Sheryl Sandberg on Falsity of Media's End-of-Men Meme: Men Still Rule

Sheryl Sandberg writes that even as the mainstream media recurrently create a faux (and entirely false) "end-of-men" meme, men still rule the world and the women's rights movement has stalled.

I'll say: take a look at the faces of American's ten greediest citizens at present, as compiled by Sam Pizzigati at Common Dreams.  Notice anything those ten faces of egregiously greedy and power-hungry citizens of the U.S. have in common?

John Dominic Crossan on Angels and Christmas Narratives: Christ or Caesar

"Christ Before Pilate," School of Hieronymus Bosch, 16th-Century, Princeton University Art Museum

Noted scripture scholar John Dominic Crossan writes at Huffington Post about the infancy narratives of the Christian gospels and their use of angels as directors of "narrative traffic" in the various infancy narratives.  He points out that in the Lucan narrative, angels give the new-born messiah titles parallel to those applied to the Roman emperor--but with a radically different vision of how both bring peace to the world:

In the News: GOP Primary, Catholic Right, Bully Bill Donohue, and NOM

In the news right now:

At Talk to Action, Fred Clarkson reprises former Republican insider Mike Lofgren's Truthout essay from this past September, about which I blogged some time back.  Fred notes that Lofgren's rueful truth-telling about what has gone wrong with the Republican party as it has sold its soul to theocrat zealots intent on dismantling American democracy is now viral, and is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding why the current Republican primary season is playing out as it's playing out.

Remembering: Anniversary of My Father's Death

Today's the anniversary of my father's death.  He died in the wee hours just as December 12th turned into the 13th in 1969, as a result of injuries he had sustained in an auto accident a few days earlier.  If I'm not mistaken, the picture I've provided above is his college graduation picture, though I can't remember clearly whether it was taken for his undergraduate graduation or when he finished law school--the former, I believe.

Addendum: Guadalupe and Voices for the Voiceless--J. Michael Walker

This is a brief addendum to what I published earlier today in commemoration of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  At the time that I made my previous posting, I hadn't yet run across a marvelous online gallery of artist J. Michael Walker's images of Guadalupe--one of which I chose to illustrate my previous posting, but from an article discussing Walker's work that I had run across before I discovered his gallery.

Guadalupe, the Magnificat, and Giving Voice to the Voiceless

Today's the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  As I explained in a posting about Guadalupe last year, this has long been a day with special significance for me, because my father died late on the Guadalupe feast day in 1969.  In addition, the themes of this particular Marian devotion--the indigenous face the Virgin Mary shows in her appearance on the hill of Tenochtitlan, her preferential love for the wretched of the earth, of whom she is one in the cult of Guadalupe: these appeal to me powerfully.

Now You See It, Now You Don't: The USCCB Lobby and the Contraception Shell Game

I'm confused.  When the tempest in a teapot about the proposed HHS guidelines requiring Catholic institutions to offer contraceptive coverage in their health care plans started, Michael Sean Winters began writing,