"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." — Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail Our paper, like most others, focused on the symbolic and the trivial — literally trivial — in covering the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The holiday seems to be all about King's "dream" — or about the part of that vision that he described in the final paragraphs of... Read more
When a long string of days passes without a post appearing over on the Fafblog, they can always explain their prolonged absences by saying that they've been stuck up a tree, defending their stockpiles of ham from an attack by zombie robot gorillas an Dick Cheney an zombie robot Dick Cheney an such. Nothing quite like that happened here during the past week. At least not the Dick Cheney part, anyway. My stockpiles of ham are still safe. I did... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 188-199 Meet Loretta. The only parishioner left behind at New Hope Village Church: "Hello," an older woman said from behind Rayford and Chloe. She stood in the doorway of the church offices sunken-eyed and disheveled, as if she'd come through a war. After pleasantries she retreated to a desk in the outer office. Like most of the people in this story, Loretta has lost everything. But unlike most of the people in this story, Loretta seems to... Read more
"When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire" Ani DiFranco, "Amazing Grace" Stars, "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" The Frogs, "Not That Kind of Girl" Susan Tedeschi, "It Hurt So Bad" Elvis Costello, "I Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down)" Don McCloskey, "Funk University" Norah Jones, "Lone Star" The Pixies, "Here Comes Your Man" Kasey Chambers, "We're All Gonna Die Someday" Blur, "Song 2" Read more
I've often theorized here that homosexuality gets singled out for such fervent condemnation by many religious conservatives because it's the safest target. Condemning anything as a sin is a dangerous business. You get up on a soapbox and start railing against envy, sloth, gluttony, greed, wrath, lust or pride and eventually people will begin to realize that you're very well acquainted with your subject matter. The only safe "sin" to preach against is one you can be sure you'll never... Read more
Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher offers a good summary of today's press debacle: "Media Report Miracle Mine Rescue — Then Carry the Tragic Truth." Mitchell points to this "Beyond the Headlines" discussion at Poynter, in which Scott Libin writes this: This case reminds us of a lesson we learned, at least in part, from Hurricane Katrina: Even when plausibly reliably sources such as officials pass along information, journalists should press for key details — respectfully and courteously, but assertively. Mr.... Read more
Before the horrifying surprise of that 2:57 a.m. news alert — the one announcing that we, and all those poor family members had been grievously misinformed — I was talking with the late guy on our copy desk about miracles. The word miracle appeared in quotes in our headline — we used it only because it was used by people at the scene: "Relieved families celebrate 'miracle' after men spent 41 hours underground." Technically, the word has several definitions, one... Read more
So McDonald's now has Chronicles of Narnia Happy Meals. Each comes with one of several plastic Narnia figurines — Tumnus, Lucy, Edmund. Aslan. They're selling plastic Aslans at McDonald's. Plastic Aslans. At McDonald's. … I … … Plastic Aslans at McDonald's. The crucifixion-nail pendants were pretty awful, but at least Mel had the decency not to license Happy Meals. Related: Who buys this stuff? Read more
By now I'm sure you've heard this story. The more important matter, of course, is the story itself — the loss of 12 lives and the suffering of 12 families. But I thought I'd share a glimpse of the story behind the story, and how it unfolded in the newsroom where I work. Deadlines at our paper were already a bit screwy last night due to the triple overtime Orange Bowl, but in addition to scrambling to get reports of... Read more
Maybe Joe Loconte just can't read. I'm just trying to figure out why Loconte keeps insisting that Jim Wallis has been silent on topics he's written extensively about. Or why Loconte keeps employing out-of-context quotations to imply that Wallis has said things he's never said. Maybe Loconte's not really a dishonest, malicious hack. Maybe he just can't read and he doesn't realize he's offering a twisted misrepresentation. Yesterday, Loconte recycled yet another variation of his caricatured attack on Wallis, the... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In