Phoebe Snow, RIP

I was sad to see on Twitter the other day that Poly Styrene had died. I’d been a big fan of her music. Not much later, I read that Phoebe Snow had died. I’d kept up with news about Poly but realized that I hadn’t heard what was going on with Snow in a few years. I came across the CBS morning news video embedded here on Roger Ebert’s blog at the Sun-Times. It’s several years old but it was full of detail and I was sobbing by the end. If you’re at all a fan, you will be well served to check it out.


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A short stay on Mt. Athos

As you would expect, quite a few readers have sent emails requesting my opinion of that “60 Minutes” Easter piece the other night about the monks of Mt. Athos. Here’s one from Bob Koch that was delivered with a bit of wit:


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Is it ever OK to lie?

Back in March, I wrote a post about the ethics of undercover journalism. The hook was the NPR sting but the background was the vigorous debate among prolifers about stings of various Planned Parenthood offices. That debate centered around undercover reporters exposing employees willing to break rules and laws in order to help an underage sex ring. Some defended the morality of the undercover journalism while others said that lying can’t be defended, even if it does expose wrongdoing.


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Obama and the Easter kerfuffle

Last week I complained about the lack of coverage surrounding President Barack Obama’s confession of Christian faith at a pre-Easter Easter breakfast he hosted at the White House. I wrote, “remember how much the media covered those polls showing that huge chunks of people in all parties were confused about Obama’s religion? Isn’t that at least partly an indictment of how the media cover Obama’s own words about his faith? Even when he speaks very clearly about his own religious views, the news is covered but not highlighted, pushed to the margins or sent out on the wire without fanfare.”


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A wedding under the Church of England's watch

If you dare to wake up at 3 a.m. to watch the royal wedding on Friday, consider yourself a traitor. So argues Mark Oppenheimer at Slate, who encourages Americans to boycott the nuptials. This isn’t Mark’s usual religion column, but maybe you’ll enjoy the mini history lesson.


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Father McGreevey? Not so fast.

Many readers have sent along the New York Post story that uses unnamed sources to report that former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey is not being allowed to join the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. It’s written with about as much nuance as you’ve come to expect from the Post, but at least they’ve corrected a few errors that were in the original version of the story. Now, for instance, they have the correct name of the bishop of the Newark Diocese.


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Church and State ... and unions?

As the daughter of a public employee union member, I was inclined to look at this Associated Press story about religion and unions. Its headline in the USA Today version was “Churches wrestle with God’s stand on union rights.” I was hoping the story would discuss, well, churches wrestling with the issue — or with each other — but it was actually just a long, but shallow, look mostly at what a few mainline clergy have to say about collective bargaining battles:


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Wedding threatens to overshadow beatification

Friday would be a good day for anyone to admit to some secret scandal because you can pretty much predict that a significant portion of the media will be focused on the royal wedding. And then recovering Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is expected to watch her husband launch into space. Even if reporters break other news, it might be difficult to get people’s attentions.


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