Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Feb 16, 2009, 04:15AM

Yes: Journalism as Religion

Headline says it all.

If we just eliminate the sarcasm, this would be great:

Could the Times have transformed itself into a faith-based organization and helped Judith Miller avoid jail in 2005? Consider United States v. Judith H. Kuch, a federal case from 1968. Facing narcotics charges, Kuch called herself "Primate of the Potomac" of the Neo-American Church, announced that LSD was her sacrament, and advanced a religious-freedom defense. The judge scoured the Neo-American faith—no spur-of-the-moment Kuch concoction, it had been incorporated in California three years earlier and claimed some 20,000 members—for the customary marks of churchdom and concluded that it came up short. There was no evidence of "a religious discipline, a ritual, or tenets to guide one's daily existence." But the judge did find troublesome stigmata of frivolity: The church symbol was a three-eyed toad; its term for clergy was Boo-Hoos; one of its hymns was "Puff, the Magic Dragon"; and—the judge seemed to find this particularly significant—its motto was "Victory Over Horseshit."

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