A year spinning vinyl records when I was a disc jockey in college won’t let me take Pope Francis seriously, because Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Jackson Browne were more coherent in two songs than the new papal encyclical letter…
You almost have to admire the talent for backhanding happiness shared by producers and editors at CNN. When an event celebrated by conservatives pops into the news cycle, Jeff Zucker’s employees inevitably respond with variations on themes first sounded by…
Now that we’re slaloming into the last quarter of an especially grumpy election year, it’s time to laminate my happy warrior membership card and write a “get off my lawn” manifesto. Rush Limbaugh is one inspiration for this resolve, and…
Alfred Lord Tennyson was right: We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven. Sadly, we do not have the consolation of being able to claim that we are “one equal temper of heroic hearts,”…
When a spokesperson for my North Carolina county took to social media to announce what Gov. Roy Cooper’s office called “Phased Reopening Guidance for Faith-Based Communities,” a donnybrook broke out among my neighbors. “Stay well and be kind,” one woman…
Every writer out there can learn something from reading the work of his or her fellows, but when the mass of a polarizing election pulls even apolitical work into its gravity well, avoiding ambushes becomes a challenge. It wasn’t until…
The local fish wrap recently published a hit piece on evangelical Christians by a contributing writer who used to be an investigative journalist for 60 Minutes. A forensic look at that essay, “The political challenge for NC evangelicals,” suggests that…
The Washington Post headline would have passed me by had it not been regurgitated by the news aggregator on my phone. Instead it showed up like Cousin Eddie crashing Christmas vacation: “Trump lashes out at impeachment inquiry in fiery news…
The Raleigh News & Observer contributor J. Peder Zane is a piñata who lends a patina of bipartisanship to a progressive editorial page where other writers claim the moral high ground. In an opinion column published July 31 and updated since,…