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Earlier this week we saw two sad stories involving political figures. It turned out that the Democratic nominee to be the next Connecticut Senator, Richard Blumenthal, had lied (or “misplaced” his words, as he put it) about whether he’d served in Vietnam. And a Republican Congressman from Indiana, Rep. Mark Souder, resigned upon revelation of an affair he’d had with a staffer.
Pretty much the moment Elena Kagan was nominated by President Obama to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the questions started swirling. Few online seemed all that concerned with her politics or her understanding of constitutional law. “Elena Kagan husband” became a major Google trend, and it seemed a lot of people just wanted to know why Kagan, at the age of 50, was still single.
We are going to play a little numbers game for a minute, so please hang in there with me. The following is totally fiction, so please do not get hung up on the details.
As you would expect, the Baltimore Sun is in full celebration mode when it comes to the consecration of the Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool of Annapolis as a new assistant bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. This makes sense for all kinds of reasons, in terms of the newspaper’s views of the changes that must be made to help build a better and more enlightened world.
Here at GetReligion, we write about reporters and their journalism. But you wouldn’t have stories without story subjects. And I always find it interesting when subjects discuss what it was like to be written about in an article.
As reporters dig into Elena Kagan’s sparse record, they’ll look at any and every angle that might help us know how she might rule on Supreme Court cases.
Gay issues are some of the most difficult to write about. People have such strongly held feelings about sexual orientation and behavior. Emotions tend to run roughshod over reasonable discussion.
Earlier this week, the New York Times ran a story about how the Vatican handled abuse claims against the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the worldwide order Legionnaires of Christ. The story, which focuses on Vatican politics, hasn’t gotten as much play as the previous Times story attempting to link Pope Benedict XVI to an abuse case in Wisconsin. But this story also focuses on then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s role in handling the many claims against Father Maciel.
