Mollie Hemingway

Does the press have the right to mock religions?

With Danish and Norwegian embassies in flames this weekend, it is clear that Muslim outrage over a Denmark newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad is not going away. We previously highlighted some of the issues involved, namely that Islam forbids rendering Muhammad in visual media and the obvious tension between Western values of freedom of the press and a Europe with a growing Muslim population. Yesterday Terry covered the stateside media treatment. But this religion and media story is causing such an international crisis that I feel compelled to point out a few other things.


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In gods we trust

Every year since 1953, an extremely mysterious Christian group called The Fellowship has hosted a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. At $400+ a pop, tickets for the breakfast are some of the hottest in town (don’t worry, it’s free on C-SPAN for us plebeians). Leaders of Christian groups across the country make sure to attend, as do dignitaries from around the world. Every president has attended for the last 50 years. Tables are full of senators and Congress members.


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Depicting Muhammad

Yes, Kanye West posed as Jesus Christ on the cover of Rolling Stone. And, like he’s a Pat Robertson-in-training, the grandstanding worked. Media outlets splashed the news everywhere. So it was nice to see the way Rashod Ollison analyzed young Kanye for the Baltimore Sun:


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Simon does it again

Stephanie Simon is the Los Angeles Times reporter who did such a great job a few months ago with that piece about what happens inside abortion clinics. In a lengthy feature published Saturday, she writes about Danielle, a woman who refuses an abortion after finding out her baby would be born without a brain.


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Last year's news, today

Back in early December, I pointed out the media silence over a curriculum battle in California. Even though reporters were all over stories about curriculum battles in Kansas and Pennsylvania, no one was paying attention to California, where Hindu nationalists were succeeding in making major changes to sixth-grade textbooks about Hinduism.


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Altar of sport

So Seahawks and Steelers, eh? Should be a good Superbowl, I think, after watching all of the Broncos-Steelers game and a bit of the lesser conference game. I am an expatriate of Broncos Nation, which means many of my Sundays after church have been spent in front of the television.


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Logic versus faith?

I realize I’ve been covering a great deal of abortion-related stories recently and some, including myself, might be somewhat beleaguered by the topic. But today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the media are running many stories about abortion with a religion angle. The feature I want to bring to light was written by an unabashedly pro-choice man in today’s New York Times Magazine. Author Eyal Press is the son of an abortion doctor in Buffalo who was a colleague and friend of murdered abortion doctor Bernard Slepian.


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