Ziegler’s Death of Free Speech

I had the radio on in the car one day, a couple months ago, when I caught part of an interview with a filmmaker named John Ziegler, who was promoting a film on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election called “Media Malpractice,” which he purported would demonstrate decisively just how in the tank the popular media was for Obama. I’m not sure a documentary is really necessary to make such a point, but the guy sounded funny, so I figured I’d check the local library system to see if there was a copy available I could request. They didn’t have a copy of the docum...

Celebrity Gossip and Moral Reasoning (part 1)

“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.” The preceding quote from Catherine Aird is always good for raising a laugh, and there’s a certain ring of truth to it. Having read the Bible, I’m well aware of the kind of role horrible warnings can play in human history. But any real estate agent will tell you that location is everything. Translation: context matters – a lot. Ty Burr wrote an Ideas piece published in the Boston Sunday Globe this past weekend that I found quite disturbing...