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We all agreed to take a look at Jon Meacham’s lengthy mash note to the sainted Billy Graham. I alternately enjoyed the Newsweek piece and felt it went a bit over the top in luscious praise. But I’m pretty sure I would have hated it if I hadn’t read Meacham’s earlier pieces on the Nativity, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As noted in the past, Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham really doesn’t do ordinary journalism anymore.
As I have stressed in the past, it has been hard for me to write about the wars at Baylor University because of my close connections with the campus. I’ve known Dr. Robert Sloan for many years and consider him a friend and colleague in the wider ecumenical world of Christian higher education.
It must be the week for stories about how evangelical Christians are turning their backs on Republican politics. Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times piece on Gregory Boyd is still rockin’ the charts, even driving Boyd’s book from #32,738 to #54 on Amazon.
We would have looked at Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times piece on an evangelical pastor disowning Republican politics even if many of our readers hadn’t asked us to. Apparently a number of you had strong feelings about the piece, some loving it and some not so much. It’s also the second-most-e-mailed story on the Times website right now.
Alas, I am sad to report that there are no ghosts at all in Newsweek‘s much ballyhooed front-page exclusive look behind the secret curtain that hid the real President George W. Bush from the eyes of the secular world during his lengthy trip to Russia for the G8 summit. This is the feature story with the heavy subheadline “Behind the Scenes With President Bush As the Middle East Explodes.”
It’s so difficult to write about Ann Coulter. Sometimes I think that those of us who do are all pawns in her game of making hoards of money. Having read her first book — which was harsh but not a bad read at all — I have come to the conclusion that she writes them and then inserts completely over the top and uncharitable statements at the last minute. This is for the sole purpose of having the mainstream media get outraged and bring her on the air to discuss it. She then goes home and watches the Amazon counter spin out of control.
Fred Phelps is getting help from the American Civil Liberties Union. Phelps, of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, is suing in federal court, challenging a Missouri law that prohibits protesting at military funerals.
