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Bad News

In Bob Dole’s remarkably inept campaign for the presidency, he could nonetheless count on one surefire applause line to rouse even the most dispirited audience: an attack on “the liberal media.” (He made a particular target of the New York Times.) Dole obviously enjoyed sticking it to the . . . . Continue Reading »

God, Man, and H. L. Mencken

Mencken: A Lifeby fred hobsonrandom house, 650 pages, $35 H. L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor.edited with an introduction by jonathan yardleyknopf, 450 pages, $30 H. L. Mencken, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work . edited by fred hobson, vincent fitzpatrick, and bradford . . . . Continue Reading »

Religion’s Bad Press

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. –Alice in Wonderland Are journalists irreligious, and does this affect their coverage of religious news? For some years a number of media critics have been . . . . Continue Reading »

A Roman Cautionary Tale

On July 6,1991, the Italian Jesuit biweekly, La Civilta Cattolica, published a lengthy editorial arguing that the just war tradition should no longer be considered normative in Catholic thinking about the ethics of war and peace. Those familiar with the ideological peregrinations of many members of . . . . Continue Reading »

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