Only days after the Armstrong Williams paid-for-pundit debacle, President Bush used his January 12 "town hall meeting" to once again reach out to African-Americans. this time on his Social Security privatization plan. With a hand-picked audience of supporters present on stage and in the Washington DC audience, Bush was on the top of his game: […]
Category: Culture War
On the heels of the Armstrong Williams "Payolagate" scandal come rumors that Bush administration may be planning additional outreach to the African-American community. While not confirmed, the DC grapevine has it that the Bush folks have in fact asked NWA and their lead man Ice Cube to perform their smash hit "Straight Out of Compton" […]
Every once in a while, you realize that the apparently pointless concepts you learned back in math class were not completely without value. Or in the case of the Time selection of George W. Bush as its "2004 Man of the Year", absolute value. Bush's second crowning as Man O' Year reminds us of the […]
In the latest example of what Perrspectives has called a "Faux National Tragedy", Scott Peterson was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife Laci. As we described in 1997 after the Heaven's Gate cult mass suicide, a Faux National Tragedy has four identifiable traits: Unlimited Media Frenzy. This is the necessary but not […]
On Thursday, the United Methodist Church defrocked a lesbian minister, the Reverend Elizabeth Stroud of Germantown, Pennsylvania. This was the first such step by the Church in 17 years, reflecting its law that bars ""self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" from ministry. Convicted by a 12-1 vote and defrocked by a 7-6 majority, Stroud may still perform other […]
Two recent news developments highlight once again the fallacy of "rational rejection" of the rights of gay Americans by social conservatives. In their ongoing quest to mask theology as social science, they have once run into the dual brick walls of the academy and the Supreme Court. The first instance of conservatives being "mugged by […]
In the latest installment of the Red State Pathology Report, we bring you this bit of psychosis from Wisconsin. Apparently, five people were killed and three wounded in a shootout over the use of a deer hunting platform. The Sawyer County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle summed up the episode, "it's absolutely nuts." The bizarre massacre […]
With the election over and the Scott Peterson trial completed, the American media apparently has little else to report but the supposed scandal over the raunchy Terrell Owens Monday Night Football pre-game skit. For conservatives like the Heritage Foundation's Rebecca Hagelin, ABC and the NFL joined to open yet another front in the war against […]
In what is only the latest in a long line of Faux National Tragedies, Scott Peterson was found guilty of murdering his wife Laci. The media's obvious fixation with the tragedies of predictably white, often blond, and usually well-to-do girls continues unabated. Laci Peterson joins BYU student Brooke Wilsberger, Dru, Elizabeth, Jon Benet, Samantha, and […]
Sometimes, a single day of news tells you everything to know about what is or what is to come. On April 2, 2004, for example, the New York Times featured no fewer than seven stories covering different scandals, deceptions, stone-walling and perversions of science by the Bush administration. November 9, 2004 is another one of […]