The Dish

I don’t agree with everything in this op-ed (I still believe the Iraq war was worth fighting and is still eminently worth winning), but I share his despair on fiscal and moral matters.

It worked for me. Major time-waster, though.

A classic English obit of a classically English fellow, William Donaldson, a sexual compulsive who, under the pseudonym, Henry Root, wrote famous people hilarious letters of sympathy, reproof and sheer right-wing nuttiness, many of which were politely responded to. Root’s persona was a kind of John-Derbyshire-meets-Hugh-Hefner. He loved twitting the self-righteous:

He had an unerring eye for the approach which would rankle most with his recipients. Writing to Harriet Harman, then of “The National Council for so-called Civil Liberties”, he began: “I saw you on television the other night… Why should an attractive lass like you want to confuse her pretty little head with complicated matters of politics, jurisprudence, sociology and the so-called rights of man? Leave such considerations to us men, that’s my advice to you. A pretty girl like you should have settled down by now with a husband and a couple of kiddies.” If she must work, he continued, she should consider a career such as “that of model, actress, ballroom dancing instructor or newsreader”, before enclosing a pound for her to buy a pretty dress and urging the future MP to get in touch with “my friend Lord Delfont”.

No evidence of a reply. He was also the producer of the first British concert given by Bob Dylan. Some might brag about such hipness, long before Dylan was famous. Not Donaldson: “He [Dylan] was sitting in my office one day when I came back from lunch. I couldn’t get rid of the fucker.”

“Senator Santorum proposes an interesting hypothesis regarding the sexual abuse of children by Roman Cathoic clergy based on his experience in the USA. I live in Ireland where we have had an equally serious problem, but in a society which was, until very recently, Roman Catholic in everyway the Senator could wish for. Yet the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy was rampant here during the period when Catholic moral teaching was universally accepted by the general population, and enforced by the state through its civil and criminal law. When I moved to the Republic of Ireland in 1990 contraceptives were illegal – with the exception of condoms, these being available to married couples at the discretion of their family doctors. Girls who had babies out of wedlock were commonly incarcerated in Church-run ‘Magdalen Laundries’ for the rest of their lives, and their children adopted or kept in children’s homes were they were easy prey for pedophile priests. Homosexuality was so thoroughly driven underground that I know people my age (now 41) that had never heard of it, and the Irish language had no word for it. 99% of schools were Catholic, 90% of the population were weekly mass goers and monthly confession was the norm for the majority. Divorce was banned by the constitution. There was no “plague of cultural liberalism”; there was no liberalism at all! It was almost a perfect Catholic State.

Yet the physical and sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy was rampant. Indeed it has been the exposure of these crimes that has revolutionized Irish society in the course of 10 years. In the past 10 years the Catholic Church’s standing in Ireland has totally collapsed. Now the state-run TV service carries adverts encouraging contraception. Homosexuality is now legal, gay couples are common and unremarkable, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) is a separated man who lives with a woman he is not married to. This is not remarkable to anyone. Mass attendance though still high by international standards, has plummeted, and there aren’t enough seminarians in the country to fill a booth in my local ‘Eddie Rocket’s’ diner. Irish society has never been so open, liberal, pluralistic, and so safe for our children. Senator Rick Santorum could not be more wrong. Liberalism has been good for Ireland culturally and economically, our children are well educated, confident and much much less likely to suffer sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests.”

Larry David can’t sleep. warning: the monologue makes Mickey Kaus sound serene.

The same people who parade the “God Hates Fags” obscenities just protested the burial of a special forces soldier. Their signs? “Thank God For IEDS,” “Fag Body Bag,” and “Fag Soldier In Hell.” There are some on the far right every bit as loathesome as the far left. Disrupting the funeral of a man who died for his country is beyond belief. Remember also that the far left wasn’t the only faction to blame America for 9/11 either. So did Jerry Falwell.

Why is it any congressman’s business who buys or does not buy a baseball team? The ability of these people to poke their noses into everything continues to amaze.

“My dream was to be a suicide bomber. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews. Yes, even babies,” – Wafa Samir al-Biss, who strapped explosives around herself while trying to be admitted to an Israeli hospital for treatment for burns. Words fail me.

They’re not only traitors, according to Karl Rove, they’re also behind the priest abuse scandal. Here’s Rick Santorum’s analysis of how the church enabled the molestation of minors, abetted, of course, by arch-conservative Cardinal Law, under the papacy of John Paul II:

It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning “private” moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

Santorum is the gift that just keeps on giving, isn’t he?

It may or may not be his last crusade, but I have always admired Bill Graham’s passionate but humane evangelicalism, his ability to reach out rather than condemn, his call to overcome our own deficiencies before we point out and excoriate others’. His refusal to meld his religion with a political ideology is now an anachronism, as contemporary Christianism has fused with a political party in condemnatory bitterness. But Graham shows what true Christianity is. And how it has become in danger of being eclipsed by the hubris of Dobson and the expedience of Rove.