Last weekend, I poked the Los Angeles Times because it’s lede on the Dr. James Dobson retirement story went a bit too far. You may recall that it said:
Connect the Alpha Male dots
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Emulating Newsweek
My husband and I went to see Milk, the film about the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, a few months ago. We enjoyed the movie, with some exceptions, and I predicted Sean Penn would win the Oscar for best actor — he was just that transcendentally good. And the supporting cast was also amazing.
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The culture of half-smokes
Nia-Malika Henderson had a great and illuminating piece in the Politico. Headlined “Blacks, whites hear Obama differently,” she looks at how President Barack Obama is able to speak in a manner that solidifies his support among blacks while at the same time not alienating non-blacks who speak in a different manner. Here’s how it begins:
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Newsweek plays worldview chess
Fareed Zakaria has written a thoughtful and creative cover essay for the latest Newsweek. He argues for making distinctions between Islamists who are terrorists and Islamists who wish for Sharia law in their own nations but have not supported terrorism.
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Left, right and sacramental center
Day after day, the press releases (left and right) and news reports flow into my inbox. They started late in the 2008 primary season and this digital tide tends to rise sharply in the hours just after One Of Those Appointments by the staff of President Barack Obama.
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Explaining facts and their significance
A few months ago we looked at media coverage of the promulgation of a Bush administration rule dealing with the legal right of health care professionals to practice according to their consciences. Health care professionals who work at organizations that receive funding from the federal government have been protected from being forced to perform abortions since the 1970s. This rule — which costs “only” $44 million to implement — is about making sure those protections are enforced since some medical organizations and societies have penalized or were planning to penalize medical professionals who objected to various abortion-related procedures.
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Got news? New "climate" for God & science
In this year of anniversaries and celebrations, dead scientists like Darwin and Galileo are getting their due. Live ones, like the atheist former Oxford don Richard Dawkins, attract media attention pretty much every time he opens his mouth or slings a godforsaken poster on a bus.
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Packaging of the soul
One part of Michael Kinsley’s legacy at Slate is an almost predictable fondness for contrarianism. This sometimes results in a bracing departure from pack journalism, such as Kinsley’s proposal that all parties in the debate about gay marriage would best be served by removing government from the discussion entirely.
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James Dobson, leader of what?
As you would imagine, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the Rocky Mountain News the past week, especially once the final word came down on the shutdown of the newspaper where I worked during most of the 1980s. I still have lots of friends out there and, of course, that is also the paper that the Divine Ms. MZ Hemingway grew up reading, as well. Lots of memories.
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