Religion Dispatches
…balanced” approach on discussing the “controversial” historian Barton. The New York Times followed the usual tack in its story from May, noting that “many historians call his research flawed, but Mr. Barton’s influence appears to be greater than ever,” and adding that “liberal organizations” were raising the alarm “over what they say are Barton’s dangerous distortions.” In short, Barton’s history came down to some version of the usual liberal-cons…
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…ew blog posts, op-eds, protests, or commentary from an observer in upstate New York. A recent blog post by Chuck Norris on the American Family Association’s Web site summarizes what many evangelical commentators think about the president’s recent foray into all that is Park51. “Obama is not just rebooting America’s image in the Muslim world. He’s deepening and expanding Islamic belief, practice, culture around the world, like a Muslim missionary.”…
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…, just five months later, the tables have turned. Every new edition of the New York Times, it seems, carries fresh disclosures about priestly pedophilia in Ireland, Germany, and (most appallingly) at a Catholic school for the deaf in Wisconsin. Sadly enough, priestly pedophilia is old news by now. What’s new, in the opening of court documents that the Vatican sought desperately to suppress, is that the Catholic hierarchy stubbornly refused to deal…
Read More…d up a nice boost among progressives from the lengthy cover article in the New York Times Magazine, a good piece of reporting by Gideon Lewis-Krauss suggesting that HRC was absorbing into her rhetoric and into her forward planning some serious critique of the corporate state from the Roosevelt Institute and from the likes of Joe Stiglitz: a critique that cuts far deeper than Bernie’s and that is linked to very specific policy proposals. So yes, sh…
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…teful and wasteful spending, I was pleased to see how absolutely disgusted New Yorkers were, with some even buying counter ads. New Yorkers, of all (or no) faiths, made it clear that they would not tolerate these sentiments. Yet, instead of listening to people in New York, Geller has decided that she wants to further insult our little village of five boroughs running an ad showing a plane smashing into the Twin Towers. No New Yorker would use this…
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…is day. Nazi influence in the US culminated with a huge march and rally in New York City in 1939. Thousands gathered in Madison Square Garden to listen to blatantly fascist speeches under the banners of George Washington adorned with swastikas. In 1940, FDR gave a fresh directive to hunt down Nazis. The FBI built a secret spy headquarters inside the 30 Rock building to spy on Nazi activities worldwide, but especially in South America where they co…
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…always thought of the paper, for short, anyway, much like people call The New York Times just “The Times.” But then I started to think about it, and I realized that for me, the word “Jewish” has started to come with unspoken assumptions; who is “Jewish” enough becomes aligned with who is “pro-Israel” enough. The Forward reports on Israel, of course, but it seems to manage to do so in a way that commands respect. And that is no easy maneuver in th…
Read MoreIt’s not exactly new news—but the New York Times has an eye-popping update on abusive labor practices at a Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant. In case you missed it—in May, federal immigration officials raided the nation’s largest kosher plant, Agriprocessors, Inc. in Postville, which had employed almost 400 illegal immigrants, almost two dozen of whom were also under-age. The Times’ Sunday story offers recently uncovered details about…
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…ntators ignore at their peril. (Think of all the relevant news stories the New York Times has not covered—say the early rise of the religious right—just because somewhere back there the Times’ owners decided that religion wasn’t relevant any longer!) The fact that I worked on this book for two years flat out for 15-plus hours a day, and took it through 28 full drafts shows that (besides being nuts), I certainly have done my utmost such as it is to…
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…our nation’s great history.” “Our nation’s great history.” That statement might sound ironic coming from a President and supporters who have passionately resisted calls to remove Confederate statues and monuments (see below)―evidence that our nation’s history is, in fact, not so great. But that’s actually the point. Source: Public Discourse and Ethics Survey (August 2020) Trump and his supporters don’t evaluate our nation’s greatness in light of…
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