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As an individual piece of journalism, last week’s Washington Post article on how a church is using a skateboarding park to share the message of the gospel is excellent. Its appropriately edgy style is matched by a straightforward accounting of the facts and a description of an hour or two spent observing the high-flying action:
The New York Times Saturday used the New York Mets’ acquisition of Major League Baseball star slugger Shawn Green to write about Jews in sports. To better phrase it, the 1,200-word article was about how Jews are not involved in sports.
I’m talking about a religion ghost in the ongoing saga between the Notre Dame traditionalists who believe the school is losing its soul as it attempts to compete against modern-day collegiate athletic programs and those who believe it’s a competitive athletic program that is essential to maintaining the traditional Catholic school’s soul.
Shouldn’t be long before we get the results from Tour de France winner Floyd Landis’ doping tests. The first test showed higher-than-expected levels of testosterone. As we prepare for that, it’s been interesting to see the positive coverage of the winner turn a bit negative.
I spent last week with my brother, a huge Tour de France fan. He kept me updated on Floyd Landis, his favorite cyclist, who ended up winning the race a few days ago.
On a more ominous side of religion-morality coverage of the World Cup, the most obvious and glaring case is the legalization and promotion of prostitution in Germany. The New York Times did a somewhat wishy-washy piece dealing largely with the business of prostitution while failing to give proper attention to the horrors of sex trafficking:
Last week found me stumbling around trying to write about religious issues in the World Cup. The event is one of the most significant worldwide. Certainly there were more religious issues than merely an immature head-butting, we thought.
Molly Moore wrote in Tuesday’s Washington Post that France’s national soccer team captain Zinedine Zidane, banished in the final minutes of Sunday’s World Cup final for head-butting an opponent in a moment of rage, is the “son of Christian Algerian immigrants.”
As far as All-Star games go, this year’s was pretty exciting. The National League was leading for most of the game until some American League player (sorry, I don’t follow that league enough to know names) batted a couple of runners home in the top of the 9th with a triple. I believe Bud Selig showed what a bad commissioner he is when he made homefield advantage for the World Series dependent not on the merits of the teams who got there but, rather, on the outcome of this game. How long, Lord, will we be under his reign? How long?
