Jennifer’s Body and Why I Like Buffy’s Body Better
Has a hotly anticipated new horror film about a murderous cheerleader subverted the mythos of woman as the source of evil or just the opposite?
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This Just In: College Will Make You an Atheist
A recent study is making headlines with the finding that certain college majors, most notably those in the humanities and social sciences, are likely to turn students into godless nihilists. Why is this such a big deal?
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Take It Off, Or We’ll Make You: On Sarkozy’s Proposed Burqa Ban
When you step out in clothing that boldly states your womanhood, you are a free woman. You are no longer a slave to old rules and notions. Modernity is inherently free.
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V-Day: An Arrow in the Heart
The original St. Valentinus (one of at least seven with the same name, so we can’t be too sure!) was arrested for marrying Roman Christian couples. His bloody martyrdom was particularly brutal. Love and loss, romance and violence. They’ve always gone together.
Read MoreRD News Round-Up: October 27, 2008
Ghouls, ghosts, goblins and Halloween Hell Houses; Traditional Values Coalition’s shameless Video Voter Guide; More on Sarah Palin’s religious affiliations; Hagee hears a Who-mageddon; No candy, no soda, no birth control!
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Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead
This Halloween, apart from your garden-variety ghouls, skeletons, monsters, witches, vampires and zombies, Americans will be visited by the ghosts of past presidents, the spirits of dead soldiers, and by the souls of those who endured slavery. It is a season of reckoning, both social and political. The election, on the other hand, is about life, today, now. Or is it?
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Election Day: Hope, Heartbreak, Naiveté, and Studs Terkel
We may not have had a big map, or red and blue markers, or a flashing digital electoral vote count, but some of our favorite writers agreed to share a few words on this big day.
Read MoreRDNews: Oct 20, 2008
Religious Right hammers Obama on abortion; 3 states, 3 anti-abortion initiatives; An Obama Supreme Court through the eyes of a conservative activist; Early marketing of the War on Christmas.
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True Blood: When Marketing Goes For the Jugular
An HBO show about vampires in the rural South depends on “viral marketing” for its buzz. But some people resent the conflation of fact and fiction that this kind of advertising entails. And what of the new religious movement known as the Vampire Community?
Read MoreAn Immigrant’s Tale: The Pull of the Homeland
How ironic, we immigrants sigh to ourselves, that we can turn on the tap to clean water at whatever temperature we like, but we can’t put up a poster of the Holy Mosque in our cubicle.
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