Douglas LeBlanc

The GOP's in-house comic

Brad Stine landed the gig, sort of. The conservative and Christian comedian, who really wanted to perform at the Republican National Convention, didn’t win the same billing as Michael W. Smith or Third Day, but NPR’s Talk of the Nation mentions that he performed at “R: The Party,” hosted by the hard-partying Bush twins (click here for Talk of the Nation‘s interview, which lasts just over three minutes).


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The Retro American freak show

The millionaire entrepreneur John Sperling attracted some Big Media attention for his new group-project book, The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America, with a series of visually hip ads depicting Mel Gibson and Newt Gingrich (Retro) and Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton (Metro). The book is still another version of explaining the cultural divisions that GetReligion usually describes as Red and Blue America.


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Padre Pio's new crib

That triumphalist remark is the heart of an energetic New York Times report about a massive new church built at San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, in honor of the Catholic mystic and stigmatic Padre Pio. The new church was designed by Renzo Piano, the architect of the modernist Pompidou Center in Paris. (Click here for fine photographs of the church’s exterior, and related text for architecture buffs.)


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Life in the sandbox

GetReligion tried to find humor in the story of the Kerry campaign’s unfortunate choice of a liaison to churches, so fair is fair: Joe Feuerherd of the National Catholic Reporter has written a devastating profile of Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis and the Bush campaign’s newly resigned adviser on Catholic issues.


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