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The big story in Friday’s Washington Post was headlined “God, Country and McCain.” The article was less on those three subjects and more an attempt to demonstrate the current mindset of young conservative evangelical Republicans on the eve of what could be for many of them their first electoral defeat as active voters.
Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times is a columnist and, thus, tends to produce the kinds of opinion-driven pieces that we don’t deal with a lot here at GetReligion. However, we will mention op-ed pieces and work in advocacy journals (you know, like Newsweek) when we think the topic will be of interest to journalists who cover the religion beat.
Religion reporter Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette produced a compelling and original article on the view evangelical women have on Palin as both a role model and a pulverizer of long-standing stereotypes. Rodgers mixes hard data from sources such as polls with softer anecdotes from a wide variety of perspectives that paint a narrative reflecting many of the discussions going on within the broad area of Christian evangelicalism.
Margaret Talbot, writing in the latest New Yorker, has a fascinating piece about evangelical teenagers’ sexual attitudes and practices. It begins by noting that the news of and reaction to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy shocked liberals. They expected evangelical voters to freak out over the news rather than be unfazed by it:
I know that I have said this before, but every time that I head out to Southern California, I pick up the Los Angeles Times and I’m reminded of how much news there is in the dead-tree-pulp edition, compared with what I usually see reading the same newspaper online. I always see extra religion stories and religion-haunted stories on paper that I don’t see in the digital world. Why is that?
Your GetReligionistas have been jumping all over the Los Angeles Times, in recent months, because of its cheerleader reporting on issues linked to gay rights and gay rites.
It was one of those ugly newspaper stories that makes you read and read until it becomes hard to turn away — kind of like seeing a car wreck happen in slow motion.
I think part of the requirement of being a libertarian is that you have to be very suspect of all politicians. Let me make this personal. I once deemed it safer to walk home alone after midnight in my not-the-safest neighborhood rather than accept a ride from one of the senators I was hanging out with. I'm always surprised that people place their hopes and dreams in the political class considering how completely corrupt and immoral the group is. I'm sure there are exceptions, but how do you know which ones are the exception, you know?
All of which is to say, we have another sex scandal on our hands! And in a delicious twist, it involves the congressman who was elected to replace Mark Foley after he was embroiled in that famous 2006 sex scandal linked to Congressional pages and IM software (not in that order).
This new scandal hasn't gotten a lot of media coverage but ABC News has had some coverage. In a blog post that featured the image depicted above, the story mentioned lots of juicy details:
I have been surprised, quite frankly, that the annual “Respect Life” emphasis in Catholic churches has not received more coverage in the mainstream press this year.
