media criticism

Behold the woeful ignorance of GOP strategists.

On July 2, still glowing from the national media spotlight, Personhood USA issued a press release, “Personhood Leaders Suffer Violent Attacks From Pro-Abortion Terrorists Following Newsweek Feature,” with photos and description of shattered front-door glass, spray-painted coat hangers and “F— You” with a backward F across the front of their Denver-suburb house. The release said the Newsweek profile led to physical threats and the posting of the Masons’ home address in comments—and implicated The Daily Beast’s “notoriously liberal” readers and “pro-choice criminals” in the alleged vandalism.

The kosher Buddhism presented in “Buddhists’ Delight” is basically relaxation. Not so relaxed that we forget about our liberal political commitments, but relaxed enough that we don’t check our Blackberries when they buzz.

When it comes to the consumption of meat, our human hands have long been dirty. This isn’t a discouragement to stop striving for the good. But a moral proposal that promises to wash our filthy fingers spotlessly clean—in seconds flat—is suspect. Because they will still be dirty. The pressing moral question, of meat, becomes: given that human hands are obviously soiled, what can be done with these polluted tools?

“One man, one woman” is not biblical, by the way.

Will it matter in November?

I have no desire to set off fireworks, jump into a car and yell out the window while waving fists and flags. If I were in New York City, I would light a candle at the memorial and keep vigil. In San Francisco, I pray in a room lit only by a streetlamp, filled with sadness for those who have died in America, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and apprehension at the terrorism-related deaths to come. Our work as Americans and Muslims is far from done.

I was both saddened and gratified by Mark Oppenheimer’s follow-up piece on the authors of Open Embrace, a Protestant couple’s jointly-written book on why they chose not to use artificial contraception, and how it helped their marriage. Turns out, though, it didn’t work out so well for them. And I was sad to hear it. Truly.

In Sullivan v. Dreher, a misunderstanding of “Cheap Grace.”

It’s more complicated than you think.