of solidarity is cool to see. Although it’d be a lot cooler if every TV show just added a Muhammad character to piss off righteous religious fanatics. Seriously, everybody, you can do whatever you want with Muhammad’s image. If we all get in on this together, Revolution Islam will be way too backlogged with making veiled threats to ever back them up.

(image from Internet Today via BuzzFeed)

I’m getting pretty tired of everyone coming down so hard on Revolution Islam, the group that warned Trey Parker and Matt Stone that they were probably in danger because “South Park” denigrated the image of the Prophet Mohammed. Last night, Jon Stewart spent ten minutes talking about freedom of speech and censorship on “The Daily Show” that culminated in a crude epithet towards the Muslim group (see video below), and this morning the Revolution Islam website was hacked (inset).

Revolution Islam did NOT threaten Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They merely used their own freedom of speech to warn Stone and Parker of dangerous religious zealots, while at the same time standing up for a revered icon in their religion. As an act of solidarity, I created the most respectful image of Mohammed I could imagine. You’ll note that the prophet has taken the mighty form of Godzilla, and he’s firing lasers from his eyes and mouth to destroy the godless hedonists at the Rehab pool party in Las Vegas, America’s most prominent symbol of sin. Whatever your feelings about Islam, you have to admit, Godzillahammed is pretty sweet.

Man, it feels good to stand up for what’s right. And since Revolution Islam and I are both based in New York, I welcome them to thank me in person.

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So a priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a Buddhist monk walk into a room with 10 atheists… No, seriously.  It’s a new game show called “Penitents Compete” proposed by Turkish TV station Kanal T in which converts would win a trip to either the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca, or Tibet.  This sounds amazing to me.  Of course, if you can find something awesome, you can look outside and there’ll be religious people picketing:

But religious authorities in Muslim but secular Turkey are not amused by the twist on the popular reality game show format and the Religious Affairs Directorate is refusing to provide an imam for the show.

“Doing something like this for the sake of ratings is disrespectful to all religions. Religion should not be a subject for entertainment programs,” High Board of Religious Affairs Chairman Hamza Aktan said.

Yeah!  Making religion entertaining cheapens what religion’s all about: judging other people and bombing them for their beliefs.