More On The Missionary Media

The patronizing, persistent, pontificating (every day should bring at least one alliteration) of the Missionary Media continues apace.  I wonder if it matters.  Do the incessant, heavy-handed efforts to show us the way, the truth and the light make any difference?  Do they enlighten us, make us more tolerant, more sympathetic, less tribal, less bigoted, less bad generally?

I think not.  One doesn't persuade by making a pitch of any kind in such a jarring, blatant manner.  I doubt those religious who knock on doors unnannounced to proclaim that Jesus is Lord make many converts thereby. 

Why, then, does the Missionary Media proceed in this fashion?  In the case of the religious-minded who make surprise visits to unsuspecting householders, I suspect that making converts is a secondary concern.  There's a duty to prostelyze, regardless of its success.  So, persuasion isn't the ultimate goal, and they need not spend a great deal of time honing their technique.

Can it be that the media missionaries feel the same?  Do they believe that they should, or perhaps even must, introduce characters and subplots that reflect diverse sexual, familial, cultural, racial and other considerations regardless of their relevance to the story, for our own good?

Judging from the reactions these intrusions apparently elicit, they do.  Thus the missionaries condemn negative reviews and declining ratings as inappropriate not merely from the standpoint of taste or esthetics, but immoral as well.  This is self-righteousness of considerable magnitude.

I might as well give examples.  The most recent would be the latest effort to do something, I'm not sure what, in the Star Trek universe.  I must admit I've never watched a full episode, as the premise never appealed to me.  I have no interest in the lives and sexual encounters of youthful cadets somehow becoming officers of Star Fleet by being members of a debate team and putting on plays while merrily rogering each other under the guidance of strangely smug and tendentious teachers.

But it seems clear that the peculiar focus on issues and matters which are of significance mostly to those who produce and write the show rather than established Fandom, and are crudely designed to educate all in the wisdom of a particular message, resulted in ridicule and disinterest and rapid cancelation.

What the media missionaries are achieving is the opposite of what they seem to intend.  Particularly when they tinker with stories and characters that have become beloved over time, deliberately making them different from what they're known to have been, merely to make what they think is a moral or educational point unrelated to the story being told, they foster irritation and anger. 

Those they're trying to "educate" or "enlighten" recognize these efforts as pandering and patronizing, and resent them.  It's unsurprising that they react negatively to the points the missionaries want to make as well.