Why and How to Get a Balanced News/opinion-media Diet
February 28, 2022
This is your friendly periodic reminder that* we all need to consume a balanced diet of journalism including both** liberal and conservative news/opinion sources.
Read the rest of this entry »To Make Black Americans Feel Adequately Listened to, and Heal our Nation’s Racial Divide, All You Have to Do Is…
August 3, 2020
The (black) host of NPR’s “It’s Been a Minute” and his (black) guest, who do not think they are being ironic or asking too much:
SANDERS: There is also an entire chapter on navigating an interracial friendship. And I’ve really enjoyed it. And y’all quote a poem that says, quote, “the first thing you do is forget that I’m Black. Second, you must never forget that I’m Black.” And this was advice on a white person trying to be a Black person’s friend. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Unpack that for me because it’s a word.
SOW: Whew.
(Emphasis added.)
Oh, is that all?
Frederick Douglass’s lengthy 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” is blistering in its critique of American immorality and hypocrisy on the issue of slavery:
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? . . .
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day 2020
May 20, 2020
The Mohammed drawing will continue until it’s safe to draw Mohammed.
For the awesome Bosch Fawstin, pretty much every day is Draw Mohammed Day.
Ex-Muslims of North America reprise some of the classics.
Happy Easter!
April 12, 2020
Happy Feast of St. Stephen!
December 26, 2019
As Seen In the classic Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas”:
The children’s cartoon Phineas and Ferb is surprisingly traditional (and educational!) on the subject:
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
January 21, 2019
In the tradition of Christian martyrs, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., lost his life but won the war. In the years after his assassination, his call for America to live up to her founding principles, his vision of all people treating all people as fellow human beings regardless of color, became the national consensus.
A fascinating alternative perspective from the left, from an Alison Willmore, at Buzz Feed:
Why I’ve Had Trouble Buying Hollywood’s Version of Girl Power
I get the desire to take comfort in cheerful stories of women’s triumph, from Ocean’s 8 to On the Basis of Sex. But in 2018, I haven’t found them very comforting.
When President Obama and the founding editor of National Review Online agree on something, it might be true.
. . . Obama is right . . . . Slavery and Jim Crow were indisputably manifestations of identity politics. America’s system of legalized racism was just another form of aristocracy under a different name. And as such, it was a violation of the best ideas of the Founding. Perhaps the single most radical thing about the American Revolution was the decision to reject all forms of hereditary nobility.
It took longer — far too much longer — to recognize the rights and dignity of all Americans, but the idea that you should take people as you find them, and judge them not as a member of a group but as individuals, remains perhaps the greatest part of the American creed, regardless of whether you’re a liberal or a conservative.
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 21, 2018
I turned on the radio to find that today even NPR was singing about Jesus—even during Terry Gross’s Fresh Air!
How appropriate, for this week of Thanksgiving, that even NPR should sing praise to God. We may not always remember it, but Thanksgiving is supposed to be all about God, about giving Him our thanks and even our service:
Racism Down, Interracial Marriage Up
September 30, 2018
I was listening to a podcast, and one of my favorite political and cultural commentators, Jonah Goldberg, happened to mention rates of interracial marriage as one possible measure of levels of racism in America over the years. I was curious; so I looked them up.
According to the Pew Research Center, between 1980 and 2017, intermarriage rates roughly tripled:
Share of black Americans marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity in 1980 — 5%
In 2015 — 18%
Share of white Americans marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity in 1980 — 4%
In 2015 — 11%
Out: ‘I want to know the truth.’ In: ‘I stand with…’
September 28, 2018
(Party in power nominates Mr. B.)
Opposition-party senators: I will oppose this nomination with everything I’ve got.
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day 2018
May 20, 2018
The Mohammed drawing will continue until it’s safe to draw Mohammed.
Ex-Muslims of North America (Facebook, Twitter) have a number of offerings to mark the occasion:
Reminder: Why We All Need a Balanced Media Diet
January 3, 2018
Happy new year and merry Tenth Day of Christmas!
This is just your friendly annual reminder to make sure you’re getting a balanced diet including at least some liberal and conservative media.*
The Ancient World Has Some Advice for the Internet Age
November 12, 2017
“The heart of the righteous studies how to answer,
But the mouth of the wicked pours forth evil.”
I kind of think Facebook should pin this at the top of every page, just as a friendly reminder.
Update (November 13th, 2017):
“He who has knowledge spares his words,
And a man of understanding is of a calm spirit.
“Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace;
When he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive.”
‘The first thing that came to my mind. I prayed, God, please don’t let my daughter have to walk up the aisle alone.’
October 2, 2017
A good-news story, on a day when we could all use some good news:
“The first thing that came to my mind. I prayed, God, please don’t let my daughter have to walk up the aisle alone.”
. . .
Scalise, who was playing second base, was hit in the hip. When police downed the shooter, colleague Rep. Brad Westrup of Ohio, a veteran of Iraq, rushed to his side. Westrup saw no exit wound and realized from combat that internal damage was severe.
Antifa Mob Beats Peaceful Protesters
September 3, 2017
Wow.
Long-form journalism isn’t dead.
Also, man is fallen and his capacity for evil never ceases to amaze.
OK, for those without the time or the inclination to read the whole story from beginning to end at its own pace, here’s as good a summary by excerpt as any:
Happy Independence Day!
July 4, 2017
(Madeleine Stowe as Cora Munro in the great Last of the Mohicans, 1992, on the spirit of America and freedom:
They do not live their lives “by your leave”! They hack it out of the wilderness with their own two hands, burying their children along the way.
)
Be Strong and Holy
May 21, 2017
Worth meditating on: Apparently the/a Greek word for “holy” also means “strong”.
In Christianity, we are called to sanctification, the lifelong process of cooperating more and more with God’s work to make us holy, pure and set apart for His service. In one of the seeming paradoxes of Christian theology, this process also makes us spiritually stronger and stronger, even as it also makes us more and more dependent on God, the eternal Source of all goodness and love and power.
Happy Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!
May 20, 2017
A number of intrepid souls have contributed to the cause since the last time I covered drawing Mohammed:
- The awesome Bosch Fawstin celebrated Everybody Draw Mohammed Day last year by helping others celebrate Everybody Draw Mohammed Day—for those who wanted to join the cause but didn’t feel up to the task artistically, he offered to draw a Mohammed for each on their behalf; readers took him up on it, and 65 new Mohammed drawings were commissioned and sent out!
Enjoyment and Contemplation 