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Most second- and third-tier presidential candidates fuss about a lack of media attention and the mainstream media’s general tendency to treat their campaigns as equaling the significance of a stalk of corn in an Iowa cornfield. The social conservative Sen. Sam Brownback wouldn’t hesitate to blame his lack of political traction on the media’s failures to take his candidacy seriously.
Last week I expressed my disappointment in Paul Elie’s essay for The Atlantic on various efforts to claim the mantle of Reinhold Niebuhr. Wilfred McClay — who was one target of Elie’s essay and a friend of this blog before this blog even existed (i.e., a friend of mine through email) — dropped me a note to express his dismay about Elie’s treatment of his remarks.
As part of a Los Angeles Times series on homelessness, faith and values reporter Stephanie Simon spent some time in Denver looking at a government program that involves a Democratic mayor and a challenge to the area’s churches, synagogues and mosques to work with the 600 or so homeless families in the community in a mentorship program begun two years ago.
In a Web-only interview with the Rev. Joel Hunter (pictured), Newsweek‘s Eve Conant introduces a new 44-page study, “Come Let Us Reason Together,” that tries to define common ground for evangelicals and progressives. Such projects are not new. Perhaps the best-known previous effort was called the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice.
As interesting as celebrity scandals are, celebrity mea culpas are close behind. After Patrick Kennedy, Mel Gibson, Mark Foley and Ted Haggard ran off to rehab as part of their public repentance (and I’m sure at least two of them legitimately needed it), some began to wonder if we’d ever see an apology not tied to a substance abuse claim.
In the latest Time, Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy provide an informative and lively report on the media-averse Council for National Policy and its threat to go all Ross Perot on the Republican Party if it dares to nominate the pro-choice (but also pro-constructionist) Rudy Giuliani.
Paul Elie’s latest essay for The Atlantic, a 6,400-word report on the variety of political thinkers who cite the late Reinhold Niebuhr as their hero, starts off strong but spends too much time waist-deep in the big muddy of debates about the Iraq War.
The Major League Baseball playoffs are upon us, and Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times has done a great job of reminding us that football isn’t the only sport in which religion can be prevalent.
The Amish are not known as easy interviews. In fact, many do not like to talk to journalists at all and, when they talk, they often speak German.
