Ed Kociela's Thoughts....

The word is out, the Tawdry Lifestyle Channel, once named The Learning Channel, or, now, TLC for short, is adding yet more polygamy programming to its lineup.

It will, according to a piece in the New York Post, start broadcasting
"breaking The Faith" and "Escaping the Prophet," both, as The Post breathlessly recounts, intend to "blow the lid" off of the controversial FLDS church. 
Now, The Post has always been one of the liveliest papers in the country.

The front page of this bustling tab always goes big on photos and has been the home of some of the most incredible headlines in newspaper history, including one of my favorites: “Headless Body in Topless Bar.” I was a pretty fair headline writer in my day, coming up with such gems as “Bloody Mess for Red Cross,” which went above a piece about a PR failure by the agency when it found itself in the midst of a tainted blood scandal. But, I never came close to the cleverness of The Post.

Just before Thanksgiving we’ll get “Breaking The Faith,” a show about eight young men and women who were either tossed out of the FLDS group or escaped. A few weeks later, we will get a show called “Escaping The Prophet,” based on the life of Flora Jessop, who broke free when she was just 16. She, by the way, has a younger sister, Ruby, who also recently escaped.

We’ll get to see six episodes of each show.

It will be interesting to see how TLC handles these shows. Until now, it has been very sympathetic to the practice of polygamy, pretty well setting up Kody Brown, his wife, and his three mistresses as nothing more than some innocent kids practicing an alternative lifestyle. The network has another show in its fledgling stages called “My Five Wives,” which offers another family involved in plural marriage.

I highly suspect that there will be little connection of the dots here.

You see, the two new shows will aim at Warren Jeffs and his FLDS church, which he still runs from behind bars in a Texas prison where he is serving a life-plus sentence after being convicted on two counts of child rape for marrying a 12- and 14-year-old girl.

Jeffs is the self-proclaimed prophet of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), which has members along the Utah-Arizona state line; in Eldorado, Texas; Pringle, South Dakota, Mancos, Colorado; Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada; Ensenada, Baja California Norte, Mexico, and elsewhere.

The two new shows will, undoubtedly, be viewed as the negative side of polygamy as a result of Jeffs’ actions and others who have been convicted of crimes against children, with the FLDS, no doubt, positioned as the “bad polygamists.”

The Browns?
They will continue to be promoted as the “good polygamists.”

There’s a problem with this, however.

The Browns come from the Apostolic United Brethren, a fundamentalist Mormon sect located primarily in northern Utah.

Their roots, however – like almost every single Mormon fundamentalist group – are in what is called the Short Creek community, the twin cities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, where Jeffs rose to power.

There were several splits in a series of power and leadership disputes that splintered the original fundamental polygamists who settled in the area – a place that Brigham Young, perhaps the most well-known LDS prophet and president, said would one day be “The head, and not the tail, of the church.”

It will be interesting to see how TLC addresses all of this, if it tackles the subject at all.

You see, the AUB is nothing more than FLDS-North.

I know former AUB members who tell harrowing tales that are just as tragic and sickening as those that have been told by former FLDS members. But, we have seen none of that raised in “Sister Wives,” because the network has chosen to sanitize it all.

Really, we cannot expect anything different from the new shows, which will, undoubtedly, not establish the link between the Browns, the AUB, and the FLDS.

We’ve seen TLC allow Brown to shrug it all off as a “lifestyle” choice, seen him express little reason or background into his world, seen the women in fanciful, farcical situations.

Cynical?

Maybe.

But reality TV has a way these days of making you look at it all in realistic terms.

My expectations are pretty low at this point.

Written by Ed Kociela