The Dish

That's Garry Wills' description of the core method of Barack Obama's career and life. His review of the Remnick book is a must-read (and an inspired assignment). I don't agree with its conclusion – a "wasted" first year – but I was intrigued by these insights into how Obama altered the facts of his own life-story for political ends:

He said [at Selma]: “My grandfather was a cook to the British in Kenya. Grew up in a small village and all his life, that’s all he was — a cook and a houseboy. And that’s what they called him, even when he was 60 years old. They called him a houseboy. They wouldn’t call him by his last name. Call him by his first name. Sound familiar?” Actually, Remnick shows that Obama’s grandfather was a respected village elder and property owner, who left his native town for Nairobi to cook for British colonials, and then traveled with British troops to Burma, bringing back their Western clothes and ways to his village.

In Selma, Obama claimed that his father was the beneficiary of the civil rights movement because it made the American government bring Kenyans, including his father, to the United States: “So the Kennedys decided we’re going to do an airlift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country.” Remnick proves that the airlift was an idea for the improvement of Kenya, conceived and implemented by the Kenyan leader Tom Mboya, who came to America and raised funds from private sources, including Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. It was only after Obama’s father had flown in the first airlift that John Kennedy contributed to the airlift, also from private (not government) funds.

Not that big a deal – but interesting.

A reader writes:

I'm Presbyterian. When I was a boy, our church faced a scandal. Glossing over the details: pastor sleeps with secretary, church fires pastor, church hires new pastor.

I thought a lot about our church's scandal when I worked Residence Life at a Catholic College.

There was the priest who had a habit of coming to the dorms late at night. Often, he was just there to berate students, but he sometimes wanted to go back to the private areas. When he turned up at my security desk, I always had the guys call me so that I could escort Father around, in a sign of respect, you see. Finally, I had to ask my director (also a layperson): why the college didn't just fire him? You would have thought I had spit on a crucifix.

He's appointed by the Bishop, you see. It's that respect for the clothing and not the man wearing it that I could never understand.

Scott Horton has the best analysis of the revolution in Kyrgzystan. Money quote:

The unrest in Kyrgyzstan is among other things a test for the short-term, and probably short-sighted, policies behind the U.S./NATO support arrangements in Kyrgyzstan. The United States has curried favor with powerful political figures intent on rent seeking. What happens when those figures buckle and fold in the face of public unrest? The U.S. proclivity for “sweet deals” with those in power will complicate things in time of transition.

Terry Eagleton reflects on the meaning of evil without bringing God into the equation. He later compares psychology and theology:

The modern age has witnessed what one might call a transition from the soul to the psyche. Or, if one prefers, from theology to psychoanalysis. There are many senses in which the latter is a stand-in for the former. Both are narratives of human desire – though for religious faith that desire can finally be consummated in the kingdom of God, whereas for psychoanalysis it must remain tragically unappeased. In this sense, psychoanalysis is the ­science of human discontent. But so, too, is theology. With Freud, repression and neurosis play the role of what Christians have traditionally known as original sin. In each case, human beings are seen as born in sickness. But they are thereby not beyond redemption. Happiness is not beyond our grasp; it is just that it requires of us a traumatic breaking down and remaking, for which the Christian term is conversion. Both sets of belief investigate phenomena which finally outstrip the bounds of human knowledge, whether you call this the enigmatic unconscious or an unfathomable God.

John McWhorter translates:

What truly distinguishes Palin’s speech is its utter subjectivity: that is, she speaks very much from the inside of her head, as someone watching the issues from a considerable distance. The there fetish, for instance – Palin frequently displaces statements with an appended “there,” as in “We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there…” But where? Why the distancing gesture? At another time, she referred to Condoleezza Rice trying to “forge that peace.” That peace? You mean that peace way over there – as opposed to the peace that you as Vice-President would have been responsible for forging? She’s far, far away from that peace.

A reader writes:

The Roman Church is very quick to protest that clergy sex abuse is not limited to their domain, and this is true, but when one compares the way that it has handled the issue to the way it is handled by other denominations, their protestations ring mighty hollow.

A singular case in point happened a number of years ago in a small town in Massachusetts. The rector of the Episcopal Church was accused of having had a sexual relationship with a 14 year old boy more than thirty years prior when the priest was serving at another parish in another state. The relationship appears to have been at least quasi-consensual (although one could argue, convincingly in my view, that a fully consensual relationship between a grown man, particularly one as influential as a priest, and an adolescent is not possible).

The priest, when confronted with the accusation, admitted that the relationship had taken place, and the Diocese of Massachusetts removed him, not only from his position as parish rector, but also from the Episcopal priesthood, THAT VERY DAY.

Even though the relationship had taken place a long time before, and even though the priest was almost universally beloved in his community and very effective at his calling, the church, understanding that in cases like these the issue is not sex but abuse of power, determined quite rightly that there should be no statute of limitations and that zero tolerance must be demonstrated.

I always think of this when I read about clergy sex abuse cases going on for five, ten, a dozen years. With regard to the people who exist within its hierarchy, the Roman church’s power is absolute. It could remove these men with the same dispatch that the Episcopal church showed if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to.

Piermont, New York, 12 pm

It was an arresting lead editorial yesterday at Fred Hiatt's Washington Post yesterday. While no one disputes Karzai's corruption and his erratic behavior and almost everyone acknowledges the extraordinary difficulty of conducting a counter-insurgency in defense of an Afghan government riddled with corruption and inspiring little loyalty … the WaPo suddenly finds a reason to criticize Obama for getting tough with Kabul:

Does Mr. Obama think that holding the Afghan president at arm's length is likely to prompt more responsiveness to U.S. concerns? Is he trying to show the Afghan people that U.S. support for an unpopular government is not unconditional? If so, he may have miscalculated: Not only has Mr. Karzai responded defiantly, but he has also appealed to Afghan resentment against foreign troops and political tutelage.

A strange criticism. Baffling in a way. Until you realize why:

As in the case of the very public spat he initiated with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Mr. Obama's treatment of Mr. Karzai doesn't seem to flow from a careful strategy.

Self-parody, I know. But hilarious nonetheless.

A reader writes:

I am a (currently non-practicing) Catholic mother of two adult sons, both of whom were altar servers at our beloved church in Florida. The span of time during which they served was 1979 through 1997. During those years, we became close friends with several priests. My protestant husband even converted to Catholicism during those years. Even though my husband and I were very involved in volunteer positions in our parish and were considered quite devout, we were constantly on the alert for any hints of unusual priestly interest in our boys.

One of our close Franciscan priest friends brought one of his Franciscan colleagues (I refuse to call him a priest) to our home for dinner and swimming one Sunday. The Franciscan colleague was not serving at our parish, and we had never met him prior to this Sunday visit. He played piano as did our younger son, who was about 9 years old. 

That man insinuated himself onto the piano bench and could not get close enough to our son while they played duets. And, that Sunday afternoon, after having just met us, he invited our two boys to Disney World for a long weekend, suggesting that it would be nice for my husband and me to have a weekend break from parenting.

Needless to say, we never again invited that person to our home, nor did we take him up on his offer! (This event would have occurred in 1988.) My husband and I still shudder to think what might have happened if we had been naïve and trusting. After reporting this incident to a different priest friend, we learned that the Franciscan had been transferred to our diocese because of some “troubles” in his Pennsylvania diocese, and he was not supposed to have contact with children.