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 ...

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 ...

The advertisers for Go Daddy won and they know it. We have no one to blame but ourselves. The Go Daddy commercial is a product of an American culture obsessed with relationships that revolve around prohibitions, double binds, and scandals... ...

It was 1:30 am when I heard her voice. My daughter was crying. But I couldn’t get my tired self out of bed. “Just wait a few minutes,” I thought. “If she’s still crying, then get up.” She fell back asleep within two minutes, but I did not. I was wide awake. Apparently, the invisible nurse who lives in my house decided to shoot me up with her invisible intravenous needle filled with invisible Red Bull. I was ...

Last night someone asked me if I’d heard about the Kristen Stewart sex scandal. Unfortunately, I had. Because I check my email. I go through yahoo.com to get to my email, in part because yahoo.com is a quick way to catch up on news. Apparently, the folks at yahoo.com thought the story, with the headline “Stewart Cheats with Director,” was news. Stewart, as you may know, plays the lead character in the Twili ...

This is a tragedy.  It is one of the great sorrows in my life.  With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more. - Joe Paterno It is hard not to take the Penn State scandal personally.  I have two sons - ages four and two, and a daughter - age 1.  They are three of the most important people in my life.  I’m also a youth pastor.  It may sound hokey, but I don’t care, I believe God has put my children a ...

In her book How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior, Laura Kipnis describes why we all like a good scandal.  The influence of Rene’ Girard and mimetic theory are apparent when she writes: As scandal reveals, the social world is in an eternal search for scapegoats.  This makes it a brutal place, to be sure, but the scapegoat process is intrinsic to every social group.  Societies have always purif ...