Category: The Dish

Douglas Adams was on to something.

(Hat tip: Bookforum)

A reader writes:

I am really drawn in to your discussions of fundamentalism. It is an issue that my husband and I, as well as many colleagues, often find ourselves discussing.  Why? We teach next door to a mega church and many of our families attend the church. We have seen numerous times where these children have upbraided their peers for not being "Christian enough", for not going to church where "they" do, and for not claiming Jesus as their personal savior.  To say that this behavior disturbs us, is to put it mildly.  The other day, another teacher found herself surrounded by a group of her 8 year olds calling her out on where she attends church, and what she believes. This event came after a year of one of her students frequently throwing out scripture verses aloud during class.  This is not limited to students; many of our colleagues attend services there as well.  Therefore, you will see a myriad of stickers affixed to the cars in our parking lot: "God is In Control" (guess that wraps up that Free Will debate) and "Not of this World" (funny, I thought God created this world for us) are the current favorites.

What I see are families who want certainty; to be told what to do and how to parent their children.

They don’t seem capable of parenting on their own two feet, so they turn their families over to a finger wagging mega-church that tells their kids to go out and bear witness, to wear chastity rings, and to quote scripture without ever really looking at the development of the soul. Also, there is an air of exclusivity among the children.  If you are not seen there during the weekend, or if you go trick or treating instead of going to the church carnival, or you don’t attend the "Christian Club" meetings during lunch at the public school, then you are on the outs with the crowd, because you just don’t love Jesus the right way. Further, the insistence on literal level thinking in regards to accepting the Bible as God’s literal word, has bled into classroom practices. Many of our children see no need to think about the author’s message of a text or to infer why someone might be feeling something in a given text, because if the author wanted you to think that about that, he/she would tell you directly, right?

I am looking forward for this trend to abate, and in the meantime, my family will be in the fourth pew from the back at our Catholic Church, living life in an uncertain world, comfortable with ambiguity and learning that the world is not black and white, and God probably doesn’t want it that way!

Judith Miller asks them:

As we Americans ponder our own election choices this fall, we should ask questions about what I saw in Iraq. Why isn’t the Maliki government spending more of its ample resources on the poor neighborhoods whose misery Muqtada Sadr is politically exploiting? Why isn’t Maliki doing more to rebuild Iraq and provide essential services? Why hasn’t Washington leaned harder on him to crack down on the corruption that is crippling Iraq’s recovery and infuriating Sunni and Shiite Iraqis alike, who fail to see much improvement in their daily lives?

And finally, having successfully wooed the tribal-led sahwah — or the Sunni "awakening" councils — into the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants, does it serve America’s interests to jeopardize that progress by fueling an internal power struggle among Iraq’s Shiites, who constitute 60% of the people?

Read the whole thing. Each candidate should answer the questions: why should young Americans be asked to risk their lives to advance the cause of one Shiite faction in Iraq over another? And what guarantee do we have that the victorious Shiites, whoever they turn out to be, won’t ultimately align with Iran anyway?

It’s good to see Miller raising these issues. It’s depressing to see so many ignore them, and to hear John McCain talk about Iraq as if Iraq can be summarized as some kind of simple battle against something he calls al Qaeda. We’re really not that stupid, Senator. And neither are you.

Still no real editors and no real rules. A collegehumor.com editor spills: 

And so my co-workers and I find ourselves paid to waste time based partly on our ability to guess what will be popular…It’s true: Without the benefit of a trusted formula, much of the work of picking content for the site boils down to instinct (read: guessing) mixed with analysis and a healthy dose of argument. To find oneself in a heated debate over what a young Jesus’s Facebook page would look like is odd. Odder still is to find yourself getting paid to argue over such things. Perhaps oddest of all is the degree to which arguments like this are taken very seriously. But with good reason.

A reader writes:

Although I appreciate the intellectual exercise involved in studying form and function separately, ultimately they are one. Agreed, part of me just has a problem seeing positive things written about Michelle Malkin. But when you broadcast these forgiving thoughts about Malkin (particularly on a blog as popular as yours) you have the effect of excusing her behavior and justifying her existence. I’m sure she fought tooth and nail to get where she is, and in a vacuum I respect that. What I do not respect, however, is granting her any shred of legitimacy. Malkin damages the discourse, she generates the worst brand of relentless unthinking reactionary commentary. She’s a Rovian bull horn and functions as such to the benefit of politicians you claim to despise for their vapidity.

Doug Kmiec suggests Obama should find a middle way:

How? By embracing a proposal equivalent to what the leaders of his own counsel of advisors have already endorsed: the so-called 95-10 legislation. This idea satisfies neither side of an absolutist clash completely – how could it and still be common ground? – yet  it strives for a 95% reduction in abortion over 10 years, not by legal mandate that would contradict the Senator’s belief that this decision must remain that of the mother, but instead by ensuring that no woman faces such decision without having already had the benefit of responsible information about abstinence and contraception. In the event of a pregnancy, the proposal would supply objective information about fetal development, the proper guidance of a parent if the prospective mother is a minor, and the public’s assurance of necessary economic support to carry the pregnancy to term, and if it be the mother’s informed choice, the adoption of her child.

A little perspective from the poll of polls:

The dark underside of the blogging world.

Ezra counters Ross:

A "soft" debate that really does focus on personality would be useful. Let some smart folks sit in a room and come up with questions that will allow the candidates to go off-message in illuminating, rather than confrontational, ways. Ask Clinton about her trajectory from Goldwater Girl to Wellesley radical, ask Obama about his lessons from working at an investment bank in New York, ask both for the last fiction book they read. Let them talk about an intellectual passion that’s unrelated to politics, or a beloved hobby that frees them from the tensions of the trail. Ask them about bad bosses from their past, and what management lessons they took from the experience. Ask what they’d major in in college if they could go back and do it again. I’d be interested in this sort of debate, which really could provide a glimpse into personalities that, for all their fame and visibility, remain relatively opaque. But this stuff about Ayers and Bittergate and Tuzla and flag pins is not a worthy substitute. It tells us much more about our media, and their appetite for scandal, than it does about the candidates.

They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.