« The journalist's craft | Main | We're jealous. »
United Kingdom: Here at Prattle Towers, we are usually sceptical of claims that the media causes crime, but that's because we rarely get to see a case as definitive as that of Michael and Patricia Watson.
The Watsons, a married couple, celebrated Mr. Watson's birthday with a meal and a bottle of wine before settling down to watch some violent pornography, Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ. Magistrates in Bedlington, Northumbria, were told of the events which allegedly followed.
Mrs Watson left the room, and her 44-year-old husband became so upset by the graphic depiction of the Crucifixion that he pulled the leads out of the television and went upstairs.
His wife then decided to watch the God Channel and went to ask him why the television was not working.
Yvonne Jobling, for the prosecution, said that an argument developed, and Watson accused his wife of being evil. He grabbed his wife by the throat and she fell to the floor. She said:His grip was so tight she was unable to speak, but she then managed to say something of a religious nature which seemed to cause him to relax his grip.
Magistrates in Bedlington, Northumberland, were told that Mrs Watson, a 51-year-old care worker, had gasped:I’m anointed by God. You know that, Michael. Do not touch God’s anointed.Mrs Watson, who was left with red marks and soreness to her neck and a grazed forearm, later told police that she had believed that her husband was going to kill her. Watson told the police that everything his wife said about him must be true because she never lied.
'Don’t strangle the anointed one,' wife pleaded in row over Mel Gibson film—The Times, 12th September 2006.
Posted in
Love Thy Neighbour
and The Passion of the Christ
at 15:45. Last modified on September 28 2006 at 23:43.
Permalink to this entry | View blog reactions
Comments
1: Posted by: Red Wolf | September 13, 2006 10:25 PM
Religion causes violence. Outlaw religion now.
Evangelism, witnessing and similar activitites go by one name here—, and is no different from spam for viagra, penis enlargement products and pornography. We do not take advertising. If you want to advertise your imaginary friend, please spend your own money on your own web space to do so. Any attempts to use the comments section for advertisements will be deleted, and the perpetrator barred, unless they are particularly stupid, in which case I reserve the right to pinch an idea from Teresa Nielsen Hayden and delete all the vowels.
This is not a contacts site. If you are looking for help regarding a particular path, I suggest The Witches' Voice, which does operate a contacts service.
Allowed HTML:
a href, b, br, p, strong, em, ol, ul, li, blockquote, q, pre. If your name has accents in it, things will work better if you use the XHTML entities for those letters. The same applies if you are using a word processor to compose your comment, then copying and pasting the text—either turn off curly quotes and avoid using em-dashes, or edit your comment after pasting to get rid of them. Garbled comments usually get deleted.