Japanese Comics and Cultural Economics

A few weeks ago I was listening to a very engaging American RadioWorks documentary, rebroadcast from last October, “Japan’s Pop Power.” The show focused on the increasing cultural imports to America coming from Japan, which by some estimations will soon dwarf industries typically associated with American-Japanese trade like automobiles, technology, and electronics. Continue Reading...

Media Bias and the ‘Fairness Doctrine’

The confluence of two recent headline-making stories has the potential to impact the practice of free speech, political or otherwise, in this country. First, let’s discuss the question of media bias that has surrounded the offer made by Rupert Murdoch to purchase the Wall Street Journal. Continue Reading...

Media, politics, and Christianity in America

On this Good Friday, CNN commentator Roland Martin delivers a well-needed corrective to the errors of both the religious Right and Left. It’s good to see that he doesn’t confuse action on poverty and divorce as primarily political but rather a social issues. Continue Reading...

Fumbling with fundamentalism

One of the religion beat’s favorite canards is to implicitly equate what it calls American Christian “fundamentalism” with what it calls Muslim or Islamic “fundamentalism.” After all, both are simply species of the genus. Continue Reading...