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Late last night, NPR fired senior news analyst Juan Williams. On Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” where he also contributes, there was a discussion about something that had happened on “The View” the previous week. Apparently Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar flipped out when guest O’Reilly said that “Muslims” had perpetrated the terrorist attacks on 9/11. They walked off the set in disgust.
As you would imagine, the whole Rand Paul affair is a pretty big deal at the Louisville Courier-Journal. In fact, the newspaper’s lengthy profile of the candidate — paralleling a Jack Conway profile of similar length — began like this:
How’s this for a blast from the past? Nearly 20 years after Anita Hill’s sexual harassment claims against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas riveted the nation, the “he said, she said” drama has exploded back into the headlines.
So this past weekend former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was giving a speech at a Tea Party event and told the crowd that they couldn’t “party like it’s 1773″ until enough conservatives were elected to Congress to make a difference. The reference to the Boston Tea Party was obvious enough to the Los Angeles Times that they didn’t bother explaining its significance to readers.
When news broke on Monday about the death of a prominent pro-life activist, I expected to read about it in the conservative and pro-life press. But I wasn’t so sure what to expect in terms of the mainstream media.
The headline on the recent Time cover story tried to set an epic tone, summing up a story that was going to courageously explore an election season that has intimidated politicians (mostly on one side of the political aisle) and, thus, has intimidated journalists.
As your GetReligionistas have noted many times, it’s pretty obvious that many people — including more than a few mainstream reporters — are confused about the meaning of the word “evangelical.” Heck, I’m not sure that I know what that word means anymore and I used to be one. The Rev. Billy Graham once told me that he wasn’t sure how to define “evangelical.” Honest.
A columnist at the Wall Street Journal used to regularly feature snippets from sports columnists who fancied themselves political pundits. You’d be expecting a nice piece on the last golf tournament but you’d instead get some tirade about the Iraq War or how awful President Bush is.
All together now, let’s say the words of wisdom that I learned as a Baylor University undergraduate: No non-NoZe knows the no-nonsense, non-NoZe news that the NoZe knows.
