Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
As tmatt reminded us the other day, this summer is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, the music festival. The combination of music, drugs and fellowship can’t be repeated — or can it? Surfing the Pennsylvania media yesterday, I came across this classic from the Post-gazette.com, a reminder that for some of us, Woodstock never ended.
Let’s make one thing clear: I am a smidgen too young to be into this whole, “Hey man, did you make it to Woodstock or not?” thing that’s going on in the mainstream media right now. My priest, however, is another matter, since he was there and I still think he looks like Jerry Garcia.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic does a stellar job of profiling Quentin Tarantino, even while criticizing the darker impulses of his latest film, Inglourious Basterds.
Josh Levin, senior editor of Slate, wrote an epic series this week on the theme “The End of America.” The series begins here, and rolls on in eight segments and about 23,000 words. That’s not counting Slate’s embedded notes and thousands more words in The Fray. Slate also offered discussions on Facebook and Twitter, so the most obsessive readers easily could have devoted an entire week to debating Levin’s reporting.
Maybe the most unnecessarily talked about story of the past few days, particularly in that corner of the world I dwell in known as the Jewish twitterverse, has been Madonna’s first-person piece for Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Yediot Achronot. In “I Found an Answer,” the Material Girl offered a testimonial about how she found God, got religion and awakened her spiritual soul through Kabbalah.
I grew up riding BMX and that meant spending a few days each summer watching the X Games. Once when the X Games were in San Diego County, I crashed grinding a handrail at a high school near the competition, fractured my skull and had to be medevacced — but that’s a story for another day.
If you thought R&B artist Chris Brown’s career would be hurt by viciously beating his girlfriend Rihanna and threatening to kill her, you would be wrong. His song “Forever” is one of the top 10 iTune downloads after being featured in the YouTube video that’s taking the world by storm. Now, when I think of everlasting love and romance, I can’t say I think of Chris Brown. Or autotune. But one young couple did just that — sending their bridal party that is seemingly larger than their guest list joyfully down the aisle of a church dancing to that hit for the ages.
Why is it that when it comes to celebrities, journalistic standards seem to fly straight out the window?
I already expressed my dismay of the journalistic use of the word “icon” to refer to people who are merely super-famous. Some people agreed with me and others thought that Jackson deserved to be described as such. Still others thought that only old fuddy-duddies such as myself care about preserving original definitions.
