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“Hey You! Anti-Semite!”: A Jewish Krewe does Mardi Gras

By Barbra Barnett

…bauchery, but the parade tradition is about more than drunken tourists and cheap plastic beads. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras parades began in 1857, with the Mistick Krewe of Comus, a secret society that wanted to emulate the Mardi Gras parades of Mobile, Alabama. From the start, Mardi Gras krewes were exclusive, elite clubs. Such organizations can be important networking opportunities in a small community like New Orleans, where people are used to doin…

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

…By all accounts—and especially Palin’s own account—the former governor of Alaska is a busy person these days, appearing regularly on Fox News, starring in reality television, and hop-scotching the lower 48 by private jet to make political endorsements and reeling in a reported $75,000 per speech. And all the while sustaining a vigorous home life: several children (I’m afraid I’ve lost count), including a son with Down Syndrome, a grandson, and a h…

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” How do you see that claim playing out today? Well, I do see a potential for fascism, but I don’t see it manifesting itself in the predictable way; as a takeover by an identifiably proto-fascist movement like the Patriots. Rather, what’s happened is that movement conservatives have enabled a whole panoply of fascist traits and set them into motion, creating what I call “para-fascism,” which is a…

Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…explanations of religion. Dennett is also the co-author (along with Linda LaScola) of the recently expanded and updated Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind, which documents the stories of preachers and rabbis who themselves came to see…the facts. Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola Pitchstone Publishing, May 2015 Caught in the Pulpit is a close cousin to The Clergy Project, an outreach effort to “…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…e leaving the church in droves, and the only thing saving it from total collapse is the influx of relatively liberal Hispanic immigrants, or that just about everybody hated Benedict XVI, and that’s why the cardinals elected Francis as his replacement. And it’s not even just that he slips this in this tendentious riff: “American liberalism has become more secular and anti-clerical, culminating in the Obama White House’s battles with Francis’ own ch…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…behemoth had offered up small, grande, and venti cups with (obviously secular) images of snowflakes and reindeer, 2015’s version has replaced this festive decoration with a minimalist, crimson blood-red design. Supposedly this has enraged a portion of the Christian right, who view this decision as a rejection of Christian values. This portion of conservative Christians – exactly how many remains vague in media coverage – apparently views the crim…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…ater, he was handed over to an Israeli employment agency to be a source of cheap labor in Eilat—the bottom tip of the country, where the Negev meets the Red Sea, and where Sudanese and Eritrean refugees do the service jobs that support the tourism industry. William’s people are no strangers to exploitation. He told me that much of Northern Sudan was built by the Southern Sudanese. To illustrate the system of forced labor practiced in the North, Wi…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: Missing Voices

By Daniel Ramirez

…re has been much hypocrisy in the immigration debate. All have sinned. The cheap salads and meats consumed at immigration policy conferences and stored in the homes of suburban America were placed there through the labor and sweat of “illegals” (so, too, were those suburban homes); the wine and bread served at communion tables arrived through “illegal” hands. After foisting “free trade” schemes on to the vulnerable Mexican countryside, we feign sh…

Of Zionism and Anti-Zionism: The Ultra Orthodox and the Settler Movement in Israel

By Shaul Magid

…support the Likud and not Labor because of his utter antipathy for the secularists (Labor) not because of any solidarity with Likud (he always supported territorial compromise). Thirty years later it appears the Haredim once again find themselves in a position to alter the political reality of a country they barely acknowledge. The Haredim have lived for generations in complicated diasporic circumstances, and have developed expert survival skills…

Four Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Islamic

By Zaid Hassan

…ory and direction will politics take in the Muslim world? What role will Islam play in Egyptian politics? The fact is that no one knows and this is an entirely unprecedented situation. It is entirely possible that this may well be a different type of Islamic Revolution and we must take that possibility seriously, like it or not. The interventions we are witnessing have fundamentally changed “the coordinates of the situation.” In other words, the p…