Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Sometimes the biggest news stories are sitting right out there in the open where everyone can see them. But that’s the problem. There are trends that are so big that we can’t see them. This makes the big story hard to write because it is hard to pick one piece of it and get it into a newspaper.
Thomas B. Edsall wrote Thursday on The Huffington Post about how some Republicans are working to persuade others that IOKIYAR (for “It’s OK If You’re a Republican”) should not apply to Rudy Giuliani.
Like the Divine Ms. MZ, I spent much of the week mulling over that Media Matters report titled “Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media.” I received quite a bit of email suggesting that GetReligion was ignoring the report, which would be really strange since this blog has, ever since opening its cyberdoors, been arguing for more coverage of the activities and the beliefs of the Religious Left.
Hmmmmmm … A friend sent me a notice to this Faith & Law event here on Capitol Hill next Monday. I wonder if the organizers would let me attend, not to mention the Divine Ms. MZ and young master Daniel. The Rt. Rev. Doug LeBlanc is a bit out of range, but could come on Amtrak.
Earlier this week Media Matters for America issued a report that claims religious conservatives are overrepresented in the media. The liberal group is “dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Though they come from a different perspective, they share some similarities with the conservative Media Research Center. And they do an excellent job of exposing gaffes made by anyone who’s not progressive, including Bill O’Reilly and Pat Robertson.
Horror of all horrors, Hollywood is seeking to make more movies that appeal to Christians, and it might even try to market the films to those audiences. The latest is yet another sequel from Hollywood that has Steve Carell of The Office playing a political guy who quits his career so that he can build an ark (like Noah).
One of the rare subjects on which conservative and liberal Catholics agree is this one — the work of John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter is must reading about 99 percent of the time. This is especially true, in my opinion, when he tackles complex subjects that require blending an inside-the-Vatican perspective with some understanding of Catholicism in the swinging United States.
I hope that, somewhere in the newfangled Billy Graham Library (or museum) in Charlotte, that there is a picture or even a statue of a turtle atop a tall fence post.
I am the last person anyone should go to for fashion advice, but I do recognize the importance of fashion and what it says about a society. So with that in mind, I found the recent spate of stories on the shifting mindset of women in two major Middle Eastern countries toward fashion a fascinating look inside the countries’ culture.
