Tag: Blithe Spirit

Liberal perspective

Bob McClory belongs in Perspective with his liberal viewpoint on will-the-pope-or-won’t-he wake up and smell the coffee, as in the Sunday 6/12 paper.  But not without a side-by-side from the right, of which there are many around if not in your tickler file.  I would be glad to supply a list.

                  — Bowman to Chi Trib Perspective editor, 6/12/05, re column: “POPE BENEDICT XVI: Reading a pope’s mind: Conservative Ratzinger once acted more like a liberal: Will he do so again?” by Robert McClory, a former priest and an author and professor emeritus of journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism

Ahem. 

“A former priest and an author,” Bowman might have attached to his own name.  And “longtime reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, the liberal Bible, and longtime publicist for Call to Action, the liberal shock troops,” Chi Trib might have also attached to McClory’s, while also identifying his latest book, Faithful Dissenters, but did not, let us say for lack of space.

Perspective indeed.  “Liberal Catholics and many moderates have been in a state of profound shock [nothing serious, we hope] since the election of Pope Benedict XVI,” McClory begins, candidly announcing his perspective — his liberal viewpoint, as Bowman told the editor.  McClory’s is The View from the Left, and Chi Trib would have identified it as such if its editors were not intellectually deprived in the matter, being hampered by their own view, also from the left.  (Yes, the editorials are moderately conservative, but editorials do not a paper make one way or the other: it’s the coverage, stupid; but also in Chi Trib’s case, Perspective.)

McClory does not disappoint us, writing of the new pope as “tireless enforcer of orthodoxy . . . relentless scourge of dissenters . . . determined foe of . . . relativism . . . ‘God’s Rottweiler,’” in a sort of hamming it up for dissenter groundlings while providing just enough eloquence and self-conscious overstatement — irony, you know — to pacify the rest. 

He announces “more than a little trepidation in some quarters” — this is too coy — over what to expect from the Rottweiler as pope.  All may not be lost, however, in view of his “amazing ability to reinvent himself,” which McClory proceeds to demonstrate amply, quoting the before-and-after of Ratzinger as liberal-mugged-by-reality-turned-conservative, except for the reality part, which McClory does not acknowledge.

Instead, he implies a falling from liberal grace by the new pope, beginning in the late 60s, when student revolts especially in his native Germany shocked him into new or renewed appreciation of tradition — but wait: McClory assigns no cause for the change of heart and mind except to cite speculation “about inroads of Marxism in the church . . . the decline of Catholic practice in the West” and “concerns of his immediate superior, Pope John Paul II.” 

The new pope “has shown no such openness [as he did previously] to the views of significant groups of Catholics” since the late 60s.  He ignores “the great disagreement . . . within the church” about ordaining women, for instance.  Asking, “What are we to make of the contrast between the two Joseph Ratzingers?” McClory says nothing about reaction to 60s turmoil.

It’s been a “180-degree shift” for Ratzinger, but we should “stay tuned,” apparently for another shift that would put him on his original liberal course.  In support of this advice, McClory cites the new pope’s recently telling an interfaith group, “Let us go forward with hope” in pursuit of the Second Vatican Council goal of  “full communion . . . with true docility to . . . the Spirit.”

It’s not much of an argument — just a sort of liberal’s prayer, in broad daylight in a liberal newspaper.

Zorn unmasked

 It’s good to see Eric Zorn letting his Democrat hair down in his blog, as opposed to his hard-copy Chi Trib column.  Here’s a snippet (scroll down) that goes a long way towards understanding what a condescending con job is his column:

The delightful irony here is that [Durbin’s] conservative Republican critics – oh, you should have heard them wetting their pants last night on WLS-AM! – are overplaying their hand by caterwauling for Durbin’s resignation and bleating that his analogies – and not our apparent brutal violations of the Geneva Convention – are doing the greatest harm to our reputation in the Arab world.  [Italics added, as always]

Now that’s real Democrat nonsense!

Monitoring Moyers

“Public Broadcasting Monitor Had Worked at Center Founded by Conservatives” at NYT site says the Corp. for Public Broadcasting got a right-winger to keep tabs on Ur-lib Moyers.  It’s putting a guard dog in charge of the coop, rather than a fox?  Will have to work on the simile, but in the absence of direct divine inspiration in the matter, it makes sense to hear what the opposition says.  It is lib bias we have to worry about, after all.

Crimestopper Rudy

Having asked how much safer Chi streets would be if Chi Trib devoted as much ink and space to crime-problem solutions as to legal-system abuses (see below), I must alert readers to John Leo’s 6/12 column in which he talks up Rudy Giuliani as crime-stopper:

Giuliani successfully assaulted, though he could not completely defeat, the intractable reactionary liberalism that brought New York City to its knees. Before he was elected in 1993, there were more than 2,000 murders a year there, compared with under 600 today.  . . . Giuliani changed all that. He marginalized the city’s racial arsonists, like Al Sharpton, by simply ignoring them and refusing to reward them for disturbances and threats. He ended Mafia control of the Fulton Fish Market and the private trash-hauling industry, two achievements long regarded by nearly everyone in New York as impossible. . . . Nationally, crime fell just 5 percent between 1993 and 1996, while dropping 35 percent in New York.  . . . The old order still snipes at Giuliani and refers to him as Mussolini, but he was an inspiring figure even before 9/11, and certainly after.

How far would such analysis (and reporting!) go with Chi Trib editors?

 

Can a retraction be far behind?

 “I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood,” said the Illinois senator. “I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings: our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support.”

That would be our man Dick now, wouldn’t it?

Seminary selectivity

No one “who has been part of a gay subculture or who has lived promiscuously as a heterosexual [should] be admitted [to a Catholic seminary], no matter how many years [previously] that might have occurred,” Cardinal George said during the bishops’ meeting in Chicago.

In this extraordinarily badly written Chi Trib story, by Margaret Ramirez, billed as religion reporter (a slot that has seemed an afterthought to Trib editors since Steve Kloehn left the beat a few years back [later: make Manya Brachear a nice exception to this]), we don’t know if he said it from the podium or in an interview.  The quote above is doctored (here) for clarity’s sake, but as printed, probably accurately, it sounds off the cuff — not that George is the most articulate of speakers or incapable of making off-wall statements.

In any case, what he said justifies neither lead paragraph — “As the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops gathered in Chicago Thursday for a meeting to review their sexual abuse policy, Cardinal Francis George said homosexual men should not be admitted into seminaries” — nor headline — “George: Seminary no place for gays.”

Ramirez’s analysis is like a cartoon: broad outlines of issues are offered, with reference to what “is being debated,” “critics [who] have charged,” “others [who] have said,” and the like.

The zero-tolerance ban may violate Catholic teaching “on redemption,” she writes — an odd usage that implies salvation itself is threatened by church discipline and imposing of penance for sin.  Ramirez may get things just enough wrong no matter what she writes about, but that’s little consolation to readers of news about religion and the church.

Quick, Mrs. Durbin, his medication!

Here’s what Dick Durbin said, for the record:

(6-14) Durbin: “If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime–Pol Pot or others–that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”

Columnist Phil Kadner has the quote in Daily Southtown.  So does Sun-Times and Chi Trib.  And needless to say, so does Aljazeera.   It’s a quote read ‘round the world.  Howard Dean should watch his back; Durbin of Illinois is coming on hard.

Coyotes OK, says expert

Check out Gary Wisby’s story on coyotes as way to keep geese from multiplying, in which he seeks to shoot down pet-owners’ concerns, citing an expert:

[H]umans have more to gain than to lose from the presence of coyotes, who seem to be adapting nicely to the habitat we share. On the rare occasion that an urban coyote kills a cat or a small dog, it makes the newspapers. But in the meantime the animals are performing a public service every day by curbing overpopulations of geese, rats, rabbits and other prey.

“We’re starting to show the ecological roles that coyotes play besides eating people’s pets,” Gehrt said.

Gitmo et al.

1. Reading the breathless account of what captive jihadists say — all part of the drum beat of optimism from NY Times-Democrat, do we not wonder whatever to do?  Close Gitmo?  Move it?  Release the Jihadists, some of whom don’t know any better?  Impeach Bush & Cheney, who by the way won handily in 2004?  It’s a world-class conundrum.

2. “It’s freedom of speech,” said radio host Al Franken, who had just got a Freedom of Speech Award, when urged to end a too-long tirade vs. Bush admin and war.

“It’s not freedom to kill everybody’s evening, so why don’t you wrap it up,” replied the MC. 

There are limits, in other words?


3. Re: Coyotes, from Reader Marta:
Unfortunately your instant rebuttal [they don’t bother people] isn’t completely accurate — two children were mauled by coyotes that wandered close to an elementary school here in California a couple of years back.  A bigger problem is their habit of eating household pets — I’ve lost a couple cats to coyotes.  I can sort of justify it — circle of life and all that, but I still went through the pet grieving process associated with the loss of a furry family member.
4. The 23-year-old Bears lineman caught with loaded gun is “from another state and not familiar with what’s going on here,” his lawyer said (here and here).  The state is Arizona.  After high school, where he was also a star volleyballer, he played for U. of Washington.  He weighs 300 pounds now, is 6 feet 2 inches high, broad-jumped farther than any other lineman in Bears training camp.  At U. Wash. he had to sit out a year because his high-school core-curriculum grade point average was lower than the 2.0 required by NCAA’s Proposition 48, covering college admissions for student athletes.  Nor had he scored 700 on the SAT or 15 on the ACT, thus further failing the requirement.

The rule affects black players far more than whites:  In a recent year, 87% of freshman held back were black!  These and the other 13% spent their first year on campus acquiring grades from the college of their choice so that the college could profit from their performance on the gridiron, which says a lot about (a) academic hard work by footballers or (b) colleges’ eagerness to get over the Rule 48 hump by making sure grades get good enough or courses are easy enough. 

This bad academic showing by blacks is “hugely discriminatory,” however, says The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), which “works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial.”    Yessir.

5. Have you ever considered how much safer Chi streets would be if Chi Trib devoted as much ink and space to crime-problem solutions as to legal-system abuses?  If headline after headline blared the message about what works in Chi and elsewhere, like how Giuliani cleaned up Times Square?  Wouldn’t that grab the strap hangers on their way to the office?  And help circulation while we’re at it, if you please?