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Better yet, say something nutty. And it would be particularly helpful if the nutty thing you said fed into all kinds of stereotypes about intolerant, uneducated hicks who live in the sticks.
The other day, President Obama did a campaign event where he called out Republicans for reaffirming the country’s motto (“In God We Trust”) instead of voting on a portion of his latest legislative proposal. He claimed that “God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work.â
Just yesterday, I praised a member of the Washington Post team for weaving valid religious content into the obituary of a former Washington, D.C., police official whose life led him from trailblazing work as an advocate of racial equality into a remarkable final act as a Catholic monk and priest. The story showed unusual grace in portraying the themes that were woven through the life of the man who died as Father James Murray.
Yesterday we looked at the Washington Post‘s “fact check” about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s support of eugenics. In that fact check, Sanger’s distasteful views were contextualized and she was put forth as a “racial pioneer.” What’s more, the person who mentioned her racism was labeled not just a liar but the worst kind of liar.
Get ready GetReligion readers for a new round of righteous indignation, moral cowardice and sloppy reporting about Islam. There will be a cartoon of Mohammad — quelle horreur — on the cover of the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. The magazine is set for distribution on newsstands today, 2 Nov 2011.
“Stop the presses!” I joked three months ago when I critiqued a USA Today story on the years-old practice of churches renting public school facilities on Sundays.
On Sunday, my congregation celebrated the Reformation rather gloriously. As one might expect for the day one commemorates the good news of the salvation of all sinners by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone, our pastor preached an amazing sermon. The organist pulled out all the stops. We even did the German Mass, which includes many, many hymns. But we didn’t sing “Salvation Unto Us Has Come.” And this disappointed me.
Yesterday I mentioned that I had been thinking about how we cover stories about suspected terrorism. A couple of weeks ago, a reader submitted a story about a disrupted flight that seemed to have a bit of a ghost. I thought I’d wait for more details to come out and revisit it. Here’s the original story from the Amarillo Globe-News:
I was writing a post about how we cover suspected or actual terrorism (which I’ll save for tomorrow) when word came that a gunman fired shots at the United States Embassy in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. As snippets of news came out about this on Twitter, I saw a picture of the gunman (seen here) and it appeared, because the picture wasn’t of great quality, that the man was wearing shorts. That seemed odd attire for a gunman in October. Sarah Schlesinger, a research fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute, explained:
