As of 3:00 this morning, I have completed my very first semester of my Masters of Divinity. So now, I have a week and a half before it all starts up again. The next few days will be filled with some nice relaxation. Well, the evenings will be, anyway.Dec. 14, 2006 — An interesting online milestone occurred in November: MySpace overtook Yahoo as the No. 1 most-viewed site on the Internet, according to comScore Media Metrix.
The numbers are staggering: There were 38.7 billion — yes, billion — page views for MySpace versus 38.1 billion for Yahoo, and again, that was just for November.
Here's the rest...There are plenty of possible reasons for what Robertson's spokeswoman referred to as his "apology". Belated civility, humility and public-relations savvy come to mind. Robertson may also have been heeding criticism back in the States, some of the most scathing from fellow evangelical leaders who suggested that he is now a marginal figure—despite a television audience reported to be 825,000 strong. Richard Land, a key figure in the powerful and conservative Southern Baptist Convention, pronounced himself "appalled."
But equally crucial in jump-starting the preacher's path to apology may have been a sharp response by the Israeli government and the attendant threat to his leadership in a project he has worked hard to realize. Robertson, a leader in the evangelical branch that supports Israel's existence as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies anticipating Christ's return—hence his dismay at its "division"—has many interests there. Most notably, he is collaborating with the Israeli government and a group of evangelicals to build a $50 million Evangelical "heritage center" on the Sea of Galilee. Israel was to provide the land and infrastructure for the project, leaving the funding and the center's details to the evangelicals, of whom Robertson is the best-known. The arrangement is unusual, says Zev Chafets, who is now writing a book about the relationship between Jews, evangelicals and Israel and is a former spokesman for the late premier Menachem Begin. "In the past," he notes, "Israel has been extremely reluctant to turn prime land over to Christian organizations."
If I were God—which I’m not, but if I were—I would be pretty annoyed that Falwell and Robertson keep blaming me for everything. I would probably start unleashing all sorts of crazy stuff on the world just for spite. I’m talking never-before-seen catastrophes here. Things that would make what I did to Egypt with those ten plagues look like another fun episode of Romper Room. I would bring back Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show and give her a lifetime contract, and let her live till 402. I would turn black people into white people and white people into black people, just to shake things up. I would pee on whole cities and not wash my hands, so that whenever the Hand of God worked through your life, it would be the hand that I used to pee and didn’t wash afterwards. And I would turn cherries into little blood capsules, so that Coca Cola had to reprint its Cherry Coke labels and change the name to Coke Blood.
As a happily married man, I have been troubled by the oft-stated myth that the institution of wedlock has never been central to the African-American heritage.
Unfortunately, this view has permeated the African-American community and society at large. Now, it may be single-handedly holding back blacks in their pursuit of social, economic and educational progress.
According to testimony given last fall to a Senate subcommittee by Ron Haskins of The Brookings Institution, from 1970 to 2001, the overall marriage rate declined 17% but 34% for blacks. The overall rate for out-of-wedlock births is 33% compared with 70% for blacks.
Schwartz said the issue was personal choice and freedom. "Don't make me out that I like smoking, because I don't," said Schwartz, an ex-smoker. "Bar and restaurant workers have a choice of where to work, and patrons have a choice of where to patronize."
The longest debate was over whether to exempt the city's eight hookah bars, where people smoke tobacco out of a shared pipe. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) argued that hookah bars should be exempt because tobacco use is the central focus of their business.
Schwartz then jumped on Graham. "If it's all in the guise of protecting worker health, why would you want to kill off the hookah bar workers?" she said to laughs in the packed council chambers. "The hypocrisy is just astounding."
The hiring of Gibbs was almost analogous to the traveling salesman coming home to a filthy house and the kids spoon-feeding the family mutt peanut butter. Order needed to be restored. Gibbs returned the way he left -- a stately, bespectacled grandfather, preaching unity, resolve and just plain good sense. He weathered the first prolonged criticism of his career last season, finishing a disappointing 6-10 and raising real doubt over whether a coach in his mid-60s had completely grasped the nuances of the modern game.
