Last November, KSTP TV in Minneapolis made themselves a laughingstock. They ran a news segment claiming that Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges had “flashed a gang sign” with an unidentified, faceless, African American man. The “gang sign?” She and voting rights activist Navell Gordon had posed together, pointing at one another! Politicians and everyone else point […]
Little Celebrations #2: Liturgical Quotables
“Alone we are tiny before the hugeness of the world, brief sparks against time’s immensity, lost before the unfathomable depth of the universe. United in courage and faithfulness, we reach beyond personal limitations. Intimate in spirit, we become greater in strength, deeper in joy, broader in wisdom. United as a living communion, we finally reach […]
An Old Man Ponders Rape Culture
I was a shy teenager. I still had a full dose of male hormones, though. By the time I got to high school, I found the “opposite sex” painfully attractive. In 1966 at West High School in Salt Lake City–a more virginal time and place–I knew all the tricks for looking up skirts and down blouses […]
America’s Most Beloved Sexual Assault
This photo appeared in the New York Times 70 years ago, taken by U.S. Navy photographer Victor Jorgenson. He titled it, “Kissing the War Goodbye.” A week later, Life Magazine published a shot taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, from a better angle. Life blew Eisenstaedt’s photo up to fill a full page. On the facing page was […]
Respect for Sandra Bland
A year ago Aug. 8, Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson. Not quite a year later, a Texas officer escalated a tiny traffic infraction in the exact same reckless way, culminating in police-on-black violence and then the black person’s death. This time it was a woman, Sandra Bland. She […]