Trust me, it's not the headline that I would have chosen for a conversation on this topic.
I am referring to that headline on the YouTube atop this here video feature that proclaims: "Religion Reporting Tends to Suck."
But, hey, in the streaming-video world of conservative Catholic commentary the hosts can get a little bit edgy sometimes.
I mean, after all, I talked the show's host out of, "Why Religion Reporting Sucks." Period. So there.
The talk-show host, in this case, is Patrick Coffin. I was on his show a few weeks ago and the URL is now up for anyone who wants to go there.
Who is Coffin? Lots of Catholics will know the answer to that one already. He is a media pro and public speaker who, in the past, was best known as the host of the "Catholic Answers Live" radio show, which was syndicated to nearly 400 stations and carried on Sirius Satellite Radio. Here's his farewell show in that project.
Coffin takes on quite a few topics in this programs, with some politics -- but just as much material about issues of religion and culture. Click here for his homepage.
So, during this particular video-blog we ranged all over the place, starting with my home office in the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tenn., (my political cartoon collection is visible in the background) and then a political hot-button topic -- Melania Trump's choice of footwear. I was more interested in this question: Would reporters be more interested if the supermodel First Lady wore a Madonna-esque kabbalah bracelet, rather than a rosary?
We talked about reluctant Donald Trump voters (I had not heard the term "Flight 93 Syndrome" applied to the 2016 election).
We discussed Hugh Hefner's Methodism and the repressed Catholicism of James Bond (as in the fictional spy).
We discovered that we both admire (that's too weak a word) the astonishing Robert Duvall performance in "Tender Mercies." As in:
There's more. A lot more.
So enjoy this video podcast. It's almost an hour long and, as I've been hinting, it goes all over the place. Here's that link again.
But I'd like to ask a question. Should GetReligion get involved in this kind of video-chat production? Would that be interviews with Godbeat pros? I don't think many newsrooms would welcome them taking part. How about talks with retired Godbeat reporters and other scribes whose works are of interest to people on the beat?
Just asking. Leave comments, if you wish, or write to us.