Media Matters studied how much MSM coverage is devoted to conservative vs. liberal religious leaders. The results are striking:

• Combining newspapers and television, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed in news stories 2.8 times as often as were progressive religious leaders.
• On television news — the three major television networks, the three major cable news channels, and PBS — conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed almost 3.8 times as often as progressive leaders.
• In major newspapers, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed 2.7 times as often as progressive leaders.

While this typist is no fan of organized religion, I’m very glad to see such studies conducted.

The main reason why religiosity has become so disturbing in America of late is that the Falwells, Robertsons, Dobsons, and Haggards have had a political bully pulpit that makes them the seemingly official voice of all Americans who consider themselves Christians. It’s been their way or the highway to Hell, if you get your news and punditry from mainstream sources.

Sure, I roll my eyes a bit when I see Al Gore in his wonderful pro-reason book (full report coming soon) avow, “I consider Jesus to be my Savior…” (p.59). And I wince whenever I see anyone, say, indoctrinate their children into religion or use it to justify an IED attack.

But there is a world of difference between progressives like Gore and the authoritarian, fundamentalist Christianists of the Grand Old Party.

In today’s media narratives, the Al Gores, John Kerrys, John Edwardses, and Jimmy Carters aren’t considered true Christians, true patriots, true Americans, or true anything else. Those who self-identify as religious are told in numerous ways that those statesmen are strictly trayf.

Why? Because today’s mass-market brand of religion is not the “love-thy-neighbor” variety. It’s simply a platform for the haters and featherbedders to ride Jesus’ coattails into positions of power, so they can feed the meek to the mighty, leaving us little recourse but to mix metaphors in disbelief (and in disbelief).

People who are smart enough to know the difference between religion and reality are smart enough to know the difference between people whose faith is a relatively benign foible and those for whom it’s a free pass to unbridled and unholy power.

The last two presidential elections don’t speak well for our God-fearing fellow-citizens’ ability to make this distinction. The media, of course, have played a huge role, by reflexively waving the nastier end of the religious stick on our TV screens and front pages, ushering in a sanctimonious cronyocracy that considers “reality-based” to be a pejorative.

It is a certainty that our next president will be a “person of faith.” Will the American public choose the candidate who wears that (for some) reassuring label most ostentatiously… or the one who most deserves our faith?

(via)

WTF is it with Texas mothers (and one father)? In a relatively small geographical area of the globe, mothers have been killing their children (and sometimes themselves, as well).

Texas mother hangs herself, 3 children (San Jose Mercury News)

HUDSON OAKS, Texas- A young mother who may have been depressed apparently hanged three of her small daughters and herself in a closet using pieces of clothing and sashes, authorities said Tuesday. A fourth child, an 8-month-old daughter, was also found dangling in the closet but was rescued by her aunt from the family’s mobile home. More

And from the last few paragraphs, we get a recap:

[...]Texas has seen a number of child killings by mothers in recent years.

Less than five years earlier, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself. [Perez also shot her estranged husband, Fire Capt. Manuel Perez, in the back, before turning the gun on herself; earlier in the week, he had appeared at a divorce hearing, which she had not attended.]

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family’s Houston bathtub in 2001. [We are all conversant with Yates' story, including her husband's insistence on her homeschooling the children, and her post-partum depression.]

In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, [According to testimony, Laney led two of her sons to a rock garden and crushed their skulls with heavy stones because she believed God commanded it. She also believed that she and Andrea Yates, the Houston mother serving a life sentence for drowning her five children, were chosen by God to witness the imminent end of the world.] and

Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub. [She was found "not guilty by reason of insanity; in the mental hospital, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and stabilized with medication; she was released in November/06, much to the consternation of Texans.]

Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter’s arms with a kitchen knife in 2004. [Schlosser attended Water of Life Church in Plano Texas several times a week; her mother was concerned about her increasingly "bizarre" behavior; the child bled to death.]

But, wait! There’s more: Man who microwaved baby says he was under stress

Joshua Royce Mauldin, the 19-year-old Arkansas man accused of burning his 2-month-old daughter in a microwave in a Galveston motel room last week, was indicted yesterday on a charge of felony injury to a child — and he’s blaming the incident on stress, police say.

Last Thursday, Mauldin was alone in the motel room with the baby when he called the front desk for help, saying the baby had a bad sunburn and was bleeding. He asked the hotel staff to call 911; when police showed up, Mauldin told them that he had tripped and spilled boiling water on the baby. Later, he decided he was drinking the boiling water and spilled it — needless to say, officials suspected something wasn’t right with the story, but they were shocked to discover that the baby’s burns were actually caused by a microwave.

“I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and actually it brought tears to my eyes,” Galveston Police Sgt. Annie Almendarev told KHOU. “The baby is burned on the left side here, and it’s just really bad. Her hand is so swollen — if you’ve ever touched something hot, you know you get that big boil on your hand — it looks like she’s holding a ball in her little bitty hand. It was just heartbreaking.”

The baby is being treated at the UTMB Shriner’s Burns Hospital, where she’s had two skin grafts and is listed in critical but stable condition. Surgeon Dr. Art Sanford said no one at the hospital has experience with microwave-induced burns on humans; in fact, the hospital staff only found three other instances nationwide in which children were thought to have been burned in microwaves. Police believe Mauldin’s baby was burned for between 10 or 20 seconds, which Sanford said medical research shows can burn skin and muscle.

That article didn’t mention the Devil who made him do it, according to his wife who has set up a MySpace page to counter-act her husband’s bad reputation and to “find support”. Woman Blames Devil, Not Husband for Baby’s Injuries:

GALVESTON, Texas — A woman blames the devil and not her husband for severely burning their infant daughter after the 2-month-old was put in a microwave, a officials said.

Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua’s efforts to become a preacher. Joshua Mauldin is from Warren, Ark. “Satan saw my husband as a threat. Satan attacked him because he saw (Joshua) as a threat,” Eva Mauldin said.

Just in case you’d like to help out this di$traut, $upportive and loving young mother:

She is hoping to be reunited with her daughter, but Child Protective Services is working to have her and Joshua Mauldin’s parental rights severed. A custody hearing for the infant is scheduled for later this week in a Galveston district court. [...]

Eva Mauldin has set up a MySpace page, “Joshua Mauldin is not a Monster,” in hopes of defending her husband and making pleas for people to help her.

Come on, now. How about a little ca$h for a young chri$tian $pou$e? After all, it’s Texa$, ferchri$t’$$ake! You know the judge will give that little baby back to her – what will she live on? Or rather: who will she live off? (Am I getting cynical?)

Body count: 17 children dead, one child grievously wounded, one child survived hanging, three mothers dead by suicide; three mothers tried for murder, and one father for microwaving his infant daughter. Humans dead: 20; Gawd dead: 0. Children are becoming an endangered species in Texas. And, in four of these cases (Yates, Laney, Schlosser and Mauldin), belief in gawd is directly implicated! You have to be insane to believe in him.

Maybe Phelps is right – and gawd is starting with the children…

(h/t to JJR. Thanks for bringing the last one to our attention.)