Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Remember the media narrative from the 2004 election? To explain how the country could have possibly elected George W. Bush for a second term, we were told that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls. Never mind that it wasn’t true. Bush got more evangelical voters than Republicans traditionally had, but he got more of all sorts of groups.
Love it or hate it, the Washington Post is a fine newspaper and it is very rare to see a story hit its front page with a large and glaring hole in it. But that’s what happened today, with the story that ran with the headline “Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus From Ban to Reduction.”
There are almost too many stories about California’s Proposition 8 to keep up. But let’s look at a few dealing with religious groups.
Surely, this Baltimore Sun Navy Academy feature story breaks some kind of record for most uses of forms of the words “faith” and “prayer” in a sports story. But if you’re looking for facts and details, forget it.
Reader Bekah pointed us to a story in the Daily Mail with a religion-infused quote from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin:
I was watching MSNBC on Monday night, but the Home Companion heard the theme song from Countdown with Keith Olbermann begin, and then changed the channel. No one else in the room — neither I nor the three spayed female cats we liberated from the nearest no-kill animal shelter — dared voice even the briefest protest. Such is the dismal state of my life in November 2008 in what Americans, in our hubris, call the United States of America.
Well, you have to admit that this Texas-sized story is a whole lot more exciting to write about than a monk from Dallas being elected leader of the scandal-rocked Orthodox Church in America. Right?
The other day I noted the one-sided story in the Los Angeles Times about a likable lesbian couple who live in an area that voted in support of Proposition 8, which defines marriage as a heterosexual union.
Just the other day, I paid my first-ever visit to that amazing campus on the hillside above Oakland — the University of California at Berkeley.
