Faking Cultural Literacy

Karl Greenfeld writes for the NY Times:

THERE was a time when we knew where we were getting our ideas. In my eighth grade English class, we were assigned “A Tale of Two Cities,” and lest we enjoy the novel, we were instructed to read Charles Dickens’s classic with an eye toward tracking the symbolism in the text. One afternoon while I was in the library, struggling to find symbols, I ran into a few of my classmates, who removed from their pockets folded yellow and black pamphlets that read “Cliffs Notes” and beneath that the title of Dickens’s novel in block letters. That “study guide” was a revelation.

Here were the plot, the characters, even the symbols, all laid out in paragraphs and bullet points. I read the Cliffs Notes in one night, and wrote my B paper without finishing the novel. The lesson was not to immerse and get lost in the actual cultural document itself but to mine it for any valuable ore and minerals — data, factoids, what you need to know — and then trade them on the open market.

With the advent of each new technology — movable type, radio, television, the Internet — there have been laments that the end is nigh for illuminated manuscripts, for books, magazines and newspapers. What is different now is the ubiquity of the technology that is replacing every old medium.

The information is everywhere, a constant feed in our hands, in our pockets, on our desktops, our cars, even in the cloud. The data stream can’t be shut off. It pours into our lives a rising tide of words, facts, jokes, GIFs, gossip and commentary that threatens to drown us. Perhaps it is this fear of submersion that is behind this insistence that we’ve seen, we’ve read, we know. It’s a none-too-convincing assertion that we are still afloat. So here we are, desperately paddling, making observations about pop culture memes, because to admit that we’ve fallen behind, that we don’t know what anyone is talking about, that we have nothing to say about each passing blip on the screen, is to be dead.

Read the rest.

The Surprising and Sickening Outrage over Josie Cunningham’s Abortion

Trevin Wax reflects on the news story from Britain about Josie Cunningham and her decision to have an abortion to further her career.  Click over to read the whole thing.  His concluding reflections are quite insightful and enlightening.  

The surprising response is also sickening. British society reacted with revulsion toward a woman who decided to sacrifice another human in order to further her career. (I use sacrificial terminology deliberately, since all idols demand sacrifices, and a career can function as an idol.) 

What’s sickening is to see how society bullies and shames a woman who is following the script that society itself has given her. Over and over again, we are told that women’s rights hinge on access to abortion, that women can be equal to men only if they have full freedom over their reproductive choices, that women need to put themselves and their careers first. One woman follows the logic, and all hell breaks loose against her. 

Other news outlets have reported on the vitriol, so I won’t link to the comments made about this woman, many too vile to print here. Abortion is dehumanizing toward the unborn. The treatment of Josie Cunningham is dehumanizing too. It makes her a monster, when in fact, the monstrous act of abortion is something we as a society have created and promoted. (I wonder if there is a reverse sacrifice going on here. Josie Cunningham sacrifices her child on the altar of her career ambitions, and then British society sacrifices Cunningham as a collective easing of the conscience of a society with blood on its hands.) 

Absent from this discussion, sadly, is the baby’s father. Where is he? Who is he? We are quick to heap scorn and judgment on a woman, as if she is the only person responsible for this debacle. How is it that a society that promotes woman’s rights can so quickly demonize a woman? Meanwhile, the man walks away after his romantic fling without consequence. Far from elevating our view of women, the abortion culture has led to a sickening double standard. 

So, yes, the outrage over Josie Cunningham’s abortion is both surprising and sickening. As Christians, we should weep for the baby who was lost and be encouraged by society’s shock at abortion for selfish gain, even as we shake our heads at the double standard on display in society’s demonization of a woman.

Read the rest.

Why We Argue Like Jerks

Bradford Davis:

The other day, I found myself flipping through channels in the ninth circle of Hell, otherwise known as cable news. Two guests were debating about the latest public policy or gossip column. Pundit A let me know that Pundit B hates the truth. Pundit B told me about the secret ‘WAR on _____’ (You haven’t heard of that war yet? Because you’re probably fighting it.) The host “moderates” the discussion by provoking one or both guests, stating something that’s phrased as a question, but I’m not too sure is an actually query (e.g. ‘How could a decent human being possibly support what you believe?’). . . . What’s most painful for me is when I find myself ironically cussing at the tube. Or, writing a 2,000 word essay telling someone on the internet that they are wrong. As much as I hate it, I am very much the problem that I want to solve.

Read the rest.  

(HT:  JD)

Contextualized or Compromised?

Good reflections  from Trevin Wax on movies and the intake of media in general.

22 Thoughts on Richard Sherman's Interview

Tommy Tomlinson:

1. So the Seahawks beat the 49ers to go to the Super Bowl, and Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman made the game-saving play, and Erin Andrews interviewed him on the field immediately after the game, and he hollered like a crazy person:

2. Within seconds people on social media were calling him a fool, a thug, a classless jerk and many worse things. 

3. Sherman is black, and so of course there was an undercurrent of race to some — OK, a lot — of the discussion. 

4. Sherman graduated second in his class in high school and also graduated from Stanford. So not only is he not a fool, odds are he’s smarter than you and me. 

5. His degree from Stanford was in communications … which might explain why, while he seemed to be hollering like a crazy person, he didn’t curse and looked into the camera the whole time. 

6. In other words, he might have just been auditioning for the WWE. 

7. Maybe 15 minutes later, when Sherman sat down with the Fox NFL guys, he was calm and funny. 

8. If you stick a microphone in a football player’s face seconds after he made a huge play to send his team to the Super Bowl, you shouldn’t be surprised if he’s a little amped up. 

9. Ninety-nine percent of on-field interviews are boring and useless. The TV networks do them anyway for the 1 percent of the time they get a moment like Richard Sherman. 

10. As a reporter and writer, that raw emotion — whatever form it takes — is exactly what I hope for. That’s why media people fight for access to locker rooms. After players and coaches cool off, most of them turn into Crash Davis, reading from the book of cliches. 

11. But we — the media, and fans in general — don’t know what we want. We rip athletes for giving us boring quotes. But if they say what they actually feel, we rip them for spouting off or showing a lack of class. 

12. It’s like we want them to be thinking, Well, that was a fine contest, and jolly good that we won. Which NO athlete is EVER thinking. 

13. As a side note: Richard Sherman also called out Skip Bayless on Bayless’ own show, which trumps pretty much anything bad that Richard Sherman has done in his life. 

14. So: Did you watch the game? 

15. Did you see the two most physical teams in football beat each other half to death? Did you see all the brutal hits? Did you see all the players who couldn’t get up after the play? Did you see all those guys who had to be helped off the field? 

16. Did you see NaVorro Bowman, the stud linebacker for the 49ers, wreck his knee when a Seattle player fell on it? I’m not sure how you could’ve missed it — Fox must have shown the replay 20 times. 

17. (I understand that it was a big play — Bowman recovered a fumble at the goal line, although the refs called it the other way. It deserved another look. But still: Can’t you crop out Bowman’s crumpled knee, or put a black bar over it, or something? After one or two replays, isn’t it just injury porn?)

18. Anyway: That was the kind of game it was. Rough and angry and so violent that at times it was hard to watch. 

19. This, of course, is part of the attraction of football. And part of the reason so many players leave the sport crippled and concussed. 

20. Richard Sherman made the big play Sunday. His team is going to the Super Bowl. 

21. More important, he survived the carnage. 

22. It seems to me that the only proper response to surviving something like that is to holler like a crazy person.

Rick Warren: The Most Important Interview I’ve Ever Done

Rick Warren:

After teaching How to Get Through What You’re Going Through” for the past eight weeks, Kay and I felt it was time to grant the first media interview since Matthew’s death. We chose CNN’s Piers Morgan Live because it offered a full-hour for us to share our thoughts, rather than just short sound bites. 

What happened in the taping surprised us all. Several members of the tech/camera crew were in tears, hugged us, and told us that their lives had been profoundly impacted by the experience. Piers Morgan was unusually sensitive to the moment, allowing us all the time we needed without interruption. At lunch, Piers shared that it was the most moving interview he’s ever done. 

In kindness, the CNN team came to us, taping the interview at our Acts of Mercy family foundation office. In our conversation, we discussed:

• What it was like to parent a child who battled mental illness all his life.

• What it has been like to grieve our son’s suicide as public figures.

• Mental illness, depression, guns, grief, and God.

• What needs to change in our culture, including removing the stigma from mental illness.

• How to support the mentally ill and the families who care for them.

• How our faith has been tested and has grown stronger.

• How we get our sins forgiven, purpose for living, and home in heaven through Jesus.

• The overwhelming love we’ve received from our church family and others.

• How God gives us HOPE in our darkest days.

The interview was raw and real. The CNN crew and our staff watched almost breathlessly. For an entire hour, you could’ve heard a pin drop, everyone was so riveted by what God was doing through the conversation. 

I wanted to take an opportunity to pass along some of the most significant things we were privileged to say, and I would welcome your feedback on the interview.

Read the rest for interview highlights.

Ira Glass From "This American Life" Talks About Christians in the Media

"The news value is undeniable." #Gosnell

Writing for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf sums up his lengthy summary of the details with this statement:

There is, finally, the fact that abortion, one of the most hotly contested, polarizing debates in the country, is at the center of this case. It arguably informs the abortion debate in any number of ways, and has numerous plausible implications for abortion policy, including the oversight and regulation of clinics, the appropriateness of late-term abortions, the penalties for failing to report abuses, the statute of limitations for killings like those with which Gosnell is charged, whether staff should be legally culpable for the bad behavior of doctors under whom they work...

There's just no end to it.

To sum up, this story has numerous elements any one of which would normally make it a major story. And setting aside conventions, which are flawed, this ought to be a big story on the merits.

The news value is undeniable.

Read the rest.

9 Things You Should Know About the #Gosnell Infanticide and Murder Trial

Joe Carter:

1. Gosnell was arrested in January 2011, charged with eight counts of murder: one patient who allegedly died under his care after a botched abortion, and seven infants supposedly born alive whose spinal cords Gosnell allegedly severed with scissors. 

2. According to prosecutors in Philadelphia, Gosnell catered to minorities, immigrants, and poor women, and made millions of dollars over 30 years performing illegal and late-term abortions in squalid and barbaric conditions. Gosnell took extra precautions with white women from the suburbs, according to the grand jury report. He allegedly ushered them into a slightly cleaner area because he thought they would be more likely to file a complaint. 

3. Women paid $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. The clinic took in up to $15,000 a day, said authorities. Although abortions after the 24th week are illegal, Gosnell allegedly aborted and killed babies in the sixth and seventh months of pregnancy and charged more for bigger babies. 

4. According to the grand jury report, the clinic reeked of animal urine and the furniture and blankets were stained with blood. Medical instruments found in the practice had not been properly sterilized. State officials have failed to visit or inspect his abortion clinic since 1993. Prosecutors also claim that Gosnell is not certified in either gynecology or obstetrics. 

5. Prosecutors say that none of Gosnell's staff, including his wife, were licensed nurses or doctors and that a 15-year-old student performed anesthesia with potentially lethal narcotics. 

6. A woman who worked for Gosnell testified that she was called back to a room at his abortion clinic in Philadelphia where the bodies of aborted babies were kept to hear one screaming amid a shelf-full of dead babies. "I can't describe it," says the woman. "It sounded like a little alien." She says the body of the child was about 18 to 24 inches long and was one of the largest babies she had seen delivered during abortion procedures at Gosnell's clinic. 

7. On January 31, 1998, a then 15 year old Robyn Reid sought an abortion from Gosnell's clinic. Once she was in the clinic, though, Reid, an 87-pound teenager at the time, told Gosnell she changed her mind about the abortion. She claims Gosnell got upset, ripped off her clothes, restrained her, and repeatedly told her, "This is the same care that I would give to my own daughter." Reid regained consciousness 12 hours later at her aunt's home, with the abortion having been completed against her will. 

8. Gosnell's arrest and trial have received almost no coverage by the national media. During the early part of the trial ABC, CBS and NBC did not cover the trial at all, yet gave 41 minutes and 26 seconds of air time to the story of Mike Rice, the Rutgers basketball coach who was fired for verbally and physically abusing his players. 

9. The 3801 Lancaster Film Project is an ongoing documentary series about Kermit Gosnell, the Women's Medical Society, and the cover-up by state and local oversight agencies.

Recommended reading:

• The Case For Life
• Defending Life

8 Reasons for the Media Blackout on Kermit #Gosnell

Trevin Wax lends his voice to the reasons behind the media silence over the Gosnell abortion case.

1. The Gosnell case involves an abortionist.
2. The Gosnell case involves an unregulated abortion clinic.
3. The Gosnell case involves protestors who, for years, stood outside 3801 Lancaster and prayed, warning people about what was taking place inside.
4. The Gosnell case involves gruesome details about living, viable babies having their    spinal cords “snipped” outside the womb.
5. The Gosnell case raises the question of human rights.
6. The Gosnell case involves the regulation of abortion clinics.
7. The Gosnell case exposes the disproportionate number of abortion clinics in inner cities and the disproportionate number of abortions among minority groups.
8. The Gosnell case competes with recent stories about states enacting broad laws banning many abortions.

Click through to read his reasons.


Books by Trevin Wax:

• Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope
• Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals
• Gospel-Centered Teaching: Showing Christ in All the Scripture

Why is The Gosnell Trial Not Getting More Attention in the Media?

I found this quite insightful.

Mark Baddeley :

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that the problem here is that this story cannot be framed the right way for the mainstream media. I don’t want to blame them entirely for this problem – their consumers prefer stories that are framed in a way that fit with how they already see the world anyway. But there has been a constant frame for decades of brave pro-abortion advocates and doctors fighting for women’s health against misogynist knuckle draggers who want to force women out of the workplace and into the kitchen and delivery room. There is simply no way that this story fits with the frame *at all*. And so there is no story. A story that can’t fit the pre-existing frames open for it can’t be communicated within the limitations inherent to the media at this point in time. On this story the conservative and Christian sites have a gift on a silver platter because the story fits entirely within their frame, and is what their punters already expect to see happen sooner or later. 

I’m sure that the partisan cheerleading for the pro-abortion side is at work here, as was painfully evident with the Komen reporting debacle. If the editors wanted to tell this story they’d try and overcome the frame problem.  Having framed all the stories on this issue to fit the pro-abortion side, there is no frame available to help communicate this one. And without that frame contemporary journalism finds it hard to function. Their consumers don’t pay them to force them to think.

I would add that this story makes the line between infanticide and abortion very blurry.  Some pro-choicers are willing to go there and embrace that blurry line and even cross it but more of the general pro-choice public is not.  I would assume that most in the mainstream national media would be pro-choice and so the suits at the big networks have a hard time with that blurry line.  Thus, no story.

There is an unarticulated unease with this story that make pro-choicers very uncomfortable.  It's like they are handing pro-lifers ammunition and that can't be good.  To bury it is better than to face it honestly.  

3 Media-Made Myths about Abortion

Trevin Wax:

MYTH #1: Believing abortion should be outlawed in most or all cases is an extreme position.
MYTH #2: A pro-life position is unpopular with women and risks losing their votes.
MYTH #3: Abortion is one of many women’s health issues.

Click over to read his explanations.

I found this section helpful:

For pro-life people, abortion is not, first and foremost, a women’s health issue. It is a human rights issue. At stake is our commitment to cherishing and protecting human life at all stages of development.

Right! What about the women in the womb that are being killed in the name of "choice"?  How come they don't have any rights?

Don't forget to get Scott Klusendorf's book, The Case for Life.

The Ultimate Hidden Television

The Rise of Urban Digital Tribes

From this article in Christiantiy Today:

...we underestimate how much young people are shaped by the massive power of the digital tools, consumer culture, and media of the broader American culture. Thomas Bergler's work in The Juvenilization of American Christianity gives us a fabulous phrase for this: "the deadening effect of popular culture." Of course, many Christians recognize and bemoan the impact of media and technology on young people. Many, however, miss how much the influence is increasing and how much every age group is feeling its effects. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the typical teenager is using more than 10 hours of media per day, far more than previous generations. Is it any wonder when you mix and stir human nature, reality television, and social media that one-quarter of today's teenagers believe there is a "definite" or "probable" chance they will be famous or well-known by age 25? Call it the American Idol effect....

In addition, our research shows that typical parents are just as "addicted" to media and technology as are their teenagers, just in different ways. In an ironic and telling shift, the teenagers we interviewed complained that their parents' use of technology was inhibiting quality family time.

Read the rest.

(HT: Josh Harris)

We Just Look Like "Fag-Haters" and Religious Politicians

Been emailing with a friend about all the homosexuality focus in the media right now. I thought this comment from him was well put as it pertains to perceptions of Christians amidst the broader cultural discussion.  We would be wise to keep these things in mind.  It speaks more broadly to discipleship that should be flowing from our local churches and into the culture at large.

Another thought on this issue--the idea of selflessness or denying self should be the stock and trade of Christians no matter the domain. At its very worst a "big hair" evangelist living a fiscally indulgent life while condemning homosexual people, makes all of us look stupid as Christians. If selflessness is demonstrated across the board and the rallying cry of the church is a Jesus-like commitment to universal selflessness, the issues related to sexuality fine their proper place in the discourse. Without that we just look like "fag-haters" and religious politicians.

How I Wish The Homosexuality Debate Would Go

Trevin Wax:

Perhaps because of President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage yesterday, this post of mine from last fall has jumped to the top of my page views again. “How I Wish the Homosexuality Debate Would Go”

Just once, I’d like to see a TV interview go more like this:

Host: You are a Christian pastor, and you say you believe the Bible, which means you are supposed to love all people.

Pastor: That’s right.

Host: But it appears to me that you and your church take a rather unloving position when it comes to gay people. Are homosexuals welcome to come to your church?

Read the rest.

On The Christian Reaction to Savage and Reilly

There is wisdom in what Barnabas Piper writes here.  I too get quite nervous when Christians get all up in arms when they are persecuted.  What did you think you were signing up for when you decided to follow Jesus?

 I would only add that oftentimes "giving an answer for the hope that you have" can serve to encourage other Christians who might not have a clue how to respond to these self-refuting attacks.  Apologetics may not convince the unbeliever but it may serve to support and encourage the believer.  This, in my view, is an important role.

Where does defensiveness fit into this paradigm? As followers of Jesus, we are called to suffer, to be reviled, and to do so with rejoicing. We were promised with great clarity that suffering would come and that the world would see the gospel of Jesus as drivel. So why do we get so up in arms when it actually happens?

Defending the truth is right and biblical. But defending the truth is different than public displays of defensiveness. What Christians are doing by firing back at Savage or Reilly is, as Jesus says, throwing “pearls before pigs.” In that same verse He says that those pearls will be trampled and the pigs will turn on us to attack. Jesus is saying that response, defense, and judgment are not always wise and will often be harmful.

It is not our strong defenses against blow-hard anti-Christians that will lead people to Jesus. It is the exemplification of a Christ-like life and the firm proclamation of His gospel. Our spar-and-parry articles will not overcome the influence of Dan Savage, Rick Reilly, or those like them. We cannot win this cultural war of words. But, through our lives and testimony, the Spirit can win the war for souls.

Read the rest.  

This is One of the Huge Reasons Why I Don't Miss Having a TV

Mike Cosper:

In a culture of narcissism, celebrities must continually project themselves into the conversation in order to feel validated. For a pundit, that often means gravitating towards the extreme, regardless of how disconnected our comments might be from reality. Limbaugh is on his 4th marriage – not exactly moral high ground, and though he’s since apologized for the statement, he’s done so with enough caveats and qualifications to make for a profoundly unapologetic apology. He laments, “I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.” A strange statement from a man who relished every moment and detail of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The pundits on the left have pounced on the issue, holding it up as an obvious example of the right’s hatred of women, conveniently forgetting the comments of folks like Bill Maher, who regularly spew similar vitriol about Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol. This is an equal opportunity offense by conservatives and liberals.

To me, what’s sad about Limbaugh’s comments are that they’re so… ordinary. Our speech is full of hyperbole – from political discourse to dinner descriptions. Just cruise through a twitter timeline. It seems like we can’t have a conversation about ordinary, everyday things. We can’t be civil and mediated. All of life is the best and the worst. The hero and the villain. There is no grey. There are no degrees. There is only black and white.

To our over-stimulated and over-hyped world, ordinary life is boring. Put a pundit on television who is willing to color in shades and nuance the issues, and you’ll find yourself reaching for the remote. Loud sells, and we’re all buying it.

The only alternative for us is to turn it off.

Read the rest.

The New Channel Surfing

The TV will soon be dead or re-imagined.

Covenant Eyes blog:

According to a recent survey from Pew Internet, people are far more likely now than ever to go online for no particular reason other than to pass the time or have fun. Some 58% of all adults (74% of all adults who use the Internet) say they use the Internet this way. This is almost double what it was 10 years ago.

Jeremy Lin and the Challenges of Stardom in the Age of the Internet

Charles Pierce with some insight here that transcends Jeremy Lin.  He writes:

The Accelerated Age has taken the phenomenon out of the phenomenon of being a phenomenon. It used to have some build to it. It used to take a while. Even the simultaneous ascendancy of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird seems today as though it came to us all by wireless radio. Now, anything great that happens suddenly becomes so freighted with instant significance that the essential parts of it that are not crushed entirely are simply buried. In the case of Jeremy Lin, it took almost no time at all for the phenomenon to become commodified. He's already become a self-contained universe of images, most of which he did not seek, and none of which are under his control. He's been made into a vessel into which people have placed the precious illusions that they'd otherwise keep protected in bubble wrap and romance, deep in their childhood hearts. He's come to symbolize everything about sports that nostalgics need sports to symbolize. And he's trying to learn how to succeed as a point guard at the highest possible level of his sport — and that has to be the hardest part for him.

Can't he just be a player now, for a while, anyway? Can't he learn how not to turn over the ball nine times in a game? Can't he learn that he can't just pound the ball on the perimeter the way he does? Can't he have some space to figure out for himself and his teammates how things are going to be for the Knicks when they get their entire roster back together and everybody has to adjust, especially him? These are not easy lessons. Can't people simply refrain for a while from using him and his success as an excuse to take their pet theories about America out for a walk around the various green rooms and radio studios?

Of course not.

Read the rest.