Thursday, July 15, 2004
Battle Lines
Some followups on yesterday's posts:
Earlier this week, Salon reviewed the new film Outfoxed, about the slanted news management at Fox, and the title of the story says it all: "Happy Talk From Hell." As bad as they are, it's worse than you think.
When I was researching the composition of state legislatures yesterday, I was surprised at the number of reliably red states that have Democrat majorities in one or both houses of their state legislatures. The flip side of that is the number of reliably blue states--New York and California among them--that have Republican governors. As Kenneth Baer writes in The American Prospect, electoral math isn't as easy as it seems. States, red and blue, are just lines on a map. They do not enclose totally homogenous areas. Thus, John Edwards is unlikely to bring a single state into the Democratic column, but Baer says he'll keep John Kerry competitive in what he calls "'southern' areas of non-Southern states."
Recommended Reading: Jim Wallis of Sojourners shows yet again how Christian ideals have been hijacked by right-wingers for distinctly non-Christian purposes. "Many of us feel that our faith has been stolen, and it's time to take it back." Wallis suggests that a politician's denominational identity is less important than how his religious and moral commitments shape his vision. While I have my doubts about whether the good religious faith can do outweighs the evil for which it is responsible, Wallis's prescription would take a great deal of the toxicity out of today's brand of political Christianity--and that would be good for everybody.
Some followups on yesterday's posts:
Earlier this week, Salon reviewed the new film Outfoxed, about the slanted news management at Fox, and the title of the story says it all: "Happy Talk From Hell." As bad as they are, it's worse than you think.
When I was researching the composition of state legislatures yesterday, I was surprised at the number of reliably red states that have Democrat majorities in one or both houses of their state legislatures. The flip side of that is the number of reliably blue states--New York and California among them--that have Republican governors. As Kenneth Baer writes in The American Prospect, electoral math isn't as easy as it seems. States, red and blue, are just lines on a map. They do not enclose totally homogenous areas. Thus, John Edwards is unlikely to bring a single state into the Democratic column, but Baer says he'll keep John Kerry competitive in what he calls "'southern' areas of non-Southern states."
Recommended Reading: Jim Wallis of Sojourners shows yet again how Christian ideals have been hijacked by right-wingers for distinctly non-Christian purposes. "Many of us feel that our faith has been stolen, and it's time to take it back." Wallis suggests that a politician's denominational identity is less important than how his religious and moral commitments shape his vision. While I have my doubts about whether the good religious faith can do outweighs the evil for which it is responsible, Wallis's prescription would take a great deal of the toxicity out of today's brand of political Christianity--and that would be good for everybody.
