Blog-o-rama

  • Just mak­ing the rounds of the blo­gos­phere. I’ll divide it into Ortho and non-Ortho, for your dis­cern­ing read­ing plea­sure:

    Ortho and Christian

    • Is it okay to admit that some­times I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on? Huw is about to break a com­ment record with a post about The Emer­gent Move­ment and I still can’t fig­ure out what it is. If some­one wants to try to fill me in, have at it. But please, use smal­l­lll words.
    • So timely I can’t stand it. I just started read­ing Frederica’s First “Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Jour­ney Through the Canon of St. Andrew” and Orthodixie has a National Review Online inter­view on the book. FWIW, it seems to me that the book’s first chap­ter answers all the back­ground that the NRO inter­viewer poses, but if you want to try before you buy, it might be worth read­ing the NRO piece.
    • One cat­e­chu­man has fin­ished her walk! Many years, Erica. But now your blog needs a name-change!
    • Via GetRe­li­gion — This ought to seal the case that there’s a dou­ble stan­dard when it comes to the idea of reli­gious tol­er­ance and sensitivity.

      Exhibit A: A uni­ver­sity stu­dent does an ongo­ing car­toon called “Christ on Cam­pus” that many Chris­tians would find offen­sive. Result: He is given a mild talking-to:

      “I think that it went pretty well,” he said. “There were some early tense moments but the ten­sions eased by the mid­dle of the con­ver­sa­tion. They never pushed for cen­sor­ship.… It’s going to be busi­ness as usual, at least for now.”

      Exhibit B: A uni­ver­sity stu­dent reprints six of the same! stu­pid! Dan­ish car­toons that every­one has down­loaded off the inter­net by now, which many Mus­lims would find offen­sive. Result: Two stu­dent edi­tors have been sus­pended and may be fired. The news­pa­per apol­o­gized and called the editor’s deci­sion “a bla­tant abuse of power.” At an ensu­ing protest by Mus­lims, one local librar­ian expresses con­cern over our insen­si­tiv­ity post 9/11:

      “Our gov­ern­ment has been vio­lat­ing the civil lib­er­ties of Mus­lims liv­ing in our coun­try and increas­ing this cli­mate of stereo­typ­ing,” Inskeep said. “We need to stop sow­ing hatred and mis­un­der­stand­ing and think about what’s actu­ally going to pro­mote edu­ca­tion and the pub­lic good.”

      So, to recap: If the sub­ject is Chris­t­ian, then spoof­ing = good fun and cen­sor­ship is a bad thing. If the sub­ject is Islam, then spoof­ing = hate and cen­sor­ship is a very, very good thing.

    • And lastly, can some­one please tell Jerry Fal­well to shut up?

      “Ear­lier today, reports began cir­cu­lat­ing across the globe that I have recently stated that Jews can go to heaven with­out being con­verted to Jesus Christ. This is cat­e­gor­i­cally untrue.”

    Non-Ortho

    • Via Drudge: Under the cat­e­gory “Main­stream Media Pun­dits Who Haven’t Real­ized that in the Age of the Blo­gos­phere, They Can Become the News” (a long cat­e­gory, but a good one) — we have a win­ner in David Gre­gory, NBC’s Chief White House Cor­re­spon­dent, who child­ishly stomped around at a White House press con­fer­ence back here. And now, he called into MSNBC’s IMUS show this morn­ing from India to cover the president’s visit, and was so drunk he could hardly talk:

      IMUS: Are you all right David?

      GREGORY: India is a won­der­ful lan­guage and I’ve been learn­ing, where’s my lit­tle sheet here. I’ve been learn­ing some new phrases to come home. But any way, that being one of them and i just think it’s nice.

      IMUS: It is.

      GREGORY: Thank you.

      IMUS: Hav­ing a lot of fun there. What’s wrong with you?

      GREGORY: I just think it’s funny. [Laugh­ter] [Laugh­ter] [Laughter]

    • This one has been all over alt-media:

      AURORA, Colo. — A Col­orado high school teacher was on admin­is­tra­tive leave Thurs­day after he crit­i­cized Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, cap­i­tal­ism and the United States’ for­eign pol­icy in his geog­ra­phy class at Over­land High School.

      Sound like an over­re­ac­tion? Sound like the teacher was just doing his job, or maybe just slightly express­ing an opin­ion? That’s what you would be bound to think based on news write-ups like this one. But when you look at the tran­script (from the record­ing made by a stu­dent for his notes), you real­ize it was a lot more than that. Here’s a sam­ple from the teacher’s 20-minute rant:

      “[Bush] started off his [State of the Union] speech talk­ing about how Amer­ica should be the coun­try that dom­i­nates the world. That we have been blessed essen­tially by God to have the most civ­i­lized, most advanced, best sys­tem and that it is our duty as Amer­i­cans to use the mil­i­tary to go out into the world and make the whole world like us.

      “Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler use to say.

      “We’re the only ones who are right. Every­one else is back­wards. And it’s our job to con­quer the world and make sure they live just like we want them to.

      “Now, I’m not say­ing that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same. Obvi­ously, they are not. Ok. But there are some eerie sim­i­lar­i­ties to the tones that they use. Very, very “eth­no­cen­tric.” We’re right. You’re all wrong.”

      Still sound like he’s just doing a good job in his Social Stud­ies class, or Poli Sci, or even Amer­i­can his­tory? But that’s the prob­lem. He’s teach­ing geog­ra­phy. What does any of this have to do with the loca­tion of Argentina or the source of the Nile?

      I remem­ber teach­ers like this, and in that way we could all sigh and say that noth­ing has changed. But I’m glad this stu­dent spoke up, because it’s been almost 30 years since I was in a high school class­room, and if they’re still a con­stant source of lib­eral opin­ion being passed off as objec­tive knowl­edge, then it’s time to put an end to it.


    Related posts:

    1. Blog-o-matic
    2. Blog bag for today
    3. Blog round-up
    4. Blog round-up, part two
    5. What the [bleep] is going on?!

    March 2nd, 2006 | Grace | 1 Comment |

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