InstaPunk Returns

We, of course, were as offended as anyone by the President’s evident pleasure in  being depicted as Creator of the Universe. His later insistence that it was just a plate of food that happened to have blond hair was disingenuous to say the least. There. That’s out of the way. Putting aside all the bluster about blasphemy by secular observers whose relation to religion is probably a checkbox item, I believe there is a real story lurking in all the feigned outrage. a neon flash of double standards. It’s a media story, probably meaningless to those who aren’t ancient enough to have witnessed Obama’s first year in office. He was kind of everywhere, on every news interview program, every newspaper headline, and every magazine cover. (For the youngsters in the audience, there used to be things called magazines with words and pictures in them. It was a big deal to be featured on their covers.) If you weren’t a big Obama fan — and maybe even if you were — this got to be kind of sickening a...

This post is a pick-up from an entry at another website of mine from Good Friday, a couple days ago. Originally, I didn’t see it as having an audience here because I don’t want to overdo the archaeology of my own work and past personal experience. But looking back is part of the process of using insights past in new ways that illuminate the present and the challenges of the future. So I rethought the placement and offer it here without apologies. The one day a year devoted entirely to death. Got to wondering, what’s the single deadest thing in our culture right now? Deader even than journalism, the fine arts, literature, music in every genre, and the scientific method. My own answer is history. I’ve read and studied a lot of history, both in school and as an avocation. As an elementary school kid, I saved a Sunday supplement that put color pics of all 35 Presidents on one sheet of newsprint and I memorized the order. Before college I got AP credit in both American and European history....