As students, you should expect to feel uncomfortable about your beliefs as a matter of course.… Read the rest
Madeleine Bunting is Cross at the Pope
Sep 18th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOffend, offence, offended, Islamophobe, outrage, insensitive, difference, oh dear.… Read the rest
Karen Armstrong is Cross at the Pope
Sep 18th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOffended, offensive, Islamophobia, western, medieval, Danish cartoon crisis, oh dear.… Read the rest
Junk Politics
Sep 17th, 2006 4:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonNo I’m still here, I haven’t run off with the minstrels. It’s just that there’s this deadline for TPM (The Philosophers’ Mag, you know) and I’ve been taken up with that. But I was reading an old Harper’s the other day, from November 2003, and found a lively article by Benjamin DeMott on ‘Junk Politics’ (excerpted from an eponymous book published a couple of months later). It’s not online, unfortunately, so I’ll give you an extract or two.
… Read the restThe case is that both the essential planks and the elaborating tropes of today’s junk politics are troublingly underexamined, yet they’ve been functioning for some time as major agents of public confusion…Junk politics introduces new qualifications for high political office…It tilts courage
Taslima Nasrin on Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Sep 17th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Ayaan’s questions may not be new, but they need to be reiterated, especially by women.’… Read the rest
Secretive MPAA Has Power, no Accountability
Sep 17th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonViolence is fine, lesbian sex unfine; what’s that about, and why are these people anonymous?… Read the rest
FCC Questioned About ‘Lost’ Report
Sep 17th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFCC hides report that says media consolidation is bad for tv news, says dog ate homework.… Read the rest
Booker Shortlist Saves Bookies a Fortune
Sep 17th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFavourites dropped, list full of young unknowns.… Read the rest
Argument Over Gibson ‘Passion’ Inspires Strangling
Sep 17th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMan upset by violent crucifixion scenes, so throttles wife.… Read the rest
On Jahanbegloo and openDemocracy
Sep 16th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAnthony Barnett cites greater responsibility on those who seek to encourage ‘velvet revolutions’.… Read the rest
Bush Goes to Congress to Lobby for Torture
Sep 16th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWay to seize the moral high ground.… Read the rest
The US Christian Right Is Only a Little Scary
Sep 16th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSays Peter Steinfels, who writes a column on ‘religion and ethics’ in The New York Times.… Read the rest
Peter Singer Interviewed
Sep 16th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe issue is suffering.… Read the rest
Fuss About Pope’s Speech Continues
Sep 16th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson24-hour news, with comments taken out of context, disseminated and recycled, does its bit. … Read the rest
Andrew Brown on Religion as Collective Identity
Sep 15th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAlmost all the more loathsome attitudes of the OT will actually promote group cohesion and success.… Read the rest
9/11 Not a Wake-up Call but a Brutal Sedative
Sep 15th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe most superpower became a sleepwalking giant only half aware of its surroundings and oblivious to itself.… Read the rest
Crooked Timber Watches Euston
Sep 15th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonInteresting comments from Jon Pike, Oliver Kamm, Marc Mulholland.… Read the rest
Oriana Fallaci 1929-2006
Sep 15th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonKnown for her uncompromising interviews with world leaders; recently for criticism of Islam.… Read the rest
The NYTBR blows it again
Sep 14th, 2006 8:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonAlan Wolfe wrote a very, erm, unsatisfactory review of Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? in the NY Times book review on Sunday. We could just slap it into that largish collection we’re starting to build up of Weirdly, Almost Perversely Bad Reviews from the NYTBR – there’s the one William Vollman did of a book on Nietzsche that Brian Leiter ripped up one side and down the other, there’s the Leon Wieseltier one of Dennett’s new book that Brian also took issue with, there was that Wonkette mess on Katha Pollitt’s new book that I was faintly critical of, and now this.
It starts horridly – “Bérubé comes off as spunky, likable and anything … Read the rest
The Fourth
Sep 14th, 2006 7:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonI found the old comment on Ates and the one on Homa’s win because I went rummaging through last September’s comments to find out when B&W’s birthday is – to find I’m late again. I was late last year and I’m late again. I always think it’s later, because it didn’t really get going until October, I think, but no matter, it was born on September 10 so that’s it’s birthday. It’s four years old. That’s old, man. Four years old and still going strong. Toot toot.… Read the rest