Remember that wonderful headline that Mollie hit us with the other day: “You mean Mormons aren’t all Republicans?”
Finding religion in new places
You mean Mormons aren't all Republicans?
So Vice President Dick Cheney gave a commencement speech this week at Brigham Young University. He told the gathered assembly of about 20,000 to savor second chances and be prepared for the unexpected throughout life. A small group of College Democrats and anti-war activists protested outside the venue where he spoke. Some students and faculty were upset with the choice of commencement speaker.
For Hoosiers, God is standard
Part of me thought, the minute I saw this Indiana-based story, “You know, I should have young master Daniel Pulliam write about this one, seeing as how he is our authority on all things Hoosier.”
I have no response to that
It has been a very busy week for me as we ended the spring term at the Washington Journalism Center. I have been away from my keyboard quite a bit.
My strange new respect for Nikki Giovanni
During Virginia Tech’s convocation to mourn 32 murder victims last week, Nikki Giovanni did more with just 258 words than anyone else achieved in the thousands of other words preceding hers (MSNBC video; MP3). It was an electric moment. Her speech came alive for me with the second paragraph: “We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.”
Wiccan pentacles make my head spin
A fair share of you loyal readers noticed the fair share of mistakes I made in my previous post on the Veterans Affairs Department’s decision to include the Wiccan pentacle on a list of approved religious symbols for gravestones. For those mistakes I apologize, particularly to New York Times reporter Neela Banerjee. I’ll use this as an opportunity to revisit the subject briefly, because we had many thoughtful comments that I thought I would highlight.
Return of the Know-Nothings?
Sometimes readers wonder why we look at mainstream media coverage of abortion. A few have suggested it’s not a religious issue. Yet many religion reporters routinely cover both the pro-life and pro-choice movements and cover abortion regularly. Well, the losing side of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act has been noticing religion. Readers have sent along various anti-Roman Catholic opinion pieces — most notably The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s cartoon and Rosie O’Donnell’s screed on The View. But we don’t care whether editorial writers or pundits have opinions on religious issues. That’s just what makes for an exciting editorial page. Although even Rosie O’Donnell’s crazy conspiracy theories don’t salvage The View, do they?
Mere candlestick holders in Moscow?
As an Orthodox Christian, I have to admit that my heart lurched a bit when I read the early wire stories about the funeral of Boris N. Yeltsin.
