The British press is giving some interesting coverage to the Charlotte Church controversy. Church used to be a sweet, little girl with a nice voice who recorded classical music, much of it with a religious bent, and even sang before Pope John Paul II when she was 12 or so. Now, she’s grown up and has a new TV talk show for which she has done skits blaspheming the Eucharist and calling Pope Benedict a Nazi.
Britain’s Daily Mail summarizes the controversy and reports that Ignatius Press has pulled all her materials from their catalog. They do a surprisingly even-handed job of addressing the legitimate outrage of Catholics. I suspect they don’t think much of her or her new show or her blatant attempts at ginning up publicity.
I guess I’m not exactly surprised about this anyway. Can anyone name any child star that didn’t have a disastrous transition to adulthood? Certainly the bad outnumber the good: Drew Barrymore, Macauley Culkin, Lindsay Lohan, and on and on. The sweeter their on-stage persona as a child, the wilder the counter-reaction, it seems.
We might like to think of Charlotte as being as sweet as the cherub on the cover of her CDs, but let’s face it: That’s the world of make-believe. Why are we surprised that children immersed in the cesspool of the entertainment industry won’t grow up looking and sounding exactly like products of that environment? If you buy a puppy and kick and beat him all day, don’t act surprised when he bites someone.
There is no way I would allow anyone to put any of my children in movies, TV shows, on any type of recording, or in any nationally competitive sport (e.g. Olympics). The cost is just too high.
Technorati Tags:anti-Catholic, Catholic-bashing, child stars, media
