Tag: rolling stone

OWS Reads

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Our founding editor, Jeff Sharlet, has two new articles out on the Occupy Movement:  at Bookforum and at Rolling Stone. Here’s an excerpt from the former:

I’m not sure when I first felt that joy, but I know when I named it for what it was: one night lying on a sleeping pad beneath a thin blanket, hemmed in by my just-met friend Austin, a teacher of autistic children who leaves the park for work every day at 7:30 AM, and his girlfriend and her girlfriend, reading my newly acquired copy of The Pagan Rabbi by the yellow sodium light of the city’s permanent illumination. Purists call that light pollution, but filtering through the feathery leaves of Zuccotti Park’s honey locust trees, it was lovely. More than lovely; bathed in its amber glow I felt like one of five hundred little Christs, if by “Christ” you’ll allow me to refer not to divinity itself but to one of its more wholly human representations, Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph Piss Christ. Appreciating what’s happening in Zuccotti Park requires a mental shift akin to the one necessary to see Piss Christ—an image of a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s own urine—as not blasphemous but beautiful. And I don’t mean ideologically beautiful—a baroque idea one admires for the complexity of its inversions. I mean gorgeous, breathtaking and breath-giving at the same time.

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Taking Scientology Seriously

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An interview with Janet Reitman, author of Inside Scientology: The History of America’s Most Secretive Religion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, July 2011)

By Amy Levin

It was fifteen minutes of fantastic and totally outlandish claims, and yet each testimonial was presented in such a reasonable way that in spite of myself, I felt kind of hopeful. ~ Janet Reitman, “Introduction,” Inside Scientology

Janet Reitman’s new book, Inside Scientology: The History of America’s Most Secretive Religion, represents her attempt to take seriously what may be the most controversial New Religious Movement of our time. Scientology, as Reitman tells us, means “the study of truth,” and the word itself has a seductive, even philosophical, ring to it. What Reitman’s book tells us, though, is that beginning with the publication of L. Ron Hubbard’s best-selling book, Dianetics, and his visionary moment in 1952, when Scientology itself began to take shape, the religion, as it came to be known, eventually grew into a “global spiritual enterprise that trades in a product called ‘spiritual freedom.’”

How did you get involved in this project, and how did your coverage of Scientology begin?

I first got involved in Scientology reporting back in July of 2005, with an article I did for Rolling Stone, and spent nine months researching and writing that story. Towards the end of that period I went to California and had a three-day interview with Church officials who, after many months, granted me this kind of special access. They had been very resistant for a long time in talking to us, and I wanted not just to sit down for interviews, but to tour the facilities – I wanted the whole thing. Continue Reading →

Mainstreaming Conservatism

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Kristina Loew: From movies to music, conservative voices have cornered the tween scene, that 12 – 13 year old demographic which often looks to their favorite stars for moral guidance (and ways to spend their parents’ paychecks). Parents can feel safe knowing that the Twilight franchise is one long ode to abstinence, while the Jonas Brothers sport promise rings and Miley Cyrus gives shout-outs to Jesus. Most recently, Justin Bieber let his fans know he doesn’t like abortion, even in cases of rape. With young impressionable minds hanging on every word, maybe it’s time for parents to ask — has the mainstreaming of conservatism gone too far? Continue Reading →