It started sounding like Unholy Week on NPR. On the national show “Fresh Air,” one day after Bart Ehrman insisted Jesus didn’t see himself as God, host Terry Gross brought on another atheist author, Barbara Ehrenreich. The segment was titled "A Nonbeliever Tries to Make Sense of the Visions She Had as a Teen."
Or as Hanna Rosin summarized it for Slate: “Could Barbara Ehrenreich, fourth-generation atheist, proud socialist, and mocker of brightness and smiles, have found religion? Dream on, Billy Graham.” But apparently titling your book "Living With a Wild God" makes your atheist comrades unhappy.
Barbara Ehrenreich
By Tim Graham | April 13, 2014 | 9:12 AM EDT
McDonald's Hiring 50,000, Media Celebrate. But In Reagan Era, Media Dismissed 'Hamburger Flipper' Jobs
By Tom Blumer | April 5, 2011 | 3:51 PM EDT First, let me make something clear. One thing I learned in my first job as a dishwasher back in the Mesozoic Era is that all work conscientiously done can be noble. I don't criticize McDonald's for wanting to grow their business and the businesses of their franchisees, and I surely won't criticize anyone for taking a fast-food job to put food on the table or to gain an employment foothold.
That said, the people who have expressed contempt for such jobs and for an economy that for the last 30-plus years has, according to certain wrong-headed social critics, been devolving into one where the only jobs available will be low-paying, dead-end service-sector jobs have been awfully quiet in the wake of the fast-food king's announcement that it's looking to hire 50,000 workers.
An unbylined write-up at the Associated Press Monday evening comes across as more of a puffy promo than as a hard-news piece (puffery in bold):
Mayors' Report Details Rise of Homelessness and New, Growing 'Tent Cities'; Press Ignores or Glosses Over
By Tom Blumer | December 14, 2009 | 10:26 AM EST In a Washington Post opinion piece published on December 6, longtime expansionary entitlement program apologists Peter Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich ripped into the 1996 welfare reform law and its alleged effect on the poor during the struggling economy of the past two years.
In the course of their rant, Edelman and Ehrenreich told readers something that the rest of the press has largely ignored since Barack Obama took office in January: Homelessness is up, as in way, way up:
According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP), the number of homeless Americans is up by 61 percent since the recession began in December 2007.In fact, a new report from a source normally favored by the press tells us that new "tent cities" have sprung up, and that others in existence a year ago have grown. Does anyone think these facts would remain so well-hidden if Bush 43 were still in office?
Interestingly, it seems that Edeleman and Ehrenreich appear to have serendipitously misinterpreted their information source.
By Stuart James | August 23, 2007 | 11:44 AM EDT
Left-wing author and media darling Barbara Ehrenreich’s August 29 article, entitled “Smashing Capitalism,” proves yet again what’s been obvious for quite some time. Her view of economics is crazy. Ehrenreich is the author of numerous books, her most famous being “Nickel and Dimed,” and her most recent “Dancing in the Streets”