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This was the year when the media took a keen interest in what they termed “Islamophobia.” This was all the craze for a while, with Time running a cover story headlined “Is America Islamophobic?” The actual text of the story acknowledged no evidence to substantiate the charge, but had paragraphs like this:
Jim Wallis has been calling the religious right dead for a while now. I can’t imagine his surprise when he was included in Newsweek‘s new list on “faces of the Christian right.” It is as if the editors at Newsweek are saying, “Ha ha, you thought it was dead, but you’re actually the leader of it — joke’s on you!”
So, set the way-back machine for about a year ago and remember the early coverage of this movement. The key was that the tea party core, the top leaders, were all about economics, not social issues. Their movement represented a chance for the Religious Right era to come to an end in God’s Own Party, with the drive for theocracy being crushed under a kind of brash grassroots Libertarian assault. The goal was to blend pickup-truck populists with the kind of rich country-club Republicans who went hunting with Dick Cheney.
Here’s the New York Times‘ latest piece about sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in Europe. It’s brief but unbelievably sad. Here’s the lede:
During the press events for the Lord of the Rings movies, Peter Jackson said one wise thing over and over when talking about the legacy of writer J.R.R. Tolkien. In a session in which I was present, he put it this way:
Late last month, the Associated Press‘ Rachel Zoll had a really interesting and important story about Muslim adoption. Or, rather, a story about how Islam, while encouraging care for orphans, forbids adoption. Almost immediately we heard from readers — some of them adoptive parents, some of them Muslim or having Muslim family members. They said that they enjoyed what the story said but were very surprised about something very important that was missing from the story.
One of my childhood heroes — right up there with “Little House” author Laura Ingalls Wilder, Celtic great Bill Russell and jazz pianist Dave Brubeck — was cartoonist Charles M. Schultz. I still cannot believe that Schultz died (February 12, 2000) only hours before his poignant farewell to his readers ran in American newspapers.
If you’re looking for reflections on God and religion in mainstream news coverage of Elizabeth Edwards’ death, the hunt may take a while.
