Social Issues

Ron Sider has what he hopes is good news to counter the "liberal hysteria" over evangelical Christians' bonding with President Bush, an alliance evident in Tuesday's election turnout. "Evangelicals," said the Eastern Baptist Seminary professor and evangelical activist, "are not nearly as scary as some people think. " Sider notes that 55 percent of U.S. evangelicals - who number about 50 million - favor strict environmental regulations, and 45 percent think homosexuals should have the same civil rights as others.

The looming Social Security deficit is one of the hottest issues in American politics, and there was every expectation Wednesday night it would come up in the debate. And indeed, it did incite a testy exchange in the final presidential debate between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry. But what Bush and Kerry had to say served mostly to cloud the issue, according to top experts from across the political spectrum. Both candidates sidestepped the politically volatile question of how to deal with Social Security?s most pressing problem: how to make ends meet in the next decade when projections show the system will begin to go into the red. "It was not an exchange that would enlighten the American public," said Henry Aaron, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a left-of-center think tank.

To understand how the presidential campaign is going in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it helps to keep two images in mind. One is the Bush-Cheney campaign billboard along the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Carbon County. All it says is "One Nation Under God," with the third word underlined, reminding the region's voters that the Republican ticket is in tune with their views on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other image, slightly less conspicuous, is the Techneglas factory in Pittston.

Inside a conference center in this breezy little Brittany port town this month, some well-dressed young people were busy plotting a new French revolution. Its leader, Sabine Herold, 22, has been likened to Joan of Arc or Margaret Thatcher for her will to stand up to the entrenched. In June, looking prim in pearls and heels, she climbed atop a telephone booth in the Place de la Concorde in Paris and led 80,000 people in condemning what she called the sloth of France's unionized public-sector workers and exhorting the nation to stand up to them.

The Brooklyn neighborhood of author Juan Williams' youth was a microcosm of African American faith life, one reflected in many urban communities. On one corner, a bow-tied follower of the Nation of Islam sold bean pies and copies of the newspaper Muhammad Speaks. Down the street, black Catholics sat amid burning incense listening to a hushed Latin Mass. Around the corner, black Pentecostals shouted to the heavens and spoke in tongues in a storefront church. In the center of the block, wall-shaking gospel exploded out onto the streets from the neighborhood Baptist congregation.

Sana Musasama's ceramic sculpture solo at Swarthmore College's List Gallery is the kind of exhibit that aims to put the old-style art aficionado out for the count. Her show is a reminder that in recent decades much attention has been devoted to the art of display in museums and galleries, and many artists have responded by coming up with an art of pure display and nothing else. But there are other artists who demonstrate that our era is better than that. One of these is New Yorker Musasama, among the most prominent American women ceramic sculptors and a teacher at Hunter College.

Hairspray just sticks to you. It's loaded with original tunes you can actually sing. It depicts and projects a '60s sensibility - screwy, a little naive, and pivotal. It's an old-fashioned musical; no zillion people sing in staccato about how they all just got off the train, in a burst of poignant urbanity. In Hairspray, people sing about cooties. (Stop scratching.) It carries a social banner. Our national discussion about race is ongoing, probably will never end, and probably never should.

An old-time studio mogul once notoriously dismissed movies that aspired to social conscience with the advice: "If you want to send a message, call Western Union. " In the 1950s and 1960s, you would have been better advised to call Stanley Kramer, especially if you wanted your message shaped in an accessible way that reached masses of filmgoers. Mr. Kramer, 87, who died of pneumonia on Monday in Woodland Hills, Calif., was a prolific and influential producer-director in postwar Hollywood.

Last week marked introduction of an important advancement in measuring the impact and effectiveness of services to the community. Established by the United Way of America, a training organization for 1,400 independent United Ways nationwide, it is called the United Way State of Caring Index. As a measure of a compassionate America in the 21st century, this was created as a new approach to check the health and well-being of our nation. It tracks multi-year trends, from 1988 to 1998, and provides critical information on pressing social issues.

U.S. Rep. H. James Saxton, a Republican running for reelection, defends his record on traditionally Democratic social issues in his first television commercial of the campaign season, set to debut on cable today. The 30-second spot features Saxton with crabbers, schoolchildren, older adults and his family as the narrator and graphics refer to such issues as protecting the environment, subsidizing prescription drugs for the elderly, and reducing school class size. "These are obviously some of the top concerns that voters have right now," said David White, campaign manager for the eight-term congressman.