Annoyances In The News

I have to admit that i get really annoyed by how the press covers "evangelicals". Take this lovely gem Obama discusses AIDS epidemic with Orange County evangelicals

It goes without saying that AIDS is important and that in Africa, it's a major problem. No arguement here on that, but why is it that whenever the press covers evangelicals and social justice, it's almost always with a sniff. Take this example "The pastor, dressed in blue jeans, cited the millions of African children from families afflicted with HIV." What does the pastor wearing blue jeans have to do with African people with HIV??? Do we say things like "Nancy Pelosi, wearing a suit, announced her candidate for speaker of the senate"?

Or even better "The senator did not shy away from remarks that might have discomfited his audience..." Has this guy not taken a look at recent evangelical publications? Um, hello, postmordernism, Gen-X ministry, renewed interest in social justice?? Evangelicalism is not the same thing as Falwell or Pentecostalism!! Why can't they send someone to cover these stories who has a clue as to what's really going on within american christianity and can tell a boomer evangelical from a millenial youthworker, who probably sports at least one tattoo or a piercing, if not both! So Obama speaking to a group of "evangelicals" about AIDS is not really that shocking. In fact i'm pretty certain that a fairly sizeable chunk of them agree with Obama and Rick Warren (after all they all buy his books!).

But wait there's more!

I hate being sick and I hate it when sick people infect me. Of course if i infect them, that's ok...right? The San Jose Mercury ran a story titled Growing problem: Sick workers who don't stay home

What's funny, is that everyone agrees that this is a problem, but they could only find one company willing to compensate their workers enough so they keep their sick selves home...Google! Seems like a no brainer to me, if you want sick employees to stay home, don't penalize them for choosing to stay home. Right? Course i could get into the competitive nature of business and the breaking of the social contract, but i'll save that for later.