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blue bits. red rocks.
Monday 11 January 2010

My complaint about Hume is not that he is plumping for born-again Christianity. I have no problem with proselytizing, and watching a news anchor morph into a televangelist isn’t really all that different from watching a news anchor morph into an ideologue — something we’ve been witnessing for years. My complaint instead is that Hume is trashing a religion — “the Buddhism,” as he awkwardly calls it — about which he knows next to nothing. Hume is doubtless speaking out of personal experience — the end of his first marriage, the suicide of his son — and you can tell by his voice that he comes not to bury Woods but to resurrect him. Nonetheless, news organizations do not tolerate financial reporters who don’t know the difference between a stock and a bond, or movie critics who have never heard of Steven Spielberg. Why should they tolerate a journalist mouthing off about a religion about which he knows next to nothing? Why should we? Religion is a prime mover in our world, and we need more discussion of it on television, not less. But unless that discussion is informed, it is, as the Bible says, “vanity of vanities. What would Buddha do?

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