Religion Dispatches
…r her Israel trip, as it has done for other presidential hopefuls, instead booking it through a Christian tour agency. He thinks, perhaps, that Palin is miffed that he and other RJC board members have been critical of her, but that she’s unwise to rebuff them because they could be so helpful to her. But this is characteristically Palin behavior — with or without the criticism. She is, for example, the only GOP aspirant who has never spoken at the…
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…f a macho Christian culture warrior by writing his op-eds and speeches and booking him for media appearances. Local investigative journalism has blown the lid off of his vanity project—which, as it happens, is directly connected to Project 2025. Walters had the state contract with Vought Strategies for his public relations campaign. The president of Vought Strategies (whose name bears an eerie resemblance to the evil corporation in the popular TV…
Read More…tion program that works with LGBT youth. The camp organization refused the booking because it said WayOut promotes homosexual activity, which counters its understanding of the Bible. The appeals court upheld a 2010 finding of discrimination from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. According to Australia’s ABC, “The Court of Appeals has found there was no legal error in the tribunal’s decision and exemptions to preserve religious free…
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…n. That said, there’s never any getting around the blunt reality of social class, and I believe Andersen deserves credit for showing how an ever-more-powerful overclass has shaped the political economy we all inhabit. If we’re lucky, we will move past the ever-more-sterile “debate” and get on with the business of uniting to overthrow an oppressive and highly racialized U.S. hypercapitalism. Because if we don’t—if we continue to spend energy in a p…
Read More…. That means you have to know where your flight is going. As it happens my flight will enter Saudi Arabia from a non-Muslim majority country, France, so will land in Jeddah, the transitional port. However, since my next stop is Makkah, and Jeddah is closer to it than any of the five miqat, then technically I have to make my intention and take on the ihram before I leave the U.S. (or in France, or mid-air). Everybody says it is great to clean up ag…
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…teness”—a “psychological wage,” as W. E. B. Du Bois called it that working class whites earn by construing their interests in racial rather than class terms, by attributing their economic insecurity to black people rather than to white elites and to the system they made. This same misdirected resentment—misperceiving black people as responsible for a set of socio-economic circumstances that were created by white elites (politicians, bankers, and c…
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…c accommodation portion of non-discrimination laws regulate the conduct of businesses, and broadly insist that once a business opens its doors to the public, that business must provide whatever goods it offers without regard to the individual purchasing those goods. “Most businesses aren’t doing a deep inquiry [of their customers] in a manner that suggests that they’re thinking of their product, and the sale of their product, as endorsing those wh…
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…ategy was to hopefully attract what editor Brian McGrory described as “big-ticket, Catholic-based advertisers.” But those advertisers did not materialize. And while the site attracted a good-sized readership, without ad clicks it wasn’t generating cash for the Globe, which pulled the plug and gave Allen control of the site, while laying off O’Loughlin and Eagan in the process (editor Theresa Hanafin was reassigned to another desk at the Globe). Al…
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…nstitutions and spiritual movements need money. I’ve paid for High Holiday tickets, passed the plate at church, and dropped bills into the basket at yoga class. But Osho’s opacity and its denial of the obvious (robes and shampoos, wine and brownies, books and videos were all moneymakers) bothered me. My fuming was worthless. Orientation still started 45 minutes late. My students and I, packed into a classroom with 20 other guests, were led through…
Read More…tions ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosperity. In short, thank the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, for a big order signed on the occasion of President Obama’s visit (230 planes at $21.7 billion!). And thank one of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, Emirates from Dubai, for the other (50 jets at $18 billion). So here’s to cooperation of the civilizations. Here’s to throwing facts in the face of faux analysis. While Victoria Jackso…
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