Month: March 2010

Tokyo, Japan, 6 pm

John McWhorter rolls his eyes at Tavis Smiley's upcoming black leaders summit:

Based on my experience, I’ll take a guess as to how Smiley’s We Count! The Black Agenda is the American Agenda will go. I know I’m going out on a limb here. Stay with me, this is a little complex: I venture that a major thread of the discussion will be the observation that although we have a black President, racial disparities persist in America. Never mind that the number of people attending or watching the event on TV who won’t already be aware of this could barely fill a minivan. And then some other dependables at events like these – speakers and the audience will respond with especial fervor to points made with, at the finish, an edgy intonation conveying a streety brand of indignation. The actual content of the utterance will be of minor importance.

TNC takes Tavis to task over his claim that black politicians are "being targeted in some pretty significant ways by some pretty powerful forces":

[Smiley's] David Paterson defense strikes me as very, very wrong. Paterson is largely in trouble for attempting to influence a case in which one of his aides is accused of beating up his girlfriend. It's the need to see an abuse accusation through a racial lens that gives me pause. This is a politician whose approval rating is below 50 percent among black voters. I don't get how he fits into a narrative of black folks "getting crushed." I suspect the same of Charlie Rangel, though I haven't kept up enough to know for sure. I just don't see where the "black/white" angle is in this.

 A reader writes:

I’ve been thinking about the way the child abuse situation is playing out, and I’ve realized that one of the unaddressed problems in this situation is silence.

I’m not just talking about the silence of those who knew horrible things were happening and didn’t report it to civil authorities. I’m talking about the silence that has created this warped culture in the first place.

I’ve spent much of my life around Catholic priests, and teach religion at a Jesuit university. In dozens of conversations with priests, it is clear that so many of them don’t believe in an exclusively male priesthood, don’t believe in the church’s teaching that homosexuality is a “disorder,” reject the church’s absurd claims about masturbation, and some (though a smaller minority) don’t believe in the necessity of a celibate and chaste priesthood. But they keep their views to themselves. They remain silent.

The truth is that this silence is a form of acquiescence to the illusion of an asexual institution. And it is this illusion that has created this problem in the first place. 

People who feel compelled to molest children either enter the priesthood with the sincere hope that they can escape their sexuality altogether, or as a shield to enable their predatory behavior. The disproportionate extent to which this predatory behavior has taken place among gay men is only a function of the disproportionate degree to which the priesthood is the world’s biggest closet, and young gay men are encouraged to enter it as a way to “escape” their “disordered” tendencies (so yes, while same-sex child molestation can and does happen with otherwise heterosexual men, in a population in which a third?, a half?, or more? [it’s bound to be speculative] of the men are gay, it shouldn’t be surprising that a higher proportion of the predatory behavior will manifest itself in molestation of boys.

And to pretend that eliminating homosexuals from the priesthood will solve the problem is not only comical—it’s like a politician promising to clean up Washington—but will only assure the church is doubling-down on the fantasy of asexuality. It makes the invitation to predators even more appealing!).

If all of those priests who whispered in private conversations about their disapproval of the formal teachings of the Church regarding human sexuality were to make themselves known, and begin to work to publicly change the Church, who knows what the result might be? It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would be a start to an honest dialogue. Of course, this is a culture that values obedience over honesty, submission over truth telling, and it is set up in such a way to assure that deviating from this value structure will lead to great personal loss. But at a certain point, once we see the costs of this warped structure, isn’t it morally incumbent on the silent to speak?

I’ve always felt that “Silence=Death” was among the most powerful slogans ever. In the case of the Church, silence sometimes equals death, but it always equals pain, suffering, and the destruction of human souls whose lives will never be the same as a result of these acts.

So, yeah, keep stickin’ it to Ben XVI and his crew….but maybe, like MLK used to say of those who silently bent to the will of oppressors, the solution rests with them.

A reader writes:

This latest scandal with the Pope, which I have learned about almost entirely from your blog, drives home our society's unending ability to focus on the trivial over the critical. Outrage just never seems to be directed at the right people, places or institutions.

Compare the MSM's coverage of the allegations against Bill Clinton for his misbehavior with their coverage of the allegations against the Pope for his misbehavior. The Beltway pundits have wrung their hands about Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff more than they ever did about McCain's choice of Palin as Vice Presidential nominee. The modern GOP is more outraged about Democratic parliamentary tactics than about the fact that many Americans will die this year due to lack of health care — and the MSM just follows right along.

In other words, I read your blog because you seem outraged about the right things.

He is to the Vatican what Jackson Diehl is to the Israeli government. A reader writes:

John Allen’s lens for evaluating Benedict’s record as pope on sexual abuse matters in the National Catholic Reporter is skewed toward an insider’s apologia for the pontiff. “For those with the eyes to see” (like Allen), the days of lethargy and cover-up are over, and Benedict is a “Catholic Elliot Ness.” Please.

The question is the degree to which one should be expansively grateful for progress that essentially moves the ball from a minus zero to maybe plus 3 or 4, on a scale of 10. It’s in the right direction but such a meager standard for justice hardly merits high praise.

Allen cites:

1) disciplining Roman favorites Burresi and Maciel,
2) meeting abuse victims twice,
3) embracing zero tolerance,
4) apologizing.

On every count, Allen is misguided.

1) Burresi and Maciel were removed from ministry, but without ruling they were molesters and without vindicating their victims. Maciel had already declined re-election as superior so his removal was essentially moot; he claimed innocence until death. Benedict’s refusal of a clear pronouncement of guilt denied justice to survivors.

Allen’s claim that a guilty verdict seemed clear is not true for the survivors themselves or the world in general, best I can tell. Playing verbal gymnastics may be an inside Vatican game, but I find it dishonest at heart. This is the first time I ever saw a direct statement from Allen that Maciel was nevertheless guilty.

2) Meeting abuse victims abroad after, what, five years since the scandal broke is a huge achievement? Each got about five minutes. Two of them told me by phone recently they are disgusted by lack of outreach.

The actor who played Christ in Gibson’s movie was invited to the Vatican itself; such an invitation has yet to be extended to survivors, even though several went to Rome about 2004 and were rebuffed. Allen notes approvingly that Benedict “devoted five full paragraphs” to abuse in a speech, calling it evil and a sin. Is that such a remarkable effort?

3) Zero tolerance – demanded by public response. There would have been hell to pay without it, but a helpful sign. Still, no voluntary document releases to expose the truth, and Vatican refusal to cooperate with Ireland’s Murphy Commission.

4) Apologies are often in the passive voice, conditional, not in the pope’s name personally, filled with theological reflections about evil as red herrings that skirt bishop accountability. Non-apologies expressing shock, horror, etc. sorrow for the pain you suffered, not the pain that we as bishops caused by criminally endangering your children.

Remember: Cardinal Law still holds power. I believe Allen is inaccurate that Law was asked or instructed to resign. Law begged Battista Re (Congregation of Bishops head) to help him get out after his first offer of resignation was turned down. And I hazard it was not the 51 priests speaking out or the demonstrators or VOTF’s call for resignation that prompted Rome to let him leave.

It was, IMHO, in large measure because the expected subpoena from the MA AG’s office, which happened to arrive the morning Law went by car to NJ to take Peter Lynch’s private plane to Rome (on his second trip). Rome could not take the chance a sitting cardinal might be indicted, especially if my understanding is right, after a contact in law enforcement hinted, “You better get him out of here.” That and the damaging loss of support by diehard major donors after the latest revelations from secret archives.

The details, be what they may, will come out over time.

"The United States has a profound interest in redressing the long-standing grievances of the Palestinian people — not with expectation that Islamic extremism will thereby vanish, with Muslims everywhere falling in love with America, but in order to strip away every last vestige of claimed moral justification for violent jihadism directed against the West.

To pretend that this divergence of interests does not exist or does not matter — or to sustain the pretense that the fraudulent "peace process" holds out any real prospect of producing a solution — is the equivalent of allowing a sore to fester.

The inevitable result is to allow infection to spread, with potentially fateful consequences. Here in the ninth year of the Long War, with U.S. policy toward the Islamic world one long record of folly and miscalculation, what we need is more candor, not less," – Andy Bacevich, noting that none other than general David Petraeus has now endorsed a key thesis of Walt and Mearsheimer and many others in the reality-based community: Israel's strategic interests in the post-cold War world are not always America's interests.

And the reason for the current battle is not personality or internal Israeli politics or anti-Semitism; it is that this fact can no longer be ignored. In my view, at some point soon, the US needs to propose the details of a two-state solution and take active steps to enforce it.

A reader writes:

It worth noting the fact that by having the "failing" stigma attached to schools, there could also be downward pressures on real estate markets where those schools are located.  I am an urban planner. While this is anecdotal, the number one thing I hear from new suburban devotees is they are living out in the 'burbs for the benefit of their children's education.  Often this is the only reason I here from parents, as they often lament the isolation and traffic.  If schools across the nation are being slapped with failing ratings, I suspect that real estate agents are more frequently having issues selling in communities that they once had no trouble selling in.

I got thinking about this unintended outcome of NCLB after remembering your post about The Origin of Sprawl.  As the suburbs grew, their central city counterparts collapsed and so did their tax bases and abilities to provide services – good schools included.  This became a downward spiral.  Though, while the "good schools" argument may not have been an original cause of sprawl, it certainly has helped sustain its growth.  If suburban schools are being slapped with the "failing" rating, and then worse fail to get out from underneath it, the communities that support those schools could find themselves in the same downward cycle that the inner city schools found themselves in.

This scenario is of course a bit speculative, but so too is most of real estate.  This makes me wonder about the suburban and exurban communities hardest hit in the real estate downturn who also have the misfortune of having "fail" ratings attached to their schools.  Will "failing" ratings be just one more daunting impediment for these communities to overcome?  If so, we could easily see these communities as the analogy to what inner-cities became in the late 20th century.

TNC keeps talking:

There are rules for me, that aren't actually set by me. And just as I have had to learn to respect my individual agency, I've had to learn to respect that part of me that I don't control. I'm not religious, but I think there's a little God in that.

Dreher delivers his final thoughts.

Obama is well-regarded among non-wing-nut Israelis and the Israeli population at large, unlike the lobby that purports to represent them, is evenly split over the critical issue:

Nearly half the respondents (48 percent) said Israel must keep building in the capital, even at the expense of a rift with the United States, while 41 percent said Israel must accept the American demand (and Palestinian ultimatum) to stop building in Jerusalem until the end of the negotiations (which haven't begun yet)… Though the public remained composed in the face of the diplomatic fracas, poll respondents are not thrilled with the prime minister's conduct in the affair.

More people said Netanyahu's behavior was irresponsible than said he acted responsibly.

Meanwhile, Laura Rozen pens a drily hilarious sentence:

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren channeled Netanyahu's anticipated response to U.S. demands to the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl earlier Thursday.

Channeled.

"I never stop whipping," – Nancy Pelosi.