News McNuggets

My friend and former co-worker Joel Griffith is going to laugh out loud at the title of this post. (It's an inside joke...sorry.) But I thought "News McNuggets" would be a good title for a post that's just going to throw several tidbits of info your way.

By the way, pardon me for trotting out the only picture I have online that proves that I've met and sat next to Michael W. Smith, and it's a tiny one at that. But hey--it proves that I've met and sat next to Michael W. Smith, who is the subject of one of my News McNuggets. I have met Smitty a couple of times, and interviewed him a couple of times at the 101QFL broadcasting booth at the Gospel Music Association convention. He proved to be a wonderful man. Like Steven Curtis Chapman, he is the real deal; his life and career all about honoring God.

Anyway, on to the McNuggets:

--Michael W. Smith has been honored with a star on the Music City Walk of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. I like what Smitty said on receiving the honor:

"Other than my relationship with the Lord, which is the most important thing, my family's always been right behind that...and hopefully my family's always known if my career ever got in the way of my family, I would've quit a long time ago. So here I am working on my twentieth album, I'm pinching myself, I'm blessed beyond measure, I'm a grateful man, I don't deserve it, so I just thank the Lord for what he's done for me."

--Casting Crowns performed last week at a festival in North Korea.

--A professor at a Catholic college in Boston has been fired after leading his class in a discussion about the Virginia Tech shootings.

--Motorcycle daredevil Evel Kneivel has become a born-again Christian.

--Sheryl Crow is now saying her toilet paper idea was just a joke. But Town Hall writer Dean Barnett thinks the damage has been done:

"..She is now officially a national punch line. The problem with her purported joke was that it was all too believable that an entertainment community member would preach such rubbish. Even if the word gets out that Crow was just jesting, the damage to her brand is irrevocable.


"There’s even the chance that the taint will spread to the entire universe of entertaining do-gooders. The next time a Tim Robbins and Sean Penn scream at a rally for Donald Rumsfeld to be prosecuted as a war criminal, their audience won’t know if the actors are playing some sort of gag and will ultimately burble, 'Hah! Had you going there, didn’t we?' In short, the entertainment community will no longer enjoy the credibility it once had as a home for sophisticated and mature analysis of global affairs. (Personal not to Sheryl Crow – See? That’s satire.)

--Perky Paris Bennett, the American Idol finalist from last year with the Rockford connection, is now a spokesperson for McDonald's Happy Meals.

Related Tags: Michael W. Smith, Joel Griffith, Casting Crowns, Evel Knievel, Sheryl Crow, Paris Bennett, McDonald's