My book has changed again; Ralph "weighs in" on local controversy

I originally had no plans to post this weekend, but two things have come up that I want to bring to your attention:

• The book has gone through yet another revision.  This time, the montage of Brenda and B.W. I created and mentioned last week is now included on page 17, one of the Down Home magazine covers has moved to page 29, and a duplicate picture of Belinda has been eliminated.  In addition, a caption of the Hambone montage with "BLOW ME a big, wet kiss" on page 54 has been changed to the following: "(Next page) It only looks dirty...until one reads the (very) fine print below."   The ordering information hasn't changed, though; just click on the cover on the page.
• In my reading of The Daily Record (Dunn, NC), I came across an article about a girl from Angier - a town in Johnston County maybe 10 miles north of the farm - who complained about an act of censorship by the Walt Disney Company that attracted the attention of Fox News Channel, and also of self-professed language expert Ralph.  First, here's the article:

Angier Child Takes On Disney Over God
By TOM WOERNER
Of The Record Staff

An Angier girl found herself in the national spotlight this week after she says the Disney Channel discriminated against her because of her Christian faith.

Lilly Anderson, the 10-year-old daughter of Julie and Jeremy Anderson, was featured on the “Fox and Friends” program Tuesday morning after an encounter with the Disney Channel. Lilly responded to a question on the Disney website during the Thanksgiving holiday asking what she was thankful for.

She responded that she was thankful for “God, my family, my church and my friends.”

The only response Lilly got from the Disney site was an acceptance denial and the words “Please be nice!” which appeared in large red print when she attempted to submit her answer.

After consulting with her mother, Lilly realized that if the word God was left out of the answer it was immediately approved as a response.

Mrs. Anderson answered the question several times and each time God was mentioned the red lettered response appeared.

“We worked together and we were able to figure out that the word ‘God’ was the problem,” Mrs. Anderson said...

She does not understand Disney’s policies.

“My whole thing is if it is OK to be thankful for things, why does Disney think it is not OK to recognize where those things come from,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Lilly is smart enough to realize her things come from God, they do not come from Walmart.”

Mrs. Anderson was also not happy with the wording.

“It is a slap in the face to Christians when you refer to God ‘as not nice,’” Mrs. Anderson said. “It tells children it is wrong to share the love of God.”...

Disney released a statement on the issue saying the incident happened because of “filtering technology to prevent profanity from appearing on our websites. Unfortunately, because so many people attempt to abuse the system and use the word ‘God’ in conjunction with profanity, in an abundance of caution our system is forced to catch and prevent any use of the word on our websites.”

The statement then said the company “would have been happy to explain our filtering technology to the inquiring family had they contacted us.”

Ralph, the church pastor whose "it only looks dirty" T-shirt with alternate definitions of certain words and phrases also used in a sexual vein is pictured (I created the shirt on the CustomInk website, then brought it into Photoshop), would have weighed in with, "How Disney explained why Lily Anderson's thoughts could not be published is unfortunate.  It's sad that so many people take the name of God in vain, and that it has ended up offending a true family of faith."