On Tuesday, Angelina Jolie went public with the news that she had a preventative mastectomy and we can’t stop talking about her. Which is nothing new – talking about Angelina is an American pastime. We have opinions – strong opinions – about Brad and Jennifer and Billy Bob, about her international adoptions, her humanitarian causes and sometimes we even talk about her movies. We enjoy loving and hating her ...

Can politics serve the common good? That’s one of the big questions in Jim Wallis’s latest book On God’s Side. It is the right question to ask because American politics seems irredeemably mired in the blame game. I, along with many other young people, was hoping for a new kind of politics five years ago when we helped to elect Barack Obama. We thought we were making that change for a new kind of politics. Y ...

In his book On God’s Side: What Religion forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good, Jim Wallis calls out his fellow men: It’s a constant story line involving powerful men in politics, sports, business, and even religion: they behave with utter disregard for the dignity and humanity of women, using and abusing them at will, and somehow believe that they are entitled to do so…What has ...

Can you be a "good Christian" and support LGBT rights and same-sex marriage? When NBA player Jason Collins announced this week that he's gay -- the first active, professional American male athlete ever to do so -- the public reaction was overwhelmingly positive. ESPN on Jason Collins & Scripture Writers like ESPN's Tim Keown noted just how un-noteworthy and "normal" the announcement is. "It's a big worl ...

When is an unborn baby viable? The question is central to abortion law and to the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider. Dr. Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia for the murder of fetuses at his abortion clinic, forcing this question back to the political front burner: When is terminating the life of a fetus murder? According to this professional legal services website, abortion law in the U.S. i ...

On Saturday, the pop culture icon Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam while on a world tour. At the end of his visit to the museum, Bieber wrote a message in the guest book. His three-sentence message has become Big News. Sunday afternoon I checked my Huffington Post app and discovered this headline on the homepage, “Fury Erupts over Bieber’s Obnoxious Anne Frank Comment.” This morning t ...

Suzanne, As I lead us into this final installment of this blogalogue, I’m feeling a lot like our protagonist Bill. He never would have thought, under any circumstances, that he would have kissed his ex-girlfriend’s best friend. That would break so many social rules. And yet, put him in the right – or wrong – situation and…BOOM! He’s locking lips with the Forbidden One on the Kiss Cam at a Dodgers game. I’m ...

Adam, I’m so glad you challenged the idea that we and our desires are solid and impermeable as billiard balls. That idea is so ingrained in our culture of hyper-individualism that even Ira Glass, the host who brought us the tale of the Kiss Cam kiss, drew a completely unsupportable conclusion from his own story! He couldn’t grasp how it was possible that the accumulated gaze of 50,000 people could cause a b ...

Hey Suzanne, I love that story! I do think mimetic theory helps us understand what makes people do crazy things on TV, even things that are against their best interests. It reminds me of Fear Factor, that “reality show” where people would eat live bugs or animal parts. Who would ever do such a thing!?! And that’s the point. We watch these shows with a sense of moral superiority, as we think to ourselves, “T ...

Hey, Adam – Have you ever wondered what possesses people to do embarrassing things on camera? I heard a story on the radio this weekend about a guy doing something he swore he’d never do, all because of a Kiss Cam. I think this guy’s apparent self-betrayal is crying for mimetic analysis and I’d love to discuss it with you. Here’s the story that appeared on NPR’s This American Life with Ira Glass: Bill Langw ...