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An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

McCain’s VP Courts Conservative Evangelicals

By Kathryn Joyce

…es not consider herself a Pentecostal, but attends “different churches” in Alaska. Among them is the nondenominational evangelical church, Juneau Christian Center. The campaign hesitated to identify her as Pentecostal, perhaps envisioning the easy target that a charismatic church attendee would make (cue the Borat clips). Nevertheless, Palin is still closely affiliated with the denomination, appearing as the special banquet guest of the 2008 Alask…

What Does a Moral Economy Look Like for the 99 Percent?

By Jonathan Rosenblum

…and in the community, coaxing them to take on an improbable battle against Alaska Airlines, the Port of Seattle, and the airport corporate establishment. The April rally was our first big campaign test. Would people turn out? They did–850 of them. And the boisterous march, the chants in different languages, the flags of many nations, and the auspicious April sunshine all boosted the community’s confidence and set us on a course to make history. Is…

Fighting Demons, Raising the Dead, Taking Over the World

By Bruce Wilson

…ly of God pastor in 2000. In August 2005, Bishop Thomas Muthee returned to Alaska and gave a weeklong sermon series at the Wasilla Assembly of God. The August 16, 2005 ceremony at the church was made notorious when footage of it surfaced during the 2008 presidential election. In it, congregants watch as Thomas Muthee blesses Sarah Palin against “every spirit of witchcraft.” Several days later after that 2005 ceremony, Palin launched her campaign f…

A Palin Pastor Primer

By Esther Kaplan

…or domestic partners, but once governor did not block implementation of an Alaska Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to provide the same benefits to same-sex partners as to heterosexual couples. Nor, as Gay City News point out, has she tried yet to advance legislation forcing the teaching of creationism in schools or eliminating standard sex ed in favor of abstinence-only. Then again, she’s only been in office for 20 months. Most troublin…

Communicators for Christ: How Homeschool Debate Leagues Shaped the Rising Stars of the Christian Right

By R.L. Stollar

…Eastman’s rhetoric, which has twice resulted in him being censured by the Alaska State House (first by Democrats in 2017 and most recently by his own fellow Republicans in 2023), has been labeled “incendiary” by national news—an accurate characterization of his Trumpian arguments that native Alaskan women have abortions to obtain “a free trip to the city,” that Joe Biden is like Adolf Hitler, and that fatal child abuse is “actually a benefit to s…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…on the tension caused when Orthodox Jewish men request same-sex seating on airlines for religious reasons generated over 3,000 reader responses. The scenario as described in the story generally unfolds something like this: the individual reaches his assigned seat and finds that the seat next to him is occupied by a woman. He shifts uncomfortably in the aisle until the flight attendant or an alert passenger recognizes what’s going on and asks the w…

The New Christianity: What the Mainstream Media Has Missed

By Bill Berkowitz

…P’s presidential candidate) chooses a relatively obscure political figure, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as his running mate. When a CNN reporter asked a GOP campaign spokesperson about Palin’s religious beliefs, she would only say that “the Republican vice presidential candidate has ‘deep religious convictions.’” Wilson began looking into Palin’s religious background. What he found was far more interesting than the fairly run-of-the-mill Christian…

Sarah Palin: Bus Tour of Destruction

By Anthea Butler

…lidifying a new hard right religious base, and making enough money to turn Alaska into the New Jerusalem. I’m only jesting about one of these pronouncements; but the fact is, Palin isn’t about rebuilding. She’s about destruction. There is a reason she was called “rogue.” Leave it to Saturday Night Live to once again capture the essence of Sarah Palin. In a deft mashup of the film 2012 and campaign clips, the destruction that ensues from the electi…

“The Camp Is a Ceremony”: A Report From Standing Rock

By Marion Grau

…t simply a story of settlers versus natives. When I did research on oil in Alaska, there were some Natives who were profiting from oil and gas leases, and others, specifically the Gwich’in, who had chosen to remain outside of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and not sell their future for a mess of oil pottage. I spoke to a water protector and he indicated that the line between those for and against the pipeline runs between family and triba…