Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Celebrity confessionals are a vertiginous business. Not so much for the authors, who get to beat their breasts, name a few names, absolve themselves and move on, but for us, their market, consumers, fans or critics.
South African President Jacob Zuma knows how to work a political rally, as shown by the video atop this post — in which Zuma sings “Awuleth’ Umshini Wami” (“Bring Me My Machine Gun”). The Weekly Standard sounded a warning about Zuma earlier this month, and retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu has raised concerns about him for years.
It is, of course, one of the most famous lines in the classic final scene of Casablanca: “Round up the usual suspects.” You’ll want to cue the YouTube video at 4:40.
A few things about Pope Benedict’s extended viist to the Holy Land were predictable. One, every word the pontiff said would be parsed for meaning like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Two, every place he went would become highly symbolic. Three, some Palestinians and Israelis would be offended when the Pope either addressed or seemed to be slighting the concerns of the other party. And lastly, there would be little journalistic consensus, at least in the immediate aftermath, about the impact of either his words or his actions on the tinderbox called the Middle East.
A long time ago, in a radically different age, then White House scribe Michael Gerson told a circle of mainstream journalists that the crucial internal battles during the first Geroge W. Bush term usually boiled down to a clash between the “libertarians” and the “small-c catholics.”
It’s just three little paragraphs in today’s Independent under the headline “Women May Join Papal Swiss Guard,” but it contains so many mistakes, both when it comes to religion and when it comes to journalism.
Pastors sometimes rebuke congregations by comparing their subdued worship style to the more exuberant displays among sports fans. “The Chosen One,” a report this week on ESPN’s Outside the Lines, reinforces the notion that nobody worships quite like a person sitting in a sports venue. (For whatever reason, the ESPN video is no longer accessible. The video is on this page if ESPN ever brings it back by cultic demand.)
