The Media’s Political Narrative Default for Tragedies + Today’s Digest

Our daily rundown of the articles from around the web that we feel our readers would enjoy and appreciate. We hope to highlight the best of what’s around.

Public Square Bulletin recommends:

Political Narratives Are the Media’s Default in Times of Tragedy

Gerald Baker—Wall Street Journal

We often look at the way the media’s coverage impacts the contours of our public discourse. In Gerry Baker’s latest column, he looks at the instinct to turn every news story almost immediately into a debate about which government programs should be started to address the problem.

An Honest Look at the Consequences of Overturning Roe v. Wade

Jessica Keating—Church Life Journal

The director of the Notre Dame Office of Human Dignity and Life Initiatives takes a tour through the various political effects of Roe v. Wade ending, looking at the best polling data on the intricacies of abortion opinion and extrapolating what the next steps might be.

The Self is a Problem

Jake Meador—Mere Orthodoxy

Where does the modern desire to construct the self come from? Could it begin with the rejection of ontological density that took place during colonialism? Mere Orthoxy’s editor-in-chief makes a provocative if unexpected argument about the roots of our contemporary identity crisis.

The Sermon of the Wolf

Eleanor Parker—Plough

This inspiring tale focuses on how one leader, looking at an apocalyptic Viking invasion facing his people nevertheless found hope through self-improvement.

To Build a Pro-Natal Culture, Don’t Overlook Maternal Mental Health

Amber Lapp—Institute of Family Studies

Do conversations about building a pro-natal culture too often fall to abstractions? Are we tackling the “earthy concreteness” of the struggles and difficulties? Amber Lapp suggests bridging the gap between the abstract and the practical may be the key to building a durable cultural shift.

On Key

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LA Times Features Public Square Magazine

Several of the folks from Public Square Magazine were interviewed recently by Meredith Blake at the LA Times. She highlighted the ways that Latter-day Saints have reacted to the show Under the Banner of Heaven. Blake did an excellent job of representing our takes on the show. But we did have a couple of observations about the show mentioned in the interview that inevitably couldn’t make it, so I wanted to add those here for those who were curious. Jeb Pyre, the fictional detective portrayed by Andrew Garfield, is the main character viewers see the story through. But none of the four people being interviewed felt like Pyre was a good depiction of a thoughtful Latter-day Saint. Pyre is depicted as a well-established, thoughtful, fully-committed member of the Latter-day Saint community, yet the way he reacted to the information he learned felt less like the way an adult would respond to learning new things, and more like an adolescent response. Pyre’s character did resonate with some of us, from when we were teenagers. His character feels like it was written by someone who left the Church when they were sixteen, and remained mentally stuck in that place, and then tried to project those thoughts into a grown man, hoping to give them more validity. Consequently, the character feels flimsy. One of the other major observations from the interview was that we worried that the Church felt like it was part of the problem in the Lafferty murder when at the time, most members of the Church felt that they were part of the victims. These two men who had recently been excommunicated came back for revenge. In fact, the stake president was on their hit list. It seemed to place most Latter-day Saints on the opposite side of this issue than they felt at the time. The show’s writer, for his part, responded to these by engaging in the kind of motte and bailey techniques Cassandra Hedelius recently did a good job of identifying for us here at Public Square. Thanks again to Meredith Blake for her thoughtful interview.    

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