Month: March 2002

You know what? I agree with almost everything in Paul Krugman’s column this morning. Including his praise of president Clinton’s free trade legacy. Amazing what Karl Rove has accomplished, innit?

Gardez battle intensifies; Bush caves in to State Department; recession over, House passes “stimulus package”; Blair faces cabinet mutiny over Iraq war.

THE NON-EXISTENT ANTI-WAR LEFT: Funny, isn’t it, that a movement that many have told us doesn’t really exist seems to be gaining strength. The Nation, for example, has seen its circulation grow to a record 112,000 since September 11, up from 95,000 in 2000. “The magazine is thriving,” Katrina vanden Heuvel, socialist heiress and editor, tells a fawning Earth Times, “in the context of too few independent voices.” She adds that “we are on the threshold of a permanent war economy which has little to do with fighting terror.” Best not to read this piece before breakfast.

LIFE IMITATES THE ONION: First there’s this story. Then there’s this one. Yeah, I know. I support the Bush position – and Mickey Kaus explains why (third item). But the Onion story is still priceless.

IS BUSH GETTING CLINTONIZED?: The steel decision was a terrible one – bad economics, short-sighted politics, and bad geo-politics. One aspect of it that has been short-changed is its devastating blow to Tony Blair. Blair has already been embroiled in a scandal taking campaign money from a steel company that wanted the Bush tariffs. He’s beleaguered in his own cabinet for his support for the war on terror. He’s the most important ally in Europe. And what does Bush do? Kick him in the teeth by pandering to the voters of Ohio and West Virginia. You think Karl Rove thought of that? And now there’s the ritual sending of a “peace” envoy, following the classic State Department line in favor of mollifying the Arab “street” and the unelected thugs of the Arab League. What is Zinni supposed to do? What on earth is there to negotiate? I know the violence is horrifying. But rescuing these parties – especially the murderous terrorism of Hamas and the PLO – from the consequences of their own decisions will not help. In fact, this safety net is partly what keeps the Palestinian terror growing. If they believe they can kill their way toward American intervention, they will kill again and again. If they believe a settlement can be imposed, and they can again shirk any responsibility for its success, then they will not negotiate a real deal. This Powellite decision is worthy of Bill Clinton – and it will have the same consequences of postponing a real peace, ratcheting up the incentives for the Palestinians to kill more Israelis and lead to yet more meaningless discussions with the Arab satrapies we prop up with oil money. So the cycle goes on. And to think I’d hoped Bush could end it.

TWO GAY CATHOLIC VOICES: I’ve been hearing a lot lately from gay catholic priests, by email mainly, frightened at what they may soon endure, horrified by the smears leveled at them by their own church, aware that they are on a knife-edge. Most seem to believe that if they keep their heads down, the sane leaders of the American Church will protect them. I’m not so sure. What really amazes me is how many seem to believe that coming out is not an option. Although there is no doctrinal reason for barring openly gay priests, the current church practices, in the view of many of its gay clergy, brutal discrimination against them. If they come out, they say they will effectively be shunted aside, removed from parishes, taken away from real missions, and so on. Compare that treatment – of honest, celibate gay priests – with the treatment meted out to closeted non-celibate pedophiles. There is no theological basis for this, no doctrinal or pastoral justification. It’s reflective of a syndrome that prefers lying to truth, secrecy to candor, and bigotry to faith. But if gay priests don’t put their careers on the line to oppose this syndrome, who will? Here’s one email that struck a chord from one gay priest:

I believe that there is much in the culture of the Church that deserves to die and which will die as a longterm effect of the exposure now occurring. That is what gives me some paschal hope amid this horror. If cover-ups are now bound to fail, it is all to the good, and that realization should give everyone the courage to read the horrific revelations head-on each day. After all, Jesus did talk about proclaiming truth from the rooftops and I think that should extend to the bad as well as to the good news. I keep sharing your links with some other gay priests. We are really outraged by the attempt to blame the crisis on us and hope you will continue to hammer away at that on your site. I think only a news media holding the hierarchy’s and the Vatican’s feet to the fire has any chance to make them change. We really don’t have many canonical rights if the Vatican is truly determined to remove us. In fact, one aspect of this situation that is very much overlooked is the Church’s need to have its own bill of rights for all members.

And here’s a reminder that there are many gay lay people serving the church as well. These people are under threat now too:

Your postings today are particularly insightful. You are right that gay priests should come out and declare who they are. As a gay layman who serves as a Catholic school principal, I also feel the same way at times since I know with certainty how many fine gay priests there are! Yet I wonder sometimes if I would have the courage to “come out” beyond the small circle of friends that know about me. What a tremendous amount of courage would be needed; perhaps we gay Catholic leaders are at a moment in our history which DEMANDS such courage? It is certainly worth praying over.

I’m not going to sit in my privileged position and tell gay priests or principals to come out. My sympathy and solidarity belong to them – and other conscientious Catholics caught in this mess – whatever they decide to do. But I do think, for what it’s worth, that something important is at stake now. And courage is needed to resist the forces that are thinking of a purge.

George Will rightly eviscerates Bush’s cave-in to protectionism and industrial policy. Why Karl Rove is running economic policy is beyond me. Are they that scared of the upcoming elections? This is easily the dumbest, worst, and most cynical decision yet of this administration, and I hope principled conservatives give them hell for it.

“The ground war in Afghanistan hotted up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of Taleban zealots by proving the non-existence of God. Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or ‘Black Berets’, will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential anomie among the enemy.” I don’t know who this guy is, but he sure made me laugh.

Here’s a stunning web-page about Ted Rall, who thinks it’s brave to ridicule the widows of men killed by terrorists. He’s apparently suing another cartoonist for, among other things, “Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.” The crime? Writing a spoof email about Rall’s dislike for Art Spiegelman and sending it to 30 or so colleagues. Poor Ted. Compared to the distress of a woman whose husband was just beheaded by terrorists, he must be really going through it.

One “dirty bomb” could make Manhattan uninhabitable for decades, expert testifies in Senate; this just in: Clinton lied; Arafat’s suicide bombers plan more murder of civilians; cost of Cardinal Law’s cover-up increases to $45 million of Catholics’ money; world’s first womb transplant performed.

THE UNSERIOUSNESS OF THE DASCHLE DEMOCRATS: John Ellis (friend and supporter) nicely highlights the sheer fatuous narcissism of Daschle Democrats toward this war for our national survival. They’re still playing the news cycle game, the Washington status game, and the blame game. Mike Kelly makes a similar point: “The administration does not know exactly how, in the end, it is going to prevail. But it does seem to know what Daschle does not — that in the end it must prevail, that it cannot settle for declaring victory and going home: Home is where they attacked us.” Kelly is right that Daschle et al are simply not serious leaders. Worse, they simply aren’t serious people. Thank God they aren’t in charge right now. And heaven help us if they control the government any time soon.

BUSH ON GORE: “Bush had little use for Gore. Publicly, he never said so, but privately, when he talked to friends and political allies, he made it clear that he saw Gore as equal parts pompous blowhard and preening chameleon, a spineless panderer ready to be anything for anyone. For Bush, this was distilled in a single, oddly chosen detail: ‘The man dyes his hair… What does that tell you about him? … He doesn’t know who he is.'” The more I read Frank Bruni’s book on the real George W. Bush, “Ambling Into History,” the more I like this president. I’m not sure that’s Bruni’s intention, but there you have it. There are still two weeks to get a fresh, insider insight into Dubya and join the discussion with me and Bruni and your fellow readers. You can get the book and thereby join this month’s club here.

PAUSE: “It gives pause. That is the reaction here in Washington to the news that the White House has created a shadow government in the mountains. We are not frightened or panicked, just, you know, pausing, briefly, to mull the implications of a government program for which the possible obliteration of one’s community is the premise.” That’s the opener for a hilarious take by Joel Achenbach on the jitters in Washington right now.

CRIMES OF OMISSION: How Bob Herbert can write a column about New York City’s success against crime while barely mentioning Rudy Giuliani is beyond me. Yes, he gives some scant credit to Giuliani’s computer-assisted strategy. But really, the ingratitude and ideological blinders are still staggering.

SIMON’S OK: “Voters can register here as “Decline To State” which is great for me as my own term would be “none of your damn business”. As a DTS I could ask for any party ballot. I was happy and excited to vote for Simon. The first time I’ve been happy to vote for an R on the state ballot since 1992.” – from the Letters page today. You also defend Clinton, Rall and the liberal media.

TED’S BUDDY: Here’s a blog from one John Scalzi who is, apparently, a friend of Ted Rall, the cartoonist who recently mocked “terror widows.” James Taranto points out something I almost missed. One of Rall’s panels has a clear reference to Mariane Pearl. One “terror widow” says, “of course it’s a bummer that they slashed my husband’s throat – but the worst was having to watch the Olympics alone.” What point does that conceivably make? Apparently, according to Scalzi, a fair one:

The question then becomes, regardless if it’s insensitive to point it out or not, whether Ted’s satirical take on these telegenic widows has some basis. I think it does; anyone who watched Mariane Pearl on TV while she was waiting for word on her husband marveled how composed she was on camera, in a situation where your typical spouse would need to be deeply medicated. I don’t personally ascribe Mrs. Pearl’s poise to an inappropriate hunger for the media glare; like her husband, Mariane Pearl is a journalist and can probably compose herself when she needs to — and she also knew that presenting a calm and collected front could help to defeat the purpose of her husband’s kidnapping, which was to instill terror. This is how I read it; Ted may have (probably did) read it differently. Neither of us is Mariane Pearl, so we don’t know what she was really thinking. We have to go on our guts from there.

Hmm. What does it say about someone’s gut that he sees a woman whose husband has his throat slit for being a Jew and he ridicules her and mocks her mourning? If this is what is motivating some elements of the anti-war left, they’re even more depraved than I thought. No paper should ever run Rall again. Censorship? Nah. Decency. And editorial judgment. (See the Letters page for an alternative view.)

EVEN ANTI-ZIONISTS: Binyamin Jolkovsky has an interesting insight into a recent terrorist attack in Israel. Usually, the justification is that this is a war against the “occupation” of land in the west Bank and Gaza, or secondly a war against Zionism and the Jewish state – not simply against Jews as such. Of course we know that the Palestinian and Arab press is still riddled with Hitlerian hatred of the Jews, but we look the other way. What Jolkovsky shows is that the recent bombing of a Hasidic neighborhood is very clarifying in this respect: the massacre targeted Hasidic Jews who specifically oppose Zionism and whose opposition to the Jewish state even leads many of them to carry Palestinian passports. It’s the Jews these Islamist murderers hate. Even if Israel were destroyed as a state, Arafat and his allies would still murder every Jew left behind. That’s the reality. It’s time we faced it.

GAY PRIESTS ETC: Thanks for all your emails. I apologize for seeming angry these last couple of days. The truth is I have never been as depressed about a Church I love. Perhaps this story will help explain why. Some of you may remember my brief account of a wonderful ordination I attended last summer. It was of a friend of mine, my own age, who, unlike me and most of his peers, has dedicated his life to vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service to God and his fellow men and women. He trained for seven years as a Jesuit. He ha
s worked among the poor, the blighted of the inner city, the young, the needy. He does God’s work, without any expectation of worldly rewards, and when I see what he has done to reach out to African-American Catholics in places others fear to tread, I feel only awe and shame at my own selfishness. At several moments in my own faith-journey, he has picked me up and helped me back on my feet. He is a good, good man. I love him as a brother. And, yes, he’s gay. When I hear his life and work and dignity trashed, violated, insulted and demeaned by the pope’s spokesman, my anger rises, and now, as I write this, the tears well. But you know what? My friend is the real church. He is the real spokesman for the Gospels. And this other spokesman for a Vatican who declared every gay priest a molester-in-waiting has only his conscience to answer to. My friend tells me to go back to the sacraments, to pray that the real church will survive this, and to believe that Our Lord will guide his church back from the secrecy, shame and evil that now infects it. His faith under siege is an inspiration and a goad. Those of us in a state of disbelief and depression need to remember that these hierarchical gay-baiters and protectors of child-molesters cannot take our faith from us, and that our church – the real church – needs us now as never before.

NOW, THE DIFFICULT QUESTION: But some of you raise important questions. Couldn’t it also be true that there are indeed some cliques of gay priests in seminaries and elsewhere, and that celibacy is flouted by some of these people, if not many? Isn’t it also true that some of these incidents are not classic pedophile cases, but more like pederast cases, where the victims are not children but under-age youths? I think the answer to both questions is, sadly, yes. The question is what do we make of it? We don’t have clear data but it’s a fair bet to say that disproportionate numbers of priests are gay. I think that proportion may have increased over the decades as fewer and fewer men become priests and those who get ordained may do so to avoid conflicts over sexual identity. But why should this matter? Celibacy is the rule – for gays and straights. If gays are flouting it, they should be called to account on exactly the same grounds as straights. It becomes a deeper practical and pastoral issue for gays, in my opinion, because the struggle for gay priests to remain celibate is not openly and frankly dealt with. The lingering stigma of homosexuality in the church means that the closet is still the rule rather than the exception, and so these priests are driven underground where they cannot get help and guidance. The closet forces people into further feelings of shame and guilt and secrecy, generating an unhealthy atmosphere in which cliques thrive, cover-ups multiply and scandals are inevitable. The solution? Not more secrecy and purges, but more openness and honesty. If every gay priest were out to his superiors, out to his parishioners, and out to the world, I think we’d be in a much healthier place. Since being gay is not sinful as such, there’s no doctrinal problem with this. And such fresh air is not as conducive to psycho-sexual pathologies as the current stifling secrecy. But of course the Church would be embarrassed to announce that gay men are among its strongest pillars, because it still harbors in attitude if not doctrine a lingering loathing of homosexuality, and its own increasingly strained sexual doctrines would seem far less potent if gays were front and center in the church’s public image. So the shame continues, the secrecy deepens, the pathologies worsen and the scandals multiply. The only way out is candor and serious pastoral care for gay and straight priests alike.

BUT ARE THEY PEDOPHILES OR PEDERASTS?: This question seems to me to be interesting but beside the point. Priests are supposed to be celibate. And if they’re not celibate, they’re breaking their vows, whether they’re gay or straight. If they’re not celibate with consenting adults, they’re criminals, whether they’re gay or straight. What more do we need to discuss? The sly point of raising this issue, of course, is to insinuate that homosexuality is somehow more likely to be expressed with children and under-age youths than heterosexuality. But there’s no credible evidence for this. In fact, much evidence points in the other direction. Britney Spears, anyone? Anna Kournikova? You think straights are less attracted to youth than gays? When this slur fails to stick, the Church’s spinmeisters try another one: that being gay is a form of sickness and that part of that sickness is an inability to control one’s sexual desires. So gays should be purged from the church because they cannot help themselves, while straight pedophiles can. Here’s a quote that addresses that precise point: the notion that homosexuals are sexually compulsive and cannot restrain their desires is an “unfounded and demeaning assumption.” Moreover, the “human person, made in the likeness and image of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation.” That’s from the 1986 Vatican authoritative document called “The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.” This is the document that Navarro-Valls single-handedly threw out the window over the weekend to promote his own personal, heretical agenda. The authentic teaching of the Church unequivocally rebuts the hierarchy’s current attempt to scape-goat its own gay priests to deflect attention from hierarchical malfeasance. That shows just how desperate and unprincipled they have become. Their arguments are not only expedient, cynical and self-serving. They are un-Catholic in every sense of the word.

Well, we weren’t the only ones who complained about the Ted Rall cartoon. But I’m sure the blogosphere helped prompt the New York Times to yank it from their site.

A superb and succinct demolition of the New York Times-Saudi Arabia plan for “peace” in Israel by Anne Applebaum in Slate. My favorite observation:

In these circumstances, the outside intervention-from President Clinton-was an utter disaster. He forced everyone to play their cards too soon, before either the Israeli or the Palestinian general public were ready to give up on violence. I can’t see how Colin Powell or Javier Solana could, at the moment, do much better: Negotiations could perhaps calm the situation, but until one or both sides has come to the conclusion that talking will produce a better deal than fighting, negotiations have little chance of long-term success. Northern Ireland is different. Even if the IRA still hasn’t quite given up its battle, there is at least a popular consensus for peace.

I agree with Applebaum, and share her belief that Bill Clinton’s policy of premature “peace” helped intensify the war. More evidence of his damaging foreign policy legacy.

Another statement from a bravely anonymous priest to the Boston Herald. There’s no pedophile problem. There’s a gay problem. “My personal feeling is, I don’t care,” this conservative priest asserts. “We should stand up and be counted, reaffirming the authentic faith. If this element [the gay clergy] isn’t rooted out, we’re going to see reoccurrences. Vocations will come back; God will take care of that.” These stories are not accidental. They’re deliberate. The church hierarchy have now found a way out of their dilemma. Bruised by revelations that they have sheltered, supported and ignored child molestation, they now want to purge not the clerics who hid the abusers – but gay priests who have done nothing wrong. This campaign suggests to me a civil war could soon break out in the American priesthood. It’s going to get brutal, as gay Catholics are targeted for smears, accusations and exposure.

Useful post-primary analysis from Arnold Steinberg at NRO. The worry is that he mainly shows how Riordan lost rather than how Simon won. Some Republicans see another Reagan. I’ll refrain from commenting. But campaigns serve a purpose in that they help show the weakness of a candidate and therefore his potential weakness in office. Riordan clearly failed the test – and the voters’ judgment should be respected. Whether Simon can now rally is another matter entirely. Still, the warning signs are there. Davis picked the GOP candidate. The turnout was pathetic. Simon’s politics have little majority appeal. I smell political suicide. But Simon deserves the benefit of the doubt – for now.

PODHORETZ ONLINE: Norman Podoretz’s recent AEI lecture predicting a new Vietnam-like domestic struggle over the war on terror is now online. Thanks to FrontPage magazine for pointing it out. I’m more sanguine than the Pod. But the speech is unsettling nonetheless.