GOD AND MAN AND THE GRAY LADY: The New York Times just ran a 1,400-word story to explain what cross necklaces are.
Look at how they describe women in the Trump admin like strange creatures:
Cross necklaces have, in a way, become the jewelry of choice most associated with President Trump’s second administration.
Ms. Bondi owns several cross necklaces but most often appears at official events in a diamond-set version purchased at Mavilo, a jewelry store in Tampa, Fla.
Ms. Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has frequently worn a large cross pendant at press briefings. But Ms. Leavitt is not the first press secretary to wear a cross: Kayleigh McEnany, a press secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term, also wore one.
In an email, Ms. Leavitt, 27, called the cross necklace ‘the perfect accessory to any outfit,’ adding that she wears the cross ‘because it serves as a reminder of the strength that can only be found through faith.’
These conservative women … who can understand their strange ways??
As Rod Dreher wrote in his classic 2003 article, “The Godless Party:”
True story: I once proposed a column on some now-forgotten religious theme to the man who was at the time the city editor of the New York Post. He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “This is not a religious city,” he said, with a straight face. As it happened, the man lived in my neighborhood. To walk to the subway every morning, he had to pass in front of or close to two Catholic churches, an Episcopal church, a synagogue, a mosque, an Assemblies of God Hispanic parish, and an Iglesia Bautista Hispana. Yet this man did not see those places because he does not know anyone who attends them. It’s not that this editor despises religion; it’s that he’s too parochial (pardon the pun) to see what’s right in front of him. There’s a lot of truth in that old line attributed to the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael, who supposedly remarked, in all sincerity, “I don’t understand how Nixon won; I don’t know a soul who voted for him.”
In the main—and I’ve had this confirmed to me by Christian friends who labor elsewhere in the secular media—the men and women who bring America its news don’t necessarily hate religion; in most cases, they just believe it’s unimportant at best, menacing at worst. Because they don’t know any religious people, they think of American religion in categories that have long been outdated. For example, to hear journalists talk, Catholics are berated from the pulpit every Sunday about abortion and birth control; reporters think I’m putting them on when I tell them that I’ve been a practicing Catholic for 10 years and I’ve only heard one sermon about abortion and none about contraception. For another, outside the Jewish community, there are no stronger supporters of Israel than among American Evangelicals, and that’s been true for at least a generation. The news has yet to reach American newsrooms, where I’ve been startled to discover a general assumption among Jews and non-Jews alike that these “fundamentalists” (i.e., any Christian more conservative than a Spong-ite Episcopalian) are naturally anti-Semitic.
In a further comment, that New York Post city editor inadvertently revealed something else important to me about the way media people see religion: As far as he was concerned, Catholics and Jews were the only religious people who counted in New York City (he himself is a non-practicing Jew), because they were the only ones who had any political pull. Because journalists tend not to know religiously observant people, they see religious activity in the only way they know how—in terms of secular politics. Thus, when your average journalist hears “Southern Baptist,” she immediately thinks of an alien sect whose rustic adherents lurk in the shadows thinking of cunning ways to manipulate Republican politicians into taking away a woman’s right to choose. The trouble is, she doesn’t think much further, and it is unlikely that anyone in her professional and social circles will challenge her to do so.
That’s a trend that’s only gotten worse in the uber-woke version of today’s Gray Lady. But between their “Gorillas in the Mist”-style takes on crosses (and religion in general), and Tim Walz’s spectacular ability to “code talk to White guys watching football, fixing their truck and put them at ease,” why does the modern left act like the cast of the original Star Trek whenever they had to beam down to 20th century earth when it comes to interacting with flyover country? (Actually, I know why they do, but it’s a curious pose when it keeps losing them elections.)
Related: At about the seven minutes in, Mel Brooks as the 2,000 Year Old Man explains to Carl Reiner how the cross’s ease of manufacture helped it massively take over in popularity from the Star of David: