Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Is only some insensitivity wrong?
Is only some insensitivity wrong?
Oct 18, 2026 3:35 AM

Fox News and the Washington Post reported that actor Rob Lowe came under fire last week for making a joke on Twitter that poked fun at Senator Elizabeth Warren and her claims of Native American ancestry. After Senator Warren declared her candidacy for President, Lowe tweeted,

Lowe was immediately scolded by fellow actors like Mark Hamill and journalist Soledad O’Brien. Lowe deleted the tweet with a half-hearted apology, and lamented people’s “inability to laugh at anything” anymore

Critics lambasted Lowe for echoing President Trump and for being insensitive, I assume to both Senator Warren and to people of Native American descent.

Amidst all the criticism of Lowe I noticed something. Here was Lowe being criticized for lack of sensitivity and actress Valerie Bertinelli sent out a tweet that used the name of Jesus in vain.

This is a name that a billion Christians throughout the world from every nation and ethnicity hold to be sacred and only spoken with reverence. It is a violation of one of the 10 Commandments to use God’s name in vain. And in Catholic liturgy it is a custom to bow one’s head every time the name of Jesus is uttered.

Notice the irony here.

I have no problem with Ms. Bertinelli criticizing Lowe for an insensitive tweet, but must she offend millions of people while doing so? Would she be so insensitive to other religions?

Or perhaps is it the case that only some insensitivity is wrong, or should I say, unfashionable.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Balancing the “Big Three”
This week we feature an interview with Diane Paddison, Chief Strategy Officer for Cassidy Turley in Dallas, Texas. She is the founder of non-profit 4WORD and author of the book Work, Love, Pray; Practical Wisdom for Young Professional Christian Women. For resources and to get connected into munity, follow her on Twitter @4wordwomen and Facebook. Diane Paddison is something of an expert. Sure she can negotiate multi-million dollar deals for fortune panies, but that is not what I am talking...
Getting Religion Back into Our Economic Lives
National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez talks to Rev. Sirico about his new book, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, the link between economic liberty and public morality, and the differences between socialism and capitalism: LOPEZ: How can you get more greed with socialism than capitalism? FR. SIRICO: To the extent that socialism holds back creativity and thus productivity, it increases poverty. When people e desperate, even good people can e self-centered. Few of us...
Russian Warns on Demonic Roots of Socialism
In Rome to address a conference sponsored by the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (Institute for Human Dignity) on June 29, Russian pro-life campaigner Alexey Komov expressed amazement for the support that socialism gets in some quarters in the West even though it has “never worked in world history.” In an interview with the Zenit news service, Komov pointed to how this ideology had caused such great pain and suffering “all in the name of social reform, progress and improvement.” His criticism...
What life was like in 1776
During the Revolutionary Era, Americans had the highest per capita e in the civilized world and paid the lowest taxes, says Thomas Fleming, and they were determined to keep it that way. By 1776, the 13 American colonies had been in existence for over 150 years—more than enough time for the talented and ambitious to acquire money and land. At the top of the South’s earners were large planters such as George Washington. In the North their es were more...
Don’t Eat Your Dog: The Surprising Moral Case for Free Enterprise
At the most recent Acton University, American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks gave a brilliant and paradigm-shifting speech on why advocates of free enterprise need to explain why it is the most moral, most fair, and most helpful system for alleviating poverty. You can download it here. (It’ll be the best 49 cents you spend this week.) I was thrilled to discover today that AEI has created an animated video that covers much the same material as in his lecture....
‘Religion Takes us into the Marketplace’
On The Foundry, Sarah Torre writes about the many faith based challenges that remain to the Obamacare law. There are many organizations that are religious in nature, but are not themselves churches. ply with the new health laws, they will pelled to provide conscience violating services. Towards the end of the post, Torres quotes the president of Geneva College, Dr. Ken Smith: The issue that we have with the entire law is that the Obama Administration has tried to define...
Should the Church Evade the Issue of Tax Avoidance?
The issue of tax avoidance is plex, notes Philip Booth. Not all avoidance is illegal or immoral—some is even encouraged by the government. So how, Booth asks, do Catholics determine what is acceptable? Evasion involves illegally not paying tax that is due. This includes not declaring £10 received for babysitting and multi-million pound schemes by professional criminals. Evasion is wrong and it is also wrong to aid and abet somebody else in evasion, for example by paying a tradesperson cash...
The Declaration of Independence and the Necessity of Religion
Last week’s Wall Street Journal features a column from Michael Meyerson detailing the religious perspective of the Declaration of Independence. With questions of religious liberty occupying a sizable space in the public square, the article is especially timely. According to Meyerson, the Declaration’s brilliance lies in the “theologically bilingual” language of the Framers. Phrases like “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” employ what he calls a nondenominational inclusivism, a show of rhetoric that neither endorses nor rejects any...
‘If there are people for whom to be Christian words alone would not suffice’
Comparing artists is about as helpful paring beer or theologians; it often es down to a matter of taste. However, just as with theologians, there are new insights to be gained from artists, even if they don’t turn out to be our favorite (I suppose the same holds with beer, as well.) Robert Royal, in an article for the Catholic Education Resource Center, poses the question of whether or not French poet Paul Claudel might be the best modern Catholic...
America the Acquisitive?
Last week, in ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved