God, the Devil, and David Spade
TVisGOD started about five years ago, says the religion’s founder, Chicago freelance writer Amy Bugbee. “My sister April and I were always watching TV and talking about TV, and we had come up with this idea that TV is the modern God because everyone has one. My husband was like, ‘You two should start a religion.’” The sisters put out a few issues of a newsletter and then a zine, and a friend, Mark Hejnar, made a ten-minute promotional video featuring a sermon from Pope April. “But we’re both pretty busy,” Bugbee says. “Things didn’t move as quickly as we would have liked.” A few years flew by; then “about a month ago I decided I would just go ahead and build my own Web site for it.”
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On August 21, tongue firmly in cheek, Bugbee launched TVisGOD.com, a “ministry” site that looks like it was built by Marshall McLuhan on drugs. Starting with the observation that most Americans are already worshipers, with television enshrined as the center of their lives and living rooms, General Amy lays out the foundations for the Televisionist faith: TV saves; TV shows help us through every imaginable experience; talk shows are the modern confessional; entranced staring at a TV show or video is ritual viewing; the holy book is TV Guide. The site includes words from Pope April (“If there is a devil in television, then it is the news”) and a favorable review of the show Monk by their mom, Mother Mary Joan. Visitors are invited to send in their own reviews and purchase items like the video sermon ($7), TVisGOD buttons (three for $3.50), or a lifetime membership in the ministry ($20).
On September 9 she got an E-mail from Spade’s attorneys, charging defamation and commercial misappropriation. “They wanted me to retract the story and apologize publicly. And the apology had to be approved by them before I could post it. I was really surprised.” Although the item had been picked up by the New York Post’s Page Six (where it appeared August 29), Bugbee says the Web site had drawn all of 300 hits at that point, and a previous article she had posted–wondering if American Idol was fixed–seemed more sensational. She posted the cease-and-desist letter on her site and the next day received another announcing that copyright infringement would now be added to the charges. Bugbee took the letter down but has refused to remove her story: “They wrote back threatening to sue each of us–me, my husband, my sister, and my mom–for at least a million dollars plus legal fees.” She and her husband “have nothing,” she says, but Pope April and Mother Mary Joan are upset. “I talked to a friend of Judy Tenuta’s who’s a lawyer; he told me if it’s going to start costing money, to call the ACLU.”
