Newsweek’s Lisa Miller has written a mostly thoughtful and revealing profile of Kirbyjon Caldwell this week. The story describes how Caldwell, pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, introduced George W. Bush at the Republican National Convention in 2000, voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 and has now changed his political loyalties. “Last summer he aligned himself with a man who he believes better represents the Christian ethics and American values he preaches: Barack Obama,” Miller writes in an elegant transitional sentence. Too bad the elegance wasn’t weaved throughout the article. The profile is hindered by two of the more cheap gimmicks of telegraphing opinion in a news article: scare-quoting, and “what he calls” throat-clearing. Using “what he calls” is a way for a reporter to establish a distance...
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