Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It’s too bad that “Contrarian” is already taken as the name of a standing column in Time, because contrarianism has been Michael Kinsley’s default setting for decades. During his years as one of the hosts of Crossfire, Kinsley regularly dismissed pro-lifers with a Frenchman’s wave by insisting that they either should advocate jailing all women who had abortions or they lacked the courage of their convictions.
The Miami Herald has a standard obituary this morning for the Rev. D. James Kennedy of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. I am not sure what page the story is on, but I do know that — in the online edition — there is no mention of the death of this international evangelical leader on either the front page or on the main news page. I had to use a search engine to find it.
“Hitchens Takes on Mother Teresa,” Newsweek‘s website proclaims this week, which is about as fresh a bulletin as Saturday Night Live‘s standing gag of “Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead.” That Newsweek would invite Hitchens to write an online essay is no great surprise. Even when Hitchens’ purpose is to whistle a happy tune over Mother Teresa’s grave, he does it with a certain flair. Here is a crucial point in his argument:
I have to admit that there is no reason for the following information to be posted here at GetReligion.org, other than my simple amazement that no one — Frank Rich of The New York Times leaps to mind — seems to have written about this product yet in the mainstream press.
The email is starting to come in asking when GetReligion is going to have something to say about that New York Times Magazine cover story from this past weekend, the massive piece called “The Politics of God” by Mark Lilla. The sad thing about it is that I am three time zones away from my office and involved in some long, long meetings in which a circle of journalists and academics are, during the break times, talking about this piece.
Well, this is certainly a pushy opening for a story on a hot-button issue, care of Reuters reporter Ed Stoddard in Dallas:
While visiting the blog of Episcopal priest Joseph Howard I came across a link to a new journalism and religion site. Funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative, the site has blogs, links to a Second Life community, and other features. Here’s how it’s described:
If you type the word “evangelicals” into Google Images, the art attached to the top of this post is the very first thing that turns up. This tells us quite a bit about how most Americans now define the vague word “evangelical.”
