The long arm of Rome, Cardinal Newman alert:
Tony Blair is preparing to convert to Roman Catholicism after he steps down as Prime Minister, according to a leading cleric.
His long- awaited formal switch to the faith of his wife and family will come shortly after he surrenders office, it is claimed.
Mr Blair’s decision to formalise his Catholic beliefs was revealed by Father Michael Seed, who is regarded as unofficial chaplain to Westminster and is a regular visitor to Number Ten. . . . .
Discussing specialized business weeklies with an expert, I learned recently that reporters for one such chain are paid more than those for the dailies in the same cities. Was not surprised, I said: they are better qualified and more sophisticated, writing as they do for a more discriminating audience.
Think Bay Fang in today’s Chi Trib, with her piece on Washington’s “Vulcans,” who find themselves on the hot seat in these days of the Democrat majority. It’s foreign-policy coverage for dummies, rehearsing the rehearsed.
And for a certain kind of dummy at that. What is there about the story that the “senior Democratic congressional aide” quoted anonymously would not like? He who framed the story for Fang:
“There is a real sense among Hill investigators that, after six years with a Republican Congress, administration officials became accustomed to having their explanations accepted at face value,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide. “Many of the prior inquiries pulled punches, failing to ask the hardest questions, and now that’s coming back to haunt them.”
Moreover, whose idea was the story, Fang’s or the aide’s?
Also, where in the story is “Democrats claimed” or “alleged,” to go with generic Republican objections — “Republicans called it a fishing expedition . . . . have accused [Rep.] Waxman [chief interrogator] of partisan pettiness . . . “
Nothing so story-framing available from a senior Republican aide?
And how about this one?
Vice President Dick Cheney, a charter member of the group, is still in office, but he has some of the lowest popularity ratings of anyone in the administration.
Charter member? This is columnist’s language, not news writer’s. Still in office, is he? I wondered why he keeps turning up on Fox. Popularity down the toilet? Ah-hah, Waxman’s revenge.
One more carping criticism of this column-article. “Prewar claims, later discredited, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger,” tossed off as easy as can be: That’s how WashPost’s Pincus said it in July, 2003, going with “a senior administration official.” It’s how we say it these days in all the best noosepapers.
However, Bush’s claim was that Iraq tried to buy uranium in “Africa,” citing British intel that named Congo, Somalia, and Niger. British press then focused on Congo, for what that’s worth, and the famous (infamous) Joseph Wilson reported that “a sale couldn’t likely be completed in Niger,” never disproving the attempt, according to DailyHowler.com.
By now in any other context but interest in the Democrat zeal to interrogate, it would be inside baseball. Good enough for dummies, however.
Lewis Lazare is the first (I think) to see the emperor’s nudity in the matter of that pesky Olympics logo that has to be removed, and along the way cites mayoral-office heavy-handedness in public relations:
So, Chicago, how does it feel? We’re still nearly nine years way from possibly hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics, and already we have a huge gob of egg to wipe off our collective faces.
On Wednesday, the powerful International Olympic Committee reminded the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee what it should have known: that cities bidding for the Olympics may not use Olympic colors or symbols (the torch) in their logos
The mayoral clumsiness?
Do [Pat] Ryan and Daley need to shake up their staff after this logo setback? And before going any further, perhaps these two 2016 committee leaders, if indeed that is their role, should rethink the fascistic (how very Richard M. Daley, right?), hamfisted approach to public relations that has characterized the committee’s efforts so far.
It’s the Second City way, I fear. Some years back, doing an advertorial for Forbes, I was instructed by the Hall apparatchik, eager to burnish her credentials, to interview Bill Daley, then pres. of Amalgamated Bank. I was happy to do, having taught him all he knows (I bet) about creative writing at Ignatius a long time ago. But the Forbes contact was appalled.
“The mayor’s brother? Why?”
In due time Chicago and New York went head to head on the whole tone of the piece — hamfisted, you see — and NY/Forbes knuckled under, at the expense of readability and credibility.
The Masters of Stereotype were at it again in saying the pope blasts capitalism in his new book. If he did, it was in code that only a mainstream editor can decipher. Reading news accounts, Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute had to wonder:
Could Benedict XVI really be departing from the teachings of John Paul II that economic freedom is but a part of a larger system of freedom and rights that is embraced by the Church?
Then he read the book and found in it no mention of capitalism. Rather, it’s a meditation, says Sirico, “on human solidarity and the centrality of God in human life, including aid to poor people.”
There is no mention here of economics, politics or specific programs of redistribution, much less any ringing criticism of the free economy.
The book is
explicitly a spiritual reflection on our own interior disposition toward those who are “neighbors” to us and for whom we have some moral responsibility – not an economic screed.
This ain’t the story editors see, however. It’s not part of “the agenda of journalists and editorial writers.”
Rather, the pope
is calling on us to care for the poor in every possible way: materially and spiritually. The science of economics informs us that the free economy is the best possible foundations for growing wealth.
The free economy, yes. It’s the best way to raise the poor from poverty, regardless of “the highly politicized and often deeply inaccurate reports of journalists looking for headlines.”
Relative of one of the Fort Dix Six, terrorists seeking to kill American soldiers, on where they went wrong:
…”It’s fine to be a religion man,” said Murat Duka, 55, a distant relative of the defendants who was the first of the Dukas — now numbering about 200 — to move to the Northeast and work as a roofer. “But if you get too much to the religion, you get out of your mind and you do stupid things.”
Sounds about right.
Ill. Gov. Blagojevich, seeing he would lose yesterday’s senate vote about his tax plan, urged them beforehand to vote against it, on trumped-up last-minute consideration that more time was needed to consider it.
Blagojevich sought to minimize the vote’s impact. Beforehand, he suddenly asked lawmakers to vote against his plan as a signal that they think it’s too soon to take a firm position.
More time for him to pass out key favors, rather. It’s how George Ryan did it: pass out the goodies, call it Illinois First, and watch your legislation go sailing through. Statesmanlike conduct!
Then he lost the vote, 170–0 (!) and had the further unmitigated gall to look on the bright side:
“There’s ups and downs, but (I) feel good about it,” Blagojevich said after an appearance in Chicago. “Things went pretty well today.”
He is the boy who got a pile of manure for his birthday and jumped for joy because he knew “a pony can’t be far away.”
Smile and the world smiles with you, Guv. Cry and you cry alone.
With ledes like this, from veteran wordslinger Jon Van, of the Chi Trib technology beat, writing about what’s to come in Internet speed, newspapers may yet beat the dullness-irrelevance-end-of-line rap:
Like Wild West gunslingers, cable TV operators and telephone companies are squaring off for a contest over who’s the fastest.
The story, interesting in itself and written professionally as befits the lede, is about raising the ante in a telcom (telephone company) vs. cable operators duel in the sun that could lead (not “lede,” note, because does not refer to first paragraph of a news story) to TV on demand on your computer screen.
More to the point right now, the story has this ‘net surfer rethinking his reliance on a telcom connection — SBC’s DSL — and considering an escape to the already faster cable access — Comcast.
More later, I’m sure, on this tech front.
Last night’s Midland Authors event, the annual awards dinner at the Chicago Athletic Assn. on Boul Mich, was a hit. The dinner in the 8th-floor dining room overlooking Millennium Park was marvelous, but award presenters and award recipients sealed the deal. It was an excellent demonstration for the most part of how smart, nice people can talk to each other.
Highlights included the stunning appearance of Roger and Chaz Ebert, he joining her at the podium to receive an award, she doing the talking because he doesn’t do any these days (tracheostomy does it), and making quite a presence. No surprise to many, I’m sure, but it was my first time seeing her. She’s poised and genuine, and the two of them, one hand covering the other’s at the stand, just looked great as thoroughly believable loving couple.
The Fradins, another excellent couple, were awarded for their children’s book on Jane Addams. They are Judy and Dennis. Best line of evening was his noting that he rarely leaves his study, where he researches and writes, but did so for this event. Their book, Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy (Clarion), has a painting by their daughter on its cover, one that the parents couldn’t afford to buy, Dennis noted.
As to his library and study concentration, I told him afterwards it was rather medieval of him, and he agreed. A monk’s life, I said. And in today’s limelight-seeking climate full of back-slapping, even of oneself sometimes, he was refreshing indeed.
It was fun meeting the adult fiction winner, Samrat Upadhyay, a young teacher at Indiana U.-Bloomington who hadn’t been informed even that his novel, Royal Ghosts (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin), had been submitted, much less that he’d won. The committee tried to reach him but couldn’t until the day before the dinner.
It was fun, I say, because he’s from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was taught by Jesuits I know, including Rev. Charles Law, a physics teacher. Samrat and I chatted about Charley, one of my best Jesuit friends, who died a few years ago in Nepal of natural causes. “He loved Nepal,” Samrat told me with feeling. He was very well liked by the students and loved them too.
Go here for the winners and runners-up.
Capping the evening was my chat on the return Green Line ride back to Oak Park with two long-time residents, who had got on the stop before me after hearing the Chicago Symphony perform. We passed on our experiences. Theirs was wonderful (Brahms) but also forgettable (some new German stuff interspersed with the Brahms) — somebody’s idea of bring along the Great Unwashed regular symphony-goers, apparently, giving them a dose of new good stuff.
There we were on a 20–minute ride. They lived near the “L” stop, as do I. Living in Oak Park, we hopped the train and returned same way, each heading for his cultural event of the evening. Not bad.
This came out of the Fort Dix episode:
“If these people [arrested for plotting to attack the fort] did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 2001 attacks. “But when the government says ‘Islamic militants,’ it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous.”
Not so. If they said “Islamic” people when they meant militants, that would send that message. But to speak of Islamic militants is to say not all Islamic people are militants or all militants Islamic. Don’t they teach logic where that guy went to law school?
Blithe Spirit 