Before the Rangers' Summer Fade
Frontburner's Zac Crain uses an area secret, the Texas Rangers, to knock The Dallas Morning News Web site. Crain refers to a ninth-inning walk off home run for the Texas Rangers (you know, that sports team that's not the Cowboys, Mavericks or Stars). Crain noticed that it wasn't the top story on the News' Web site. It was not even in the top ten. He concludes that the Web site is terrible.
I, on the other hand, have to put this in the plus column for the News. A baseball story belongs in the sports pages. Always, in the sports pages, not the front page (or home page). It should always take at least two clicks to get from the paper's home page to a story about a kid's game, even it's played by adults. The two-click rule applies to games, to restaurants, to fashion, and to Angelina's twin babies. So, if the Rangers weren't the top story, maybe, just maybe, there's hope that The Dallas Morning News Web site has its priorities better ordered than the the print edition does.
But danger lurks. Mike Hashimoto, on the News editorial board, uses the Opinion blog to tell us that the Rangers "are close to becoming more than a sports story." He should lose his license to practice journalism for so easily losing his objectivity. Small loss, since as far as I can tell from his scant contributions to the Opinion blog, he must be moonlighting at something else anyway.
Oh yeah, the Web site is still terrible, just not for the reason Zac Crain mentions.
Teaching British Children About Islam
Dallas Blog continues to scour the foreign tabloids for things to be outraged over. Today, Tom McGregor turns up an incident in England at a school that teaches children about other religions. The parents of two schoolboys were outraged that their sons' teacher taught the boys how Muslims pray. Tom McGregor doesn't say why he finds this story newsworthy in Dallas, Texas.
Could it be that Tom Pauken's Dallas Blog is suddenly outraged over the thought of prayer in public school? That they are suddenly champions of secular education? That they see the light that government-led religious prayer is not such a good idea in a pluralistic society?
Don't count on it. If this were a case of parents objecting to the teacher leading Christian prayers, Dallas Blog probably wouldn't cover it at all, and if it did, Dallas Blog would be defending the school and would be outraged over the parents' demand to remove God from our public schools.
P.S. To those who argue that conservatives are only asking for *voluntary* prayer in American public schools, know that voluntary prayer has never been outlawed. Schoolchildren have always been free to pray in American schools. It's the teachers and administrators who have been told not to lead the prayers.
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