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This is the kind of brief “news” story that makes me (a) laugh out loud and then (b) once I have laughed out loud, a wave of depression crashes in and I am tempted to rethink my opposition to the death penalty.
An Orthodox priest friend of mine offered an interesting observation, in response to the Harvard Divinity School’s pseudo-academic panel discussion about Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” He writes:
A friend of this blog, columnist Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News, has quietly raised an important issue over at the paper’s editorial page blog.
It’s good to see that the folks at the Harvard Divinity School know how to stage a media event that offers nuance and balance when dissecting one of the most controversial news stories of the season — the box-office smash “The Passion of the Christ.” Here are some of the viewpoints included in the press release by Beth Potier of the Harvard News Office:
We will not be observing April Fool’s Day here at GetReligion, in large part because the world already has plenty of religion news stories that verge on satire. Who needs to make this stuff up? Nevertheless, the people at Beliefnet plunged in there anyway, raising St. Oprah of the Mall of America to the status of Goddess and part of the newly formed Quadhead, which replaces the Trinity. Negotiators for the various faith groups involved also considered naming this innovation “the Quartet” or the “Quadrangel.”
The political and journalistic implications of that article by Jack Beatty are somewhat stunning, if you stop and think about it.
This is one of those days when I had a column to write and classes to teach (and tonight is a massive pre-Holy Week choir practice). So I am following the link to Air America a bit, but not much.
The God-beat professionals at www.religionwriters.com have a biweekly listserv feature called ReligionLink that floats story ideas and resources for reporters who are looking for feature stories that spin off current events in the news.
When the Kobe Bryant sex scandal first hit the headlines, one of the first things that NBA insiders began discussing was its impact on his multi-million-dollar endorsement contracts. But the discussions had a twist. While some worried that a sexual-assault rap might hurt him, others decided that this might actually boost his stock “on the street,” in the urban marketplace of hip-hop, macho credibility.
