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A glimpse of the Republican Alternate Universe
There’s not believing something because it seems so wrong. There’s not believing because the wrong keeps happening. There’s believing because of precedent. And then there’s not believing again because the precedent is just too much. Tuesday night, the scales were tipped into lala land. After eight Republican debates, we have now found a list of…
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Phew! At least nobody got mauled…
So a guy lets loose 56 exotic animals, including lions, tigers, grizzlies, and wolves in Zanesville, Ohio, near Columbus. This no joke. This is a true story. He kept extremely dangerous animals. At home! In a cage! Bengal flippin’ tigers! So the guy lets them loose, cuts the cages to keep anyone from getting them…
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It is not what we want
“This notion that ‘These media companies are just giving us what the public wants!’ No. They’re giving us what the media companies want; they’re giving us what the advertisers want. And they’re packaging it in such a way as to make it sound like it is our fault; it’s not.” –Jennifer Pozner Giving people “what…
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The Gilded Age of Media
When faced with something they find confusing, most journalists give up. They don’t do the real legwork of engaging the story. They write the “process story” instead. You’ve read the kind in which the author doesn’t actually write the story about the intended subject’s work, but how confusing that work is. They trot out tired…
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On Ecclesiology: Leadership, Emergence, and #Occupy
In the Premodern world, humanity was led by “the divine right of kings,” in other words, authority was bestowed upon a singular human authority from a divine source. In the Modern world, humanity was led by singular representation. Authority was bestowed on an individual to represent the people, either through fiat or election. The Enlightenment…
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A shocking lack of historical knowledge
We all know the paraphrase, if not the real quote by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.” And we seem to believe it. Sort of. Considering the ease with which we warn each other that such a leader as our own is the second coming of Hitler, it…
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Occupy Wall Street’s collective statement
For those following #OccupyWallStreet, click on their first collective statement. One of the criticisms of the movement has been their lack of central authority and a clear, concise statement of demands. What is unique to this movement, and more typical of organizations today, rather than 50 years ago, is the belief that the first step toward…
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Puritans: why Wall Street wasn’t occupied sooner
or #OccupyWallStreet and our fear of protests A favorite line over the last two weeks has been: I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner. Of course it did, but the media doesn’t really like protests. It is surprising since the news is all about sensationalism and big displays of strangeness and upsetting the status quo. It’s…