The Obsession with What Latinos Will Do This Election

This semester is brutal, but not so brutal, that I will be posting much more often over the next few weeks about the media’s near obsessive concern with how Latinos will vote, if they will sit out the mid-terms, etc.

Basically what the media wants to know “how pissed off are we?” that  Obama promised for 2 election cycles, to do something about immigration reform–and so far has done next to nothing.

This story is typical, not of voting per se, but of much of the religion media, many of whom don’t cover Latino/a religion well and especially do not cover Latino/a religion and politics well at all.

The article : http://borderzine.com/2014/10/for-hispanics-same-sex-marriage-another-sign-of-generational-culture-shift/  is not bad, its take on Catholicism is simplistic and it doesn’t mention the role of nones, evangelicals, etc.  It’s a quick piece meant to signal that at least some in the media think that what Latino/as think and do regarding same-sex marriage is rooted in their culture attachment to Catholicism, but as that fades, there may be a shift away from their conservative leanings. Again, not new, not particularly engaging analysis, its going to be one of many articles making much of the same argument and using many of the same stats. I expect to field a few media calls over the next few weeks about this same issue, I hope the nuances of religious identity and politics are something journalists are willing to spend some time exploring before their various deadlines.