Month: August 2006

Ann Coulter calls Al Gore "a total fag" on MSNBC. What do you think the impact would be if she called a public figure a "nigger" or a "kike"? So why the double standard?

"Saint Mel. That’s what he is in the eyes of millions of Americans. But for some, he‚Äôs Satan. Leon Wieseltier, the big fan of the Catholic-bashing writer Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, labels the movie a ‘sacred snuff film.’ Ex-Catholics like Maureen Dowd not only mistake the sacred for the profane, they think the film engenders intolerance when, in fact, the intolerance has come almost exclusively from the movie‚Äôs most vociferous critics.
But this is good — the pus has come to the surface. Now we can get on with the real debate: should the culture continue its celebration of self-indulgence or repair to a culture of restraint? If the latter is to be achieved, believing Christians, Jews and Muslims will have to join together to defeat those whose concept of liberty is pure libertinism.
Already, left-wing censors in Hollywood are out to get Mel. They think they can stop him. But it’s too late for the blacklisters to win. Nothing can stop the public from rallying around Saint Mel," Catholic League president, Bill Donahue, February 26, 2004. Saint Mel.

Issaqua, Washington, 6.05 pm.

A reader writes:

Your post reminded me of this:

Perhaps the shortest telegram exchange involved author Oscar Wilde when he was in Paris. He sent this wire to his publisher in England to see how Wilde’s new book was selling:

?

The reply was equally succinct:

!

Update: another source attributes this to Victor Hugo.

I just got wind of Michel Gondry’s next movie, "The Science of Sleep." If you don’t know of Gondry’s work, you really should. His music videos are astonishingly inventive, complex, playful and visually original. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was superb. His single video for the Rolling Stones is one of my all-time faves. He did Kylie proud too. I subject most friends to them at some point or other. The movie’s out September 22.

A reader responds to the Washington post testimonial I linked to yesterday:

I agree Andrew, that letter does speak to many American Catholics and I think that’s unfortunate. It is frustrating. It, the tribalism it reveals, is dangerous. There is only one reason that I remain a Catholic and it ain’t for the lively sermons. I believe what the Church claims to be, that it is THE Church founded by Christ, that the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, that we – Catholics – are united as family because we share this blood.  What the Church claims is radical, but after much research, thought, and discussion I am left with no alternative. I am not a conservative Catholic or a liberal Catholic … just a Catholic.

I understand, on one level anyway, what that letter writer means. I have met many people like her. There are throngs. Catholicism is very sensual. You hear the prayers of consecration, you smell the incense, you feel the holy water, you see the advent wreath, you hold the palms on Passion Sunday. It, the faith, becomes part of you. However, I could not raise my children – and I have five – in any denomination that taught things about which I had grave reservations.

Well, of course, it depends on the nature of the reservations. Humans being humans, we have thoughts and doubts and questions and consciences. many Catholics may conscientiously differ from the Church hierarchy on less fundamental matters and still remain within the Church, as far as I’m concerned. My basic rule is the creed we recite at the Mass. If you can say that with no reservations, and seek a good conscience on all the rest, you’re a Catholic as far as I’m concerned.

A musical interlude – by Joel Guzman (not the baseball player), in an inspired improvization on the accordion.

Mystery Pollster crunches the Lieberman-Lamont numbers. Mid-summer primary polls have been way off in the past.

Dahlia Lithwick homes in on why Justice Anthony Kennedy is such an important figure for the future of conservatism:

[I]n spite of the lofty intellectualism and the big words, this speech captures my imagination and that of the assembled crowd for its two quintessential Kennedy traits. The first is the vast sprawl of his imaginative world. He travels the planet and reads widely and he attends lectures on water purification. Then he applies all that knowledge to his conception of the law. And whether you like that expansive scope, listening to him is still a tonic to the smallness and smug certainty that has characterized our political leadership in this country for the past six years. It offers a welcome break from the hermetically sealed constitutional worldview of some of his detractors. Kennedy is a legendary agonizer. But his comments here reveal the extent to which that agony is not an end in itself. His sense of justice and equality is a work in progress, informed by what he learns from people all over the planet who know more than he does. There’s something reassuring in his sense that the world is a fluid place.

That sense – of the fluidity and inconstancy of everything – is the mark of a particular kind of conservative, an Oakeshottian attempt to find balance in doubt, and freedom in the minimal constraints of a rule of law that is as neutral between varying claims as possible. It is so different from the theological certainty that now passes for conservative doctrine. But "conservative doctrine" is an oxymoron. The point of political conservatism as I understand it is that it offers no doctrine, just the wisdom of a tradition resting, provisionally, on doubt.

Today’s the day. Full recrimination coverage later.