Hold onto your keyboards. The UN wants to run the Internet.

Hollywood has noticed the overwhelming response to The Passion of the Christ and is actively modifying its product to appeal to Christian audiences.

More often, though, producers, directors, studio executives and marketing specialists have been looking to either mollify or entice an audience that made its power felt with last year’s “Passion of the Christ.” That film, directed by Mel Gibson, took in an astonishing $370 million at the domestic box office when released by Newmarket Films in February 2004 and - along with the empowerment of a Christian conservative bloc after the last U.S. presidential election - helped change attitudes and practices in an industry usually known for its secularism.

Volokh offers a few insights into the motives of blog writers and their audience.

From The Volokh Conspiracy: The BBC is now using the T word to describe the London bombings, though it had previously not seen fit to similarly describe Jerusalem bombings.

The Melbourne Age reports on the rapidly growing podcast market and notes that traditional broadcasters are starting to get nervous.

Podcasters are coming out of backrooms, offices, coffee shops and bedrooms. Some get ignored but thousands are drawing audiences many conventional broadcasters envy.

As a voice says at the opening of Curry’s podcasts: “Something remarkable is happening. Radio is springing free of the regulated gatekeepers who have managed what you can hear since radio was invented. It is jumping into the hands of anyone at all.”A Mexican-style voice intrudes: “We don’t need no stinkin’ transmitter.”

No, they have the internet, no national boundaries, no regulators and a potential audience of billions.

The article.

The analysis.

A selected highlight:

With Republicans holding power the White House and Congress, conservatives see the Supreme Court as the final obstacle to control of all branches of the federal government.

Sounds like the writer had just come from watching Star Wars. Bush is two thirds of the way to creating his evil empire.

Besides, I’ve never met or heard of a conservative who thinks they have control of the first two branches of government. The White House has increased government spending in a very nonconservative way, and the Senate takes more than four years to confirm judicial nominations.

In light of the FEC’s suggestion that it might consider blogs as campaign contributions, which would allow the FEC to restrict their speech, some bloggers are starting to market themselves as regular exempt media.

For example, BillHobbs.com has announced that his site will henceforth not be a blog, but an “online magazine” instead, similar–nay, identical–in every respect to his old blog.

I didn’t want to stop being a blogger, but the FEC’s moves to regulate political speech have made it necessary - as a growing number of other former bloggers have realized. And so, as of midnight tonight, I will cease blogging and become, merely, an online citizen journalist.

Hat tip: Instapundit