Seniors look set to get massively expensive drug benefit; Bush unveils $300 million marriage-boosting program; Mugabe smears his opponent as a “traitor”; Lieberman urged to knife Gore; scholar of “wisdom” dies.
A CANCER ON THE CHURCH: It seems pretty clear to me that it will be far more damaging for the American Catholic Church if Cardinal Law survives the current collapse of confidence in his arch-diocese than if he doesn’t. This scandal – which reaches the heart of the Church, its integrity and its mission – cannot be appeased by cover-ups and now panicked firings and witch-hunts. The only way in which the priesthood in Massachusetts can begin to recover from this crisis is a complete change of guard at the top and an independent inquiry into the Church’s shameful and disgusting cover-up of child-abuse from the altar. Law must go. And he must be the first of many.
POST-OLYMPIC THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if they didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympics, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles. . . . At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare.” – George Orwell, “The Sporting Spirit” (14 December 1945)
BOOK CLUB: You finally have a thorough go at Kaplan for his “elite” disdain for democracy; Kaplan responds to his moral critics.
THANK GOD FOR RUMMY: Check out this interview with the Daily Telegraph. Rumsfeld is blunt, fearless, and right.
CHRIS MATTHEWS’ DENIAL: How do you write or think about a possible campaign against Iraq without dealing with the question of weapons of mass destruction? Chris Matthews pulls it off in Slate.
BIBLICAL MINI-GOLF: Get a hole in one in Jesus’ tomb! You think I’m kidding, don’t you?
I’LL HAVE THE RED: Ever thought you were a little extravagant in that business lunch the other day? This story about a bankers’ lunch at $12,000 a head should make you feel better.
THE INEDUCABLE LEFT: A fascinating and terrifying expose of the fashionable new book of the new left, Empire, by Brian Anderson in the new First Things. The immense popularity of the book – among its academic and media readers – helps deflate the optimism of people like me that the hard left may have been injured by the violent nihilism of September 11. In fact, some on the far left seem almost inspired.
BLOG-ROLLING IN OUR TIME: Some of you have asked me to name a few other blogs out there that I read often and that you might enjoy. Of course, Instapundit rules. So does the never-boring Mickey Kaus.Virginia is prickly but perceptive; Matt Welch kicks ass; Tim Blair is the Aussie to Joanne Jacobs’ Harriet; Ken Layne tells it like it is; Josh Marshall weighs in on the left; and newcomer John Ellis (friend and supporter) is the dark horse. They’re all acquired tastes – so go acquire them.
ONE MORE REASON TO BACK RIORDAN: He gets it right on bilingual education. Is it too late to stop the conservative stab in the front? I’ve no idea. All I can see from the East Coast is yet another attempted suicide by California’s Republicans.
ARE YOU POST-GAY?: Here’s a quote to get your brain humming:
“In urban environments in First World nations these days, the people who actually care if you’re gay are limited to some (not all) fundamentalist Christians and some teenage boys who dislike their own homoerotic impulses. As far as I can see, tell, hear, feel and sense, nobody else gives a damn. Since I have no interaction with those fundamentalists or teenage boys, my being gay has about the same effect on my daily life these days as a straight person’s heterosexuality has on theirs… We won and I’m over it. I’ve lost interest in gay life and the gay scene and have come to see them for the sometimes vacuous and sometimes needlessly segregated entities they are.”
That’s Rex Wockner, one of the more diligent and professional of gay journalists out there. It’s from an interesting story from a Sacramento newsweekly. I’m not sure we can be “post-gay” until the issue of basic civil rights is resolved. But I sure do share the goal. I want to live in a world where homosexuality is simply a non-issue, and where the gay movement no longer exists because it no longer has to. We’re not there yet – but the time is surely approaching – and it’s useful to articulate the goal in advance.
The Dish 