Pussy Riot is back in the news. I’m listening.

U.S. and Russian diplomats spar over Pussy Riot >

I wrote about Pussy Riot last August.[1]

I have a question for folks that like to dance nude on altars and through the Vatican: Okay, you have my undivided attention. What would you like to say?

I once told a friend that if I'd been born a few years earlier, I'd have been a Jesus Freak. He looked at me in all sincerity and said, "How is that different from what you are now?"

I grew up in a time when unlawful assembly, bra burning, and other sorts of nonviolent protest were common. I am, if many other things, an aging hippie, and proud of my generation's message. 

I was a child during that era, and so didn't develop the critical response to it that others did. I'm glad for that (so I can recall it fondly, uncluttered by adult cynicism).

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Judging by what I've heard, a core message of Pussy Riot is the antagonism of religion toward feminism, LGBT issues, and human rights.

I think some of their anger is misplaced. There are millions in pews every Sunday that share in some part of Pussy Riot's antiestablishmentism. Bulking religion into the opposition is myopic and unhelpful.

[2014-02-06]

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In the bubble, but not of it.

After returning from a New York conference, a former boss of mine said to me, "We are in such a bubble."

She popped it and moved on.

I am in the bubble, but not of it.

Truth is, we all are, all our lives. We often merge with larger bubbles or swallow smaller ones, but we are never outside our own, and always deforming to the shape of another.

[2014-01-12]

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[1]

My Position on P**** Riot > . I have some readers who probably appreciated the asterisks then, but with Russian social issues getting as much coverage as the games in Sochi, there’s not much point in my attempt at propriety.

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