Two mistakes by an Alinskyite

Saul Alinsky
The hero himself, left out of column

Bill Droel’s Chi Cath News column “The Working Catholic: Church once heavily interested in labor relations” has an egregious error, explainable perhaps by his working at a far south suburban community college:

Sunday, Sept. 5, 2010 at 10:30 a.m. . . . the National Center for the Laity sponsors a Labor Weekend Mass. The place is St. Catherine/St. Lucy (38 N. Austin, Oak Park; just north of Madison Ave.)

Avenue? The street of advertising dreams in New Yawk?  Madison Street, Droel, before you have your columnist’s license revoked.

Only slightly more egregious is his talking up an organizing effort in his immediately previous [headline-free] column, in which he has this remarkable item:

The Industrial Areas Foundation (637 S. Dearborn St. #100, Chicago, IL 60605; http://www.10percentisenough.org), a 70-year-old national network of community organizations, has launched a “Ten Percent Is Enough” anti-usury campaign. IAF’s material, which refers to religious tradition, suggests that they understand legal victories and legislative changes are insufficient. A solution must include moral change.

Why remarkable?  Because it identifies the IAF sans reference to its founder and inspiration and guiding light for its first 32 years, the one and only radical organizer Saul Alinsky! Now why would Droel omit such an important piece of information?

I think he’s trying to fool us, which is naughty indeed.

Thou shalt not jar

Have a Politically Correct whatever
Have a Politically Correct whatever

Today’s liberty quote on politically correct speech:

“No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.”

Get enough of those “thou shall not say” words and phrases into the Lexicon of Forbidden Words, and it’s off to the races for fascists and other so-called liberals, who are dying to catch you in the act and/or take you to court.

As in (expletive) you, the man wrote, you gosh-darn (expletive).

Or: It’s wrong to call an African-American a (expletive) or a homosexual person a (expletive).

You may think this, but you can’t write it.  You can’t even deprecate the use of such words without tiptoeing through the minefields of liberal, now mainstream, orthodoxy.

Get enough of those “thou shall not say” words and phrases into the reigning orthodoxy, and it’s off to the races for fascists and other so-called liberals.

(expletive) you, the man wrote, you gosh-darn (expletive).

or: It’s wrong to call an African-American a (expletive) or a homosexual person a (expletive).

That’s something I believe but can’t write.  I can’t even deprecate the use of such words without tiptoeing through the minefields of liberal, now mainstream, orthodoxy.