“The Clinton campaign obviously views tough, unscripted questions the way a vampire does a crucifix,” says John Fund in Opinion Journal’s Political Diary — subscription only, cheap at twice the price — writing about “Plant Gate,” in which questions are planted in Iowa, where tall corn grows when you plant it.
Tag: Blithe Spirit
Greedy, he wrote
Cardinal George not only considers financial gain the motive force behind proposed state legislation that would widen opening for suing about sexual abuse, he said so in a letter of apology to parents of a victim of two priests, Sun-Times reports tomorrow.
“This is irresponsible, is not about the safety of children as the sponsor claims, and is clearly, to me at least, about money,” he wrote.
The victim, who is not suing, “called the letter outrageous,” Sun-Times reported.
“Victims sue for justice, not for fabulous houses,” said the man, who . . . is negotiating a settlement. “Nobody wants to live in a fabulous house that reminds you that you were molested by two priests as a boy.”
This is George at his blunt best. He has a knack for the sharp comment that should make his coming term as bishops’ conference president interesting, if not disastrous.
The bill’s introducer, State Sen. Terry Link, a Lake County Democrat, has heard the cardinal talk this way before and has told him it’s offensive.
This is not likely to slow the cardinal down, and his no-holds-barred commentary has echoes in how auxiliary bishop Thomas Paprocki characterized increasing financial pressures from victims.
“This attack is particularly directed against bishops and priests,” he said in a recent speech, adding that the principal force behind the attacks “is none other than the devil.”
Somehow, you’d think he would reserve diabolism for a number of other heinous things.
Bishops again
This pops up in the middle of a Chi Trib story about relieving financial worries of sued dioceses:
“Many of the bishops basically abandoned their responsibilities to their flock, and why should we now have confidence in them that they will not do so in the future?” said Robert Bennett, a Washington lawyer and former head of the bishops’ National Review Board. “Enough time has not gone by yet.”
He is brother of Bill, by the way, and former lawyer for then-Pres. Clinton. Well-connected, that is, and presumably very sharp guy. He and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke have similar tales to tell, I’m sure, of the irresponsibility of bishops, she having headed the same committee and learned more than she wanted to know about those shepherds — as Tom Roeser reported for The Wanderer:
Anne Burke will always remember one session out-of-town with a nationally famous bishop who gave her complete assurance that all instances of sexual hanky-panky were brought to a dead halt in his diocese. The next morning she opened a newspaper and found that the bishop was on the front page, having welcomed a priest-sexual predator as a house guest. She called the bishop. “Yesterday you assured me that all matters involving the diocese had been cleaned up,” she said. “You know, you lied to me, didn’t you?” He said the priest was being used for a theological research job. She continued, “You lied to me, didn’t you.” “No, I didn’t.” “Well, the priest you hired was convicted.” “No he wasn’t.” “Really?” “He pled guilty. That’s what happened.” “Same thing.” “Well, not exactly-pleading guilty is not the same as being tried and found guilty.”
Burke smiled at that effort at the futile attempt to apply theological hair-splitting to the law. It may make it in a university theological seminar but not in a courtroom. “Why did he try to snow me?” she said to this reporter. “Did he think he could get away with it because-well, he didn’t.” Later she received a denunciatory letter from a bishop who said she was rude in some of her discussions with his colleagues. Then it became clear that she would never be given the title of Chairman but would continue as “interim Chairman.”
A delicate rebuke. One must not be rude to bishops for any reason. When reminded that she never graduated from the interim title, Burke just smiles. Rude or just following the mandate the bishops gave her, Anne Burke sat at her Supreme Court desk in Chicago last week and showed this Wanderer reporter another angry letter-like an earlier one, also from the Archbishop of Hartford, Henry J. Mansell which ripped the Board for “expanding their competence, responsibilities, activities and studies in a dynamic of autonomy.” A very tough letter. It concluded “Be assured of our continued rayers and best wishes.”
Anne Burke smiled quietly and said, “Continued prayers. How touching.”
Blogged with Flock
Common sense
It’s been this kind of talk from Giuliani that has had me on his side from the start, tentatively of course, and tentatively still, but less and less so. It’s the Islamo-fascist threat, stupid. That and Democrat tax-and-spend-ism:
Giuliani said [Thursday in Las Vegas] the “threat of Islamic terrorism” was “something that we just have to face and be realistic about, and the reality is that many of the Democrats are not being realistic.”
He accused Democratic candidates of not being able to utter the phrase “Islamic terrorism” for fear of appearing politically incorrect.
“I’m not suggesting that any religion is bad,” he said. “We’re intelligent enough to understand that. We’re intelligent enough to make that distinction and not turn it into some kind of prejudice.”
Giuliani said it was better to err on the side of caution. “This country has never, ever, I believe, gotten in trouble by exaggerating a threat,” he said. “We’ve gotten ourselves more into trouble when we underestimate a threat.”
The Democrats, he said, are exhibiting an “almost embarrassing” eagerness to negotiate with America’s enemies.
From Reader D:
I’m open to Giuliani — for the reasons you are, plus he will not be afraid to be in Hilary’s face. I do not want a “Gentle-man” to pussy-foot around her.
I wish Mrs. Romney was married to Rudy! I heard her the other night, and she deserves to be first lady. I hope Rudy’s Mrs. is not a bimbo. I haven’t heard her say a word so it’s all subjective.
The bishops are coming out with some voting blah blah that makes me think they will again twist gullible Catholics into staying home. I want to hear that [Pope] Benedict quote from a couple years ago about — if there are 2 pro-choice candidates, you have to vote for the one that has the better platform aside from abortion.
My bumper sticker will be: “It’s pragmatism, stupid!”
How dare they?
Peggy Noonan on Hillary playing the female card after her recent lambasting at a candidates’ debate:
The point is the big ones, the real ones, the Thatchers and Indira Gandhis and Golda Meirs and Angela Merkels, never play the boo-hoo game. They are what they are, but they don’t use what they are. They don’t hold up their sex as a feint: Why, he’s not criticizing me, he’s criticizing all women! Let us rise and fight the sexist cur.
Papa Rich
Picture Daley saying this in Bridgeport about political hiring and other corrupt practices:
Standing in an intersection in the Back of the Yards neighborhood Wednesday, Mayor Richard Daley reprimanded the community for not identifying the shooters who killed a pregnant woman in front of her three young children on Halloween.
“You know who did it,” he said. “Don’t be blaming the police. Look in the mirror and say, ‘I can do better.'”
I can’t.
He’s a real gone guy and I’m gonna love him till I die . . .
Chi Trib’s Colleen Mastony, a girl, delivers girl talk:
Today, Robert Redford’s strawberry blond hair is graying at the temples, his face is weathered and he wears a pair of thick, round-framed glasses. But with his slight build, sun-kissed skin and light freckles along his forearms, he retains the graceful ease and rugged good looks that once made him the golden boy of Hollywood. And — if you’re wondering — this septuagenarian can still make a heart flutter by flashing a smile and dropping a small compliment. (“That’s a beautiful name,” he says to me, mid-interview, as I swoon.)
She got this past copy editors who saw nothing amiss. Nor will higher-ups, I bet.
On the other hand, Chi Trib’s op-ed page, an oasis of sense in that publication, has another view of Redford’s and other anti-war movies:
By confusing the public’s war-weariness with their own carefully cultivated rage they’ve badly over-reached. Rage may be a good box office draw; exhaustion isn’t. The late film critic Pauline Kael is reported to have said that Richard Nixon couldn’t have won because she didn’t know anybody who voted for him. Similarly, maybe everyone [director] Paul Haggis knows shares his hatred for the war, but he just doesn’t know enough people to make a hit.
The “exhaustion” reference intended for the general public (by columnist Jonah Goldberg) could refer to Redford’s portrayal by Mastony as “pessimistic activist,” with angst in his veins. Question is, how many people want to sit through an hour and a half of Redford’s angst?
Trib, S-T: Try Sailer!
Gauntlet considered thrown before Chi Trib and Sun-Times opinion, controversy, perspective, whatever editors to give Steve Sailer space in your esteemed publications. His lede for today is alone cause for considering him:
The ritual humiliation of America’s most prominent man of science, James Watson, for publicly acknowledging that there are differences in average intelligence among the races, highlights the extent to which today’s conventional wisdom is hysterically hostile to basic findings of the human sciences.
“Feel the Love,” he wrote
Longtime reader, third– or fourth-time writer (WRITE ME, I’M LONELY!) Phil put me on to today’s David Brooks column and its brilliant reportage on the recent debate between Democrat runners-for-office, which includes this from the Man from Poverty:
EDWARDS: I worry about the two Irans. For while the corporate Jihadis are building nuclear weapons, the working-class extremists are shivering in doorways and making do with sharp sticks.
Lots more here, including a closing paean from Tonto:
GOV. BILL RICHARDSON: That was beautiful, Hillary. I love you
Who says the NY Times sucks?
Where have all the (right) causes gone, where have they gone?
Dave Newbart is at it again in S-T, with story about Loyola kids protesting LU investments in things that The Left does not like: “controversial companies like Halliburton, Clear Channel, Wal-Mart, Chevron and Dow Chemical,” says Newbart — his exact words NOT in quotes in his tendentious lede. (Suggested redo: “companies controversial to libs and mainstream media.”)
N. has finished with his Finkelstein-DePaul coverage that was heavy on complaints by protestors and perfunctory on rebuttals. It’s a meme he has pursued since he led the ouster of Fr. Donald Rowe some years back as president of St. Ignatius College Prep in which N. gave ample space to — guess what? — protesters, this time among dissident teachers.
Rowe may have overstayed his time at Ignatius, where he raised lotsa bucks in a good cause. But what about selecting this investment-in-Wal-Mart cause at Loyola, one dear to leftists’ hearts, while never the cause of campus conservatives? I would love to hear of a campus-protest story by Newbart that picks up on a conservative protest. It could be I have missed it or them, but I very much doubt it.
Blithe Spirit 