This is the 500th post on How Did We Get Into This Mess? I started the blog as a place to dump essays that I couldn’t sell, as I was new to freelancing in May of 2013, and caught up in the rush of public writing. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and pitched and…
Open a new browser window and do an image search for boys. Here’s what I got. All but two images in the first four rows are, in fact, boys (there are two adult male actors in row three). Now do the same thing for the word “girls.” It’s breasts and butts and lace and sexualized…
In America, an English-language Jesuit magazine, Mary Berth Werdel (a prof at Fordham) has a powerful essay about church and her autistic son. She begins with diagnosis and all its complexities, a story I’ve heard many times from many parents (which doesn’t make this story less important or well-written!), but I really want to focus…
There’s a new piece in the New York Times, by Susan Jacoby, on the Jewish victims of the Crusades. It notes that a lot of the debate in public spaces has focused on Christians versus Muslims, but not the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland in the 1090s and, more broadly, Crusade-related persecutions elsewhere. That’s…
This appears to be Grade-A policing…restraint/stabilization until action/force is unavoidable. http://t.co/DxlzDLo1bw @Lollardfish ^lh — The Virtus Group (@TheVirtusGroup) February 7, 2015 I write a lot about bad killings and ugly use-of-force incidents. I then get asked, “well what should the cops have done?” which is a fair question. One of the people I rely on…
Do You Like Me? Check Yes __ No ___ I reject binary epistemology ___ #AcademicValentines — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) February 14, 2015 More later. Writing.
The problem isn’t religion. The problem is ideology. Every time I write about religion and violence, which is pretty often in general and regularly over the last week, I get a lot of bigoted anti-religion responses (and plenty of other hostile responses from believers, but let’s put those to the side for now). To which…
I’ve been meaning to write about the story of Leo Forrest for a few days now. The gist of the story ACCORDING TO THE FATHER is that his father (Samuel) got media attention based on the claim that Leo’s mother (Ruzan) demanded Samuel choose between Leo and her. Leo has Down syndrome. Ruzan, according to…
A number of conservative Crusades scholars, some people I consider friends, have told me how wrong my Guardian piece is. They have not, though, really told me why. I thought I would boil my piece down to six core arguments and number them, in hopes of receiving better feedback. Maybe a real discussion could break…
In an earlier post, I talked about crusades and memory, linking to my Guardian piece and talking about the meaning of the violence linked to Crusading. I suggested that historians might debate whether a given battle or moment of violence happened, or whether it happened because of religious hatred for “the other,” versus some other…