Reading this interview in Christianity Today with Frank Page, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention whose daughter committed suicide, was a rather harrowing experience. It was harrowing firstly because he’s trying to analyze his daughter’s untimely death, and that is necessarily going to make for uncomfortable reading. But it was harrowing also because… Continue reading Mental Illness And The Southern Baptist Convention: We Have A Serious Problem Here
Even after months of relentless scandal, last week the NFL was dealt what may have been its most consequential blow yet. Lebron James, arguably the world’s greatest athlete, announced that he prohibits his two young sons from playing football. “Only basketball, baseball and soccer are allowed in my house,” James declared.
Despite getting paid obscene amounts of money to espouse political analysis, pundits chronically underestimate the extent to which raw resentment fuels voter behavior. I have occasionally fallen into this trap myself; it did not seem likely to me that the GOP would score easy gubernatorial victories in Wisconsin and Michigan last week, for example. But… Continue reading The Democrats Lost Last Week Because Of Lena Dunham
With two attacks on Canadian military personnel last week carried out by mentally-unstable transients in the name of global jihad, as well as a “hatchet attack” on NYPD officers in Queens carried out by another (likely) mentally ill transient, debate has broken out once again on the nature of the nexus between mental health and… Continue reading There’s A Lot Of Muddled Thinking About Terrorism, Motivation, Belief, And Such
Jonathan Chait, one of America’s foremost trolls, and hence one of America’s most influential political analysts, has written a widely-recommended apologia about football. Chait played as a young man, you see, and can speak from personal experience about football’s virtues. According to Chait, football provides boys with a means by which to channel their masculine… Continue reading Another Brief Note On The Idioicy Of Pro-Football Arguments
Because I keep hearing the same objections to my “Football is Irredeemably Depraved” thesis, I figured I would write a FAQ. This seems doubly timely given the recent revelations of a sexual torture regime at the “storied” Sayreville, NJ high school football program, which many are predictably explaining away by invoking the failed “a few… Continue reading Why Football At All Levels Must Be Immediately Abolished: A FAQ
Freddie deBoer has gone on a long, digressive diatribe about the evils of US foreign policy toward Muslim nations, with the presumed intention of arguing that these evils have been under-acknowledged by the tandem of Bill Maher and Sam Harris, in service of glorifying themselves. A few points. The resistance to acknowledging differences between Bill… Continue reading Breaking: Vapid Left-Liberal Posturing About Islam Still Vapid
MT: I think the major reason I was more appalled by the Democratic Convention was because at least with the Republicans, you know what you’re getting. RN: Oh yeah — everything was scripted, censored. It was like the Commissars were in charge. All the speakers had to be — to use the terrible term —… Continue reading Ralph Nader on Middle East Turmoil, Ron/Rand Paul, Netanyahu, DNC Militarism, and More
If you had asked me to conjure up the most damning possible catastrophe for Penn State, and potentially for American sports culture writ large, I would have given you something much more tame than the monstrous child rape scandal that has already destroyed Coach Joe Paterno’s legacy. And this is only based on the Grand… Continue reading Joe Paterno and the Depravity of American Football Culture
At GetReligion, Mollie Hemingway is so upset with outgoing New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s article on the GOP presidential candidates and their religious beliefs that she facetiously says the entire thing must be an exercise in satire. Keller’s column is so bad, Mollie writes, that “there must be some deeper meaning here.” Mollie… Continue reading Asking Questions About Religion of the Presidential Candidates