Month: December 2008

Ta-Nehisi:

…why the eff does Yglesias still get an award named after him? He jumped ship! Dump his ass!!

The award was named after him long before he ever worked at the Atlantic. Frum is edging out Peggy Noonan at the moment.

This column on why Sarah Palin is the "conservative of the year" is by Ann Coulter. It is an entire poem dedicated to someone regarded as the savior of conservatism in which not a single actual policy response to a single contemporary problem is discussed.

In Palin and Coulter, you have the two sides of contemporary conservatism: identity politics and malice. That’s why they lost. They had nothing substantive to say.

The top mental health breaks of the year have been clinically tested to be among the best ways to put off your pre-Christmas email or wrapping duties. Babies, hedgehogs, shark-surfing: think of it as a year-end clip show without any ads.

It will be the first time it has been used since its original use in 1861. From Lincoln’s hand to the first black president’s. The arc of history is long …

The leading Mental Health Break is the following:

A reader emails to note another celebrated moment of canine love:

        In 1924, Hachikō, an akito dog, was brought to Tokyo by his owner, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. During his owner’s life Hachikō saw him off from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station.

The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno didn’t return on the usual train one evening. The professor had suffered a stroke at the university that day. He died and never returned to the train station where his friend was waiting.         Hachikō was given away after his master’s death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachikō apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachikō waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he didn’t see his friend among the commuters at the station.        

The permanent fixture at the train station that was Hachikō attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachikō and Professor Ueno together each day. Realizing that Hachikō waited in vigil for his dead master, their hearts were touched. They brought Hachikō treats and food to nourish him during his wait.

This continued for 10 years, with Hachikō appearing only in the evening time, precisely when the train was due at the station.

Yes, I know he wasn’t a beagle, but by Year 7, he was doing it for the treats, you fools!

John Aravosis has noted that the Saddleback website posting that  “someone unwilling to repent for their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted as a member at Saddleback” has been removed. I have to say that this did not strike me as in any way notable, especially since the note also insisted that gays were always welcome to attend services. And one wonders how that makes Warren different from any Catholic bishop let alone the Pope. My own church teaches that I am barred from full communion because of my civil marriage to another man, although it does not bar me from attending mass.

And Benedict has gone out of his way to issue what can only be called calculated affronts to the dignity of homosexual persons. Yesterday’s statement that humankind needs "saving" from homosexuality, the way the rainforests need saving from being raped and pillaged is his latest provocation. His first-in-history attempt to ban even celibate gay seminarians is easily the most draconian and hateful anti-gay policy of any church, stigmatizing them even if they agree to obey every stricture the church places on them. His own complicity in covering up the abuse of children and evil protection of Father Maciel make his attacks on the dignity of homosexuals all the more repulsive.

And yet those of us born into this Communion and in love with the Jesus of the Gospels have to find a way to live in this place with our fellow Catholics in charity. At least Warren appears open to dialogue, rather than recoiling in fear and loathing. In that he is somewhat more Christian than this Pope.

The journey that Melissa Etheridge has taken is my own:

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world’s attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don’t hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And what we did this past year needs to be a beginning, not an end.

Heilbrunn speculates.