This is the latest news from the Dalai Lama’s website.

An interesting release as we (Australia) prepare to play host to His Holiness in the coming months.

Also of interest is the whole debacle about which (if any) major Australian political leaders will meet with the Dalai Lama during his Antipodean visit reported here. Frankly a bit of a sad, and indeed embarrassing episode for Australia. Yet again we see PM Howard bowing to powerful world leaders above his own morals and Rudd simply riding on the wave of public opinion, forgetting that he actually possesses a brain of his own.

Memorable Quotes:

“I had a student ask me, “Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?” Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed”

“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”

“It appears that America’s anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening”

“[homosexuals are] brute beasts…part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven.”

“Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America”

Not to mention the famous Tinky-Winky controversy

Ah, what a sad loss for the world…

Romney was, until recently Governor of Massachusetts and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints having previously served as a LDS missionary in France for two and a half years.

The article can be found by clicking here.

The main news values for this story are:

* Currency – The upcoming US presidential election in 2008 and the selection of candidates for the parties. Also the question of whether America will vote in another Republican president

* Impact – Whoever is elected as the next president of the USA is going to have great impact on the entire world (and indeed much of the universe through their space program) and as such, what the possible candidates believe in is fairly important information to consider

* Prominence – US presidential candidates are generally prominent people already, or soon become so. As Governor of Massachusetts, amongst other high-rating achievements, Romney is quite well-known, particularly in the USA

* Human Interest – Gives the audience a bit of an inside look into the life of the man, creating interest in his beliefs and his ‘human side’

from SMH May 3, 2007

Family feud can’t bruise the new, abtastic Britney
Jacqueline Maley
May 3 2007

BRITNEY’S SPEARS’S “people” must be among the busiest “people” in the world.

They put out more public relations grassfires than the Rural Fire Service in January and they are constantly confiscating her drinks and children (often she has one in each hand). Now they are forced to manage the fallout of an ugly intra-family war that makes Joan Crawford’s brood look like the Waltons.

According to this week’s gossip mags, the pop star has been disowned by her family, although Britney herself would only be aware of this if she reads the New York Post, to whom her mother and father released a statement admonishing their daughter. They say she is out of control, a bad mother to her two young sons.

To be sure, such Britney slander is hard to countenance, and would be impossible to believe were it not for Woman’s Day, which gives us a sort of Britney timeline in pictures. It confirms she has not been seen with her children since February 13, and that Britney’s dress sense has not been improved since her stint in rehab. (Mind you, who says you need trousers to stay sober?)

Britney’s riposte comes, rightfully, in OK!, which seems to have entirely reprinted a press release supplied by her “people”. The mag says that “Britney is back to her fighting weight” and is “taking control” after months of uncertainty. The mag even alleges Britters is looking “abtastic”, which is an adjective that could probably have gone without being invented.

OK!‘s services to journalism do not end there. Next comes an interview and photo shoot with David Beckham. Becks has been the subject of a stream of negative articles since he announced he was leaving Europe to play for a Los Angeles football team.

The knockers say that going to the US to play soccer is rather like going to Germany to salsa dance, and that Becks is only doing it for the outlandishly huge amounts of money. That is not all.

There have also been stories about the fragility of his marriage to dear Victoria, who fears calories the way the most of us fear death or dark cellars. It has even been whispered that they sleep in separate beds.

Enter OK! to counter the bad press in a long and saliva-soaked article that hails David as “everything we want in a hero – he’s one of the world’s greatest sportsmen, has looks, style and charisma in spades, and he’s a doting husband and dad”. He is also labelled a “hair oracle”, which is presumably meant as a compliment.

The magazine talks mostly about his hair, but does find time to devote a few sentences to his football career – assuring readers that “although [Beckham's Los Angeles move] is probably the biggest deal a footballer has ever signed, David is at pains to stress cash isn’t his motivation”.

The hair oracle just wants to make a difference, to spread the gift of soccer to the hitherto soccer-deprived population of Los Angeles. He is like the Angelina Jolie of ball sports. But with better hair.

Also in the mag is an interview with Mel B, aka Scary Spice, who had been largely ignored by the world until she was impregnated by the comedian Eddie Murphy. He then dumped her during a television interview and expressed scepticism over the paternity of the baby. It’s basically your Liz Hurley/Steve Bing plotline redux.

Scary Spice has now had the baby, a girl, and the obligatory gushing photo shoot has been duly shot, although this time with a “Dear God, I hope the father of my poor bastard-child sees this and gives me a chunk of his sizeable fortune”-twist.

As a form of passive-aggressive gossip-mag communication, it is both bold and beautiful. Britney’s people should take note.

Anyway, the article I’m writing about here was done as a “SPECIAL HERALD REPORT”: i.e. a series of a couple of features and an online forum. These were all really interesting, especially as there’s such a prevalence of negative stories about Islam in the media. It was refreshing and really informative to see inside the ordinary lives of modern day moderate Muslims and how life is for them.

When I was looking up the online versions of these stories, I came across a page on their series of stories, The Face of Islam.

The specific front-page article which drew me to write about this, Islam in Australia: a diverse society finds a new voice is listed on this page, along with many other reports.

Across all of these stories run a few main news values:

* Currency – the issue of Islam in Australia has been pretty constant and huge in the media, especially since 9/11. With the 2005 Cronulla riots bringing tensions between Islamic Australians and racist bogan Australians to the forefront of media attention, thus these moderate (OK, left, if you insist) articles bring a very different attitude to the public

* Human Interest – investigating the human side of publicly Islamic figures such as Sheikh Taj El Din Al-Hilaly

* Conflict – not so much in the reporting, although this is inevitably a part of some stories, but I think for many readers Islam immediately connotes WARNING: FUNDAMENTALIST TERRORISTS ON THE LOOSE!!!  therefore, articles which dispute this notion of the Islamic faith are immediately controversial

Check out this one while you’re at it – a great article from PR Newswire

Unlikely Places Americans Find God this Easter

This was an interesting article appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, cashing in on the timeliness of Easter and current interest in Christianity due to the widespread celebration of this Christian festival. In the print edition of the paper, it appeared as a huge feature, headlining the News Review section for those familiar with the format of the weekend herald.

Highlights of the article below. For full text, follow this link.

‘JESUS asked his mates to stay with him, but they got pissed and fell asleep, the bloody bastards.” As an account of the disciples’ failure in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus was crucified, it may lack the poetry and majesty of the King James Bible. But the 22 street people in a dingy city basement get the point powerfully.

This rather loose Bible reading from Matthew 26 by a young church worker, Virginia Moebus, is part of a weekly gathering in Credo Cafe, run by Urban Seed in Melbourne, a Baptist Church outreach to homeless and drug-addicted city dwellers.

Most of these people would never set foot in church, but they come faithfully to the gathering, followed by the free lunch served every day. “People see it like their living room, especially if they are on the street. It’s somewhere they can come and sit down and be warm and safe,” Moebus says.

But it’s more than that.

It is solace, spiritual comfort, connection. They sing confidently during the service, accompanied by an extremely competent bongo drummer, and talk freely about the Bible reading.

They are part of an extraordinarily diverse and fast-growing Christian movement catering to the multitudes who reject the institutional church but want to follow its founder, Jesus Christ.

So far, so good. But wait and see what the venerable King Jensenite has to say on the matter…

At the 2004 Anglican general assembly, the Sydney Archbishop, Peter Jensen, spoke about reaching niche groups reluctant to go to church. “There’s a group of lawyers who meet every Tuesday evening in a Sydney cafe for Bible study,” he said. “They don’t know they’re Anglicans yet – we’ll tell them when the time comes.”

Before reading this article, I may have strongly disagreed with some of Jensen’s proclamations, but respected his considerable intellect and passion. Now I have been forced to have second thoughts…

OK, news values, here we come:

* Timeliness – Um, Easter

* Novelty – Whilst not an entirely novel idea (The early Christian church was started with small meetings around meals in people’s homes) this would still be considered by most as a pretty unusual way of worshipping

* Proximity – it’s from the Sydney Morning Herald and about what’s going on in Sydney. Voila.

Imam leads first prayer by Muslim cleric on Texas Senate floor

AUSTIN — A Dallas-area imam became the first Muslim cleric to offer the Texas Senate’s daily prayer on Wednesday.

The visit raised the eyebrows of a conservative talk-show host turned senator who questioned the religious leader’s background and the timing of his visit.

Sen. Dan Patrick stepped off the floor for Imam Yusuf Kavakci’s prayer, in which he recited a passage from the Koran in Arabic and read an English translation.

“I surely believe that everyone should have the right to speak, but I didn’t want my attendance on the floor to appear that I was endorsing that,” said Patrick, a freshman Republican from Houston.

Patrick later gave a short speech on the Senate floor in which he called Kavakci’s prayer an “extraordinary moment” that underscores that America is a nation “so tolerant of others we bend over backwards to allow others to pray as they wish.”

He pointed out that other countries would not do the same for Christians and Jews, who are observing Easter and Passover this week.

Kavakci said he can’t understand why anyone would have a problem with his prayer or with the text he chose, which he said spoke generically about the mercy of God. He said he does not know Patrick or understand why he would criticize him.

“For my perspective as a Muslim, we are all brothers and sisters and children of Adam and Eve as we say,” Kavakci said. “For us there is no problem really.”

Taken from statesman.com, 5th April, 2007.

News Values:

* Novelty – come on, an Islam cleric praying in Texas period. Let alone in the senate. Maybe those Texans are more progressive than our stereotypes give them credit for… (just maybe)

* Timeliness – Easter period

Another event of interest since my last post has been the publication of The Devil’s Own Politics, an investigation into the interplay between church and state in contemporary America. An interesting review can be found here.

This event was pretty widely covered, both in news media and significantly in blogging circles. It seems everyone has an opinion about the artistic credit and/or sacrilegiousness (yes, it is a word) of the Chocolate Jesus. You never know, that could be why we call it art… Still, best to withdraw it from the public eye before we get too much intelligent debate going on!

On 8/4/07, the Canberra Times reported Canberra ahead of the trend when it comes to chocolate Jesus. As Canberra is not known for being the most progressive city in the world, this headline must have been cause for quite a celebration! But seriously, it was a pretty funny article about a similar sculpture produced by local Richard Manderson 13 years ago.

A recent life-sized chocolate sculpture of Jesus caused fury in Manhattan, but Canberra had a chocolate Christ 13 years ago. The nude, anatomically correct sculpture in New York came under further fire when the artist joked people should eat it. But a 1994 photo of Civic near the ACTION terminal shows a crowd of 150 about to munch on a life-sized chocolate crucifix. Canberra’s maker of chocolate Christs, Richard Manderson, was then a philosophy student. He said there was less outcry in Canberra, perhaps because he used Easter egg foil for a loincloth on his statue. ”I think religion is slightly different in Australia from America for one thing,” he said.

No s*%t, Sherlock. I think this contributes to the interest of the story – the issue of the influence wielded by the “religious right” in the USA. Although I’m sure there are many Aussies who would have a similar reaction of abhorrence to the artwork, I really don’t think Australians would be as unreserved about their beliefs.

US Newsweek reported a great quote from Cavallaro, the artist/sculptor, in its article: Belief Watch: Sweet Jesus

The artist himself insists there’s nothing X-rated in his conception, although “I can’t stop people from thinking that way.” Having grown up in a house where crucifixes hung above beds, Cavallaro imagines that Christians took offense because his Christ was “perishable and palatable … It made [Jesus] a real man.”

Montreal Gazette meanwhile says in its uber-long titled article: Critics raise hell over chocolate Jesus; in a bittersweet tale of what is art and what is not, a former Montrealer has suffered death threats and workplace exile

“I’m as good as I can be,” Cavallaro said Thursday from SoHo. “It hurts in the stomach. It’s been disgusting to see people’s reactions.”

After receiving death threats, he had to move out of his Brooklyn apartment. He had already been exiled from his workspace and vilified in the tabloids by New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan, who called the work “a sickening display.”

“All I’m saying is, Jesus is alive,” Cavallaro said. “He’s a man. You can smell him, touch him, taste him. I didn’t see it as offensive, and I still don’t.”

…

For the record, Cavallaro was raised Catholic, although he is non-practising. He believes critics have assailed him not because the statue is obscene or hateful, but because “it’s too real. It’s not metaphysical. My goal was that it would melt – the body decomposes and all that’s left is the spirit

Quite profound really.

By contrast, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s Catholics Outraged by Chocolate Jesus offers a fairly condemning report, not giving the artist a chance to defend himself until toward the end of the 491 word story, giving priority space instead to comments such as these:

“It’s an all-out war on Christianity,” fumed William Donohue, a former sociology professor at La Roche College who is now president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. “They wouldn’t show a depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. with genitals exposed on Martin Luther King Day, and they wouldn’t show Muhammed depicted this way during Ramadan. It’s always Christians, and the timing is deliberate.”

…

Dominick Bria, a Connecticut resident visiting St. Patrick Cathedral yesterday, bristled at the concept. “It’s disgusting,” he said. “Whoever is doing it is really sick.”

Maria Localio, 45, agreed. “It doesn’t take into account the religious sensitivities of other people,” she said.

Others said they didn’t mind the sculptor’s choice of material, but were offended by the nudity. “He’s not wearing any clothes at all,” said Debbie Charan, 40. “Why would they want to do something like that?”

Other coverage ranges from the radical to the cynical, but all of the coverage manages to sneak in a fair portion of conflict.

Which brings us to… *drum roll*

News Values

* CONFLICT – Big time. Christianity vs Secularism, Church doctrine vs Art, Suppression of Freedom of Expression etcetera etcetera

* Timeliness – Just after the events had occurred, and also during Holy Week

* Currency – Church’s influence in society is always worth a mention. Also around Easter time, so lots of articles about on Christianity and the meaning of Easter etc.

* The Unusual/Novelty – Hello, it’s a sculpture of Jesus made entirely out of chocolate… How much more novelty value could it get?

Clue 1: I’m chocolate, big and sacred (but this is not me…)

Clue 2: Nor is this, but getting closer…

Clue 3: Closer still is is this miraculous Mary formed by dripping chocolate. Neat, huh? It’s truly a sign from above. But it’s not me.

No, no, no. The wait is over. This is me. Voici la Chocolat le Christ…

TADDAH…

Who would have thought a chocolate sculpture of the divine could prompt death threats. Death threats, that is, from Christians who, by all accounts, attest to believing in a Christ who advocated love above all things. An interesting little paradox emerging there. Apparently the problem was not only the blatancy of the “attack” on Christianity in general during Holy Week, but the visibility of the Lord’s genitalia. Here I was thinking He was a man. WRONG. He was actually one of those funky god/man hybrids who, when disrobed, rather resemble a dismembered statue. You know the ones with fig leaves in place of genitals. Weird, huh?!?

The controversy, described by the head of the Catholic League (that’s right, the Catholic League – HUWAH) as “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities eva*,” erupted when “My Sweet Lord”, an anatomically detailed sculpture of Jesus was unveiled this week in New York. I mean, seriously, it’s got to be right up there with the crusades dude. The 1.8 metre high masterpiece, crafted entirely out of milk chocolate, is Cosimo Cavarallo’s latest large-scale artwork. Quite a feat I feel to actually carve that much chocolate. Let alone then have it hold together while being transported and hung up. The man deserves a medal. It’s also quite a step up from some of his previous efforts which include covering a room of the Washington Jefferson hotel in New York with cheddar cheese. And all in the name of art.

The director of the gallery where the Christ was to be installed, Matt Semmler, announced that neither he nor the artist had intended to offend by creating and showing the artwork.

“For me this is … a place of reverence and meditation – that’s why I chose the piece. This is not intended to be disrespectful.”

In the end, anyway, the religious right won over and the exhibit was withdrawn. Only after the Catholic League made further statements which implied that the artist should be thankful he was not dealing with Muslims. Those damn feisty Muslims. The Guardian reports:

Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, said the work was a direct assault on Christians. “All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended.”

That the work of an internationally renowned artist can be pulled from a gallery in Manhattan – arguably the most liberal city in the US – is an indication of the power that organised religion wields within the country.

My personal belief is that the real ruckus was due more to the correctness of the colour of Jesus rather than the materials or anatomy… Not just the abhorrent brown skin, but the conspicuous-only-by-its-absence flowing blonde wig. What an insult to Western sensibilities!

Even Tom Waits has weighed in on the debate, penning a moving song Chocolate Jesus. Profound lyrics include the following:

Well it’s got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied

And meanwhile, other sanctified culinary masterpieces throwing the nation into controversy…

* OK, I admit it. I changed the spelling to make it sound more gangsta-style. I’m sure I was capturing the original intention of the statement…