Stories & Power
Hollywood and the White House — Screenings Can Boost a Film's Revenues, Profile
From D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation screening for Woodrow Wilson in 1915 to Obama's Selma screening a century later — the most dangerous political endorsement in America is still an implied one. On the 100th anniversary of the first White House film screening.
Read at Deseret News →War of the Worlds: PC Precursor
On the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles's 1938 CBS broadcast: the mass hysteria narrative was fabricated by newspapers protecting their turf against radio. Our problem isn't the impoverishment of information — it's its proliferation. Huxley, not Orwell.
Read at National Review →Education as Civil Rights
The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School
Kelley Williams-Bolar was jailed in Akron, Ohio for using her father's address to enroll her daughters in a better public school. The op-ed generated a national outcry, led to Governor Kasich granting clemency, and became the basis for the film Won't Back Down.
WSJ Archive (subscription)Churches for School Choice
The faith community's underappreciated role in the school choice movement — and the argument for why churches, not just foundations, should be driving this fight.
WSJ Archive (subscription)Tebow's Role Model
Co-authored with Nathan Whitaker, co-author of Tim Tebow's memoir. On what the culture war over Tebow reveals about what we actually value in public figures.
WSJ Archive (subscription)Faith, Culture & Storytelling
Let Them at Least Have Heard of Brave Knights and Heroic Courage
Delivered at Hillsdale College on the opening night of Amazing Grace. The case for stories as the only reliable vehicle for forming moral imagination — from C.S. Lewis's Golden Age of Narnia to William Wilberforce's co-belligerents. Republished in Imprimis, Hillsdale's monthly journal with 5.5 million subscribers.
Read at Imprimis →Making Films for Families: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
On the undragoning of Eustace Scrubb, what Walden learned from the failure of Prince Caspian, and why "grace" remains the last great incorruptible word in the English language.
Read at Imprimis →On Palin's Reading List, C.S. Lewis
When Joy Behar mocked Sarah Palin for citing C.S. Lewis as a favorite author — calling it "children's books" — Flaherty responded in the Journal with a defense of Lewis as Oxford scholar, literary critic, and the most widely read Christian apologist of the 20th century.
Read full text (Clapham Group reprint) →Available for Commission
Micheal writes about the intersection of stories, culture, and politics. Past commissions have addressed education reform, media history, faith in public life, and the geopolitical consequences of narrative. Pitches and inquiries welcome.
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