apartheid

Podcast: America is splitting, says trending Atlantic essay. This is news? Actually, it's old news

Podcast: America is splitting, says trending Atlantic essay. This is news? Actually, it's old news

In case you haven’t heard, controversial Supreme Court decisions are causing dangerous divisions in the United States of America.

Yes, I know. If you’re old enough you have been hearing people say that since 1973. And there is, of course, an element of truth in these statements, then and now. SCOTUS has become the only branch of government that matters when it comes to forcing one half of America to accept the legal, cultural and moral changes sought by the other half. Study several decades worth of presidential elections.

However, when it comes to mainstream media coverage, not all controversial Supreme Court decisions are created equal. If you have followed Twitter since the fall of Roe v. Wade, you know that large numbers of professionals in major newsrooms are freaking out.

Is this “new” news or old news? Truth is, arguments about red America (“Jesusland”) and blue America (“The United States of Canada”) have been getting louder and louder for several decades. This was the topic that dominated (once again) this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on this Ronald Brownstein essay at The Atlantic: “America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good.”

What’s interesting about this piece is that it says America’s divisions have nothing to do with traditional forms of religion, culture, the First Amendment or the U.S. Constitution (especially Federalism). No, this is a war about racism, period. SCOTUS has been seized by the enemies of reason and freedom and, thus, America’s future is at risk. This is a concept with serious implications for news coverage.

IT MAY BE TIME to stop talking about “red” and “blue” America. That’s the provocative conclusion of Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions and the chair of the Analyst Institute, a collaborative of progressive groups that studies elections. In a private newsletter that he writes for a small group of activists, Podhorzer recently laid out a detailed case for thinking of the two blocs as fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space.

“When we think about the United States, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of Red and Blue people,” Podhorzer writes. “But in truth, we have never been one nation. We are more like a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality.”

The bottom line:

To Podhorzer, the growing divisions between red and blue states represent a reversion to the lines of separation through much of the nation’s history. The differences among states in the Donald Trump era, he writes, are “very similar, both geographically and culturally, to the divides between the Union and the Confederacy.


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United Church of Christ: A really, really big show in eyes of New York Times (updated)

Hello almost elderly GetReligion readers: How many of you out there remember the Ed Sullivan Show? Well, you may recall that his variety-show broadcasts always opened -- even if the top act consisted of people spinning plates on tall sticks -- when the host's pledge that he would be offering viewers a "really, really big show," with that final word sounding rather like "shoe."

In a strange way, that's kind of like the annual parade of summer meetings by America's various religious denominations. The agenda always looks like a big deal -- especially when arguments about sex are on the docket, as they have been for decades.

One way or another, religious leaders always manage to find a way to coat their actions in doctrinal fog, allowing the show to continue the following summer. This frustrates editors no end, especially in this age of tight travel budgets, a squeeze that for religion-beat pros began back in the mid-1980s. I'm not joking about that.

America's liberal Christian denominations have also been known to make headlines -- especially in The New York Times -- by taking prophetic actions on another hot-button issue. That would be economic or political sanctions against Israel.

One of the cutting-edge crews on this issue is the leadership of the United Church of Christ, the bleeding-edge liberal flock (remember those famous and very edgy television ads?) that includes, in its membership, President Barack Obama.

This brings us to another Times report about the ongoing debates about Israel. Read the top of this 850-word story carefully:


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The Methodist roots of Nelson Mandela

A giant banner outside the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg — which I visited during a 2009 reporting trip to South Africa — uses those terms to describe Nelson Mandela, although many more certainly could be applied.


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