The Power From Above?

92,000 strong-- a captivated and enthused audience at the Coliseum seats, while scores of others settle to watch the oft-sold-out Trojan football game on their high definition 52-inch plasma screens broadcast via satellite or Direct TV. Fan and foe alike have become accustomed to hearing the march down the field of the recent perennial favorites called by none other than the longtime USC public address announcer, Dennis Packer. Television and radio broadcast networks such as ABC, ESPN, FSN, ESPN Radio 710, and KMPC AM-1540 can be heard echoing Packer’s play-by-play calls to the nation’s NCAA football faithful who have made tuning in to such stations a fall season weekly regularity. The chance of raking in major profits from widespread broadcast media patrons have numerous television and radio stations skirmishing for the rights to broadcast such widely followed, audience-compelling events.

While the arena of sport-related broadcast remains an American staple for the sport fanatic, other programs have capitalized on a quite different audience. Networks have opted to cater to the more religious faith-based followers rather than targeting the usual fan based fanfare. Those such as James Dobson, former USC Trojan and Focus on the Family founder, has found a way to catapult his influential right-wing Christian program to new heights, successfully establishing faithful listeners through an impressive media-controlling empire. Although Dobson’s Focus on the Family more or less focuses on the Christian, right-wing conservative community, his programming remains highly influential in the realms of faith and politics because he masterfully uses his conservative, spiritual faithful as leverage to favorably influence political issues.

There are those such as Stephen Mack, an esteemed public intellectual, who seem to tackle this issue, or “Roveian strategy” of catering to the religious-right of America and the way the 2004 “post election punditry was consumed with talk about either the unsavory role Christian fundamentalists played in the campaign, or the ‘illiberal ways’ the faithful were treated by critics.” Accordingly, Mack attributes this play to tipping “the balance in small-town Ohio and Central Florida.” This could assuredly not be an understatement on his behalf, especially when taking into consideration the numbers game of a large religious right-wing organization such as Focus on the Family. According to People for the American Way, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family program alone is broadcasted daily over the radio on more than 3,400 radio stations in North America. Including international broadcasting in 15 different languages, Dobson has an estimated daily audience of over 220 million people. In addition, Dobson can also boast coverage on 80 television stations on a daily basis. His reverberations are also published in ten monthly magazines with 2.3 million subscribers. Earning revenue of about $138 million, the religious public intellectual such as James Dobson certainly has both the financial and spiritual backing needed to intertwine his religious views with politics to favorably impact society at large.

Well aware of his powerful deck of cards, Dobson has since dabbled into politics, taking a firm right-wing Christian stance on numerous controversial and polarizing political issues, thus gaining the support of many religious conservatives. For example, Dobson remains in strong opposition of gay marriage and relationships. In fact, he even goes on to admonish the rising gay marriage rates in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. He states that they are attributable to the recognition of same-sex relationships by their subsequent political leaders. With the knowledge of Dobson’s influential role over right-winged Christians, he was given the opportunity to advise members of congress, once again using his influential power to warn lawmakers that this video made to teach tolerance to school-aged children was rather pro-homosexual, further citing the video as “an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids.” Such strong statements made by a man who has garnered the clout to address members of congress at a black tie dinner in Washington celebrating President Bush’s election are made often, and come with heavy weight.

When it comes to abortion, Dobson remains adamantly pro-life in stance, thus again catering to the religious-right. However, Dobson has come under some criticism by some other pro-life supporters. Dobson’s Focus on the Family has since praised the Supreme Court ruling of Gonzales v. Carhart that regulate and provide alternative methods to abortion and which Colorado Right to Life president, along with a number of others, claim to merely “improve the public-relations image of the abortionist.” Such praise of a Supreme Court ruling further indicates the strong political agenda that the religious Dobson strives to also dedicate himself while trying to balance the support of the religiously conservative faithful.

Dobson has since found himself dodging harmful bullets accusing him, along with others as one who “puts politics ahead of righteousness.” After the Mark Foley scandal involving the exchange of explicit instant messages between Foley and a congressional page, James Dobson described the page-luring escapade as merely an affair that has “turned out to be what some people are now saying was a – sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages.” Dobson later even goes so far to defend his Republican brethren by shifting the focus of blame away from the Republican representative, stating that the Foley event pales greatly when compared to former President Clinton’s (D) Monika Lewinsky affair, which he deemed “the most embarrassing and wicked things ever done by a president in power.”

Despite the occasional backlash from the opposition, Dobson still remains the highly spiritual and political religious public intellectual. Dobson, in November of 2004 was labeled by Slate.com as “America’s most influential evangelical leader.” If ever needed, Dobson can still piece together a resume that can boast founder of the Family Research Council (a political arm through which biblical values could be made to achieve heightened political influence) and founder of the widely-listened to Focus on the Family, all the way to campaign leader of the social conservatives, a group powerful enough to block the appointment of the head of the United States judiciary committee. He has also garnered enough influence to even promise a number of Democratic Senators “a battle of enormous proportions” if they so chose to filibuster conservative appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court. Realizing his worth due to his large religious following of the right-winged faithful, Dobson, on Focus on the Family, warned that Republicans should not take his support for granted, warning “If I go, I will do everything I can to take as many people with me as possible.”

Though this Trojan alum does not hail from USC’s heralded football team, James Dobson’s notoriety and influence from his faith based programming has pushed his broadcast media audience upwards to over 220 million people worldwide. While throngs of football fiends continue to follow the play-by-play announcements of Dennis Packer, the USC public address announcer, millions of others remain faithful to the call from those echoing a spiritual (and sometimes political) message from those such as James Dobson, the religious and public intellectual. The leverage that he has gained from such a large and faithful following has allowed him to engage in the political meanderings of a number of highly controversial issues. Enlightened religious intellectuals such as Dobson have indeed, as Mack put it, “used the terms of their faith to build a sense of a larger American community,” in addition to further “insulate particular Americans within the cultural walls of more narrow communities” in part through the intricate intertwining of faith and spirituality with a political agenda.