But What if there's Money Involved?

I came upon this a few days back in the Washington Post, and found it mildly interesting, for reasons that will be revealed:

Our Endangered Catholic Schools
By Chester E. Finn Jr. and Andy Smarick
Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The positive findings in the Education Department's recent evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program provide more evidence that high-quality private and parochial schools can have invaluable benefits for low-income, minority students. Tragically, however, Catholic schools, long the heart and soul of urban private education, are disappearing. Last year, seven Catholic schools in Washington were converted into charters, and the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Cleveland are considering another round of school closures.

This accelerating crisis, which robs disadvantaged city students of desperately needed educational options, has such profound and negative implications that two U.S. presidents, almost two generations apart, urged intervention. One of us helped staff Richard Nixon's "panel on non-public education" in 1970; the other wrote the Bush administration's report last year. Yet schools keep closing.

If America is to preserve inner-city Catholic education, help is needed from the other side of the aisle. We hope the Obama administration will step forward.

Read the entire article here.

Now, it should be said that I am a product of Catholic schools--two elementary schools and one university--and I have nothing at all against Catholic education. I do happen to think that those who want to send their kids to Catholic school should be prepared to open their checkbooks and not expect the taxpayer to help out, but that's neither here nor there.

No, what caught my attention most is the sentiment in the last paragraph reproduced above, specifically the last sentence of that paragraph:

We hope the Obama administration will step forward.

And, again, I have no particular truck with that sentiment, either. I'm fully willing to accept that D.C. Catholic schools play an important role in the lives of the urban poor there, and that the institution probably is worth helping.

But I can't help but think of the tempest in a teacup that is the "outrage" associated with Notre Dame's inviting President Obama to speak at its commencement. In a fit of pique, the Catholic bishop of South Bend, Indiana, home of Notre Dame, has said he won't attend commencement because the university plans to give Obama an honorary degree.

Cathy Lynn Grossman has a fine exposition on the silliness at her Faith & Reason blog at USA Today. Grossman quotes the looney-tunes ultra-rightist Cardinal Newman Society thus:

It is an outrage and a scandal that "Our Lady's University," one of the premier Catholic universities in the United States, would bestow such an honor on President Obama given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage.

(John K. Wilson has a fun take on the "scandal" at The Daily Kos, in which he rightly points out that the Cardinal Newman Society, "although adept at getting publicity, is far outside the Catholic mainstream. The Association of Catholic College and Universities denounced the Cardinal Newman Society for making accusations that are 'distorted, inaccurate and in some cases simply untrue.'")

Alrighty, then.

We now can can naught but conclude that the right-wingnut contingent of the Catholic Church must rise up as if one and insist--insist!--that the Archbishop of Washington refuse in no uncertain terms any assistance from the Obama administration, such as that called for in the Washington Post column, since, as expressed above, the leader of said administration has "given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage."

We can't have any of that! Nor can we have any of their filthy lucre!

Yes? If not...why?

Make that "Certain" Catholics!

There are today any number of news items and blog posts that all follow this line, from Alison Go's "The Paper Trail" at USNews.com:

Obama's Planned Notre Dame Commencement Speech Riles Catholics

Go writes:

Barack Obama will give commencement speeches at the U.S. Naval Academy, Arizona State, and the University of Notre Dame this year. The Naval Academy has received the news with, and Arizona State actually moved its ceremony to accommodate the president.

But when the president isn't sticking it to a certain Naval Academy graduate and Arizona senator, he's riling the Catholic community at Notre Dame. Critics say that Obama's honorary degree is an affront to the school's Catholic teachings, citing the president's stances on abortion, gay rights, and embryonic stem cell research. Groups like the Cardinal Newman Society and the Pro-Life Action League have encouraged all Catholics to flood the university with phone calls and to sign online petitions (which have tens of thousands of signatures already).

And so on. Read it all here.

In posting Go's item to Digg.com, I had to add this comment:

I would prefer it had she said "extremist Catholics" or "wacky-doodle wild-eye right-wing Catholics," for clearly not ALL Catholics are dismayed by this possibility, but so it goes. Meanwhile, as a Catholic and an alum of another Catholic university, I plan to drop a note of support to the president of Notre Dame.

Whence comes this absurd notion that we must listen only and forever to those with whom we agree on every subject?

And where do we find such people?

And how do we grow in our own opinions, beliefs, faith, etc., if we fear to test their weight against those of others?

And what does it say about our opinions, beliefs, faith, etc., if we fear to test them?

What does it say about ourselves?

What does it say about our attitude toward higher education when thousands of noisy people insist that the University of Notre Dame invite to its commencement only people who will parrot the party line--as understood and espoused by the noisy thousands, for they are always certain of their rightness in any matter (just ask them)--and who offer nothing that might challenge their preconceptions or shake what must be their very wobbly "convictions"?

What does it say about our attitude toward America and American democracy that such people would insult the leader of the free world because he holds some opinions that are contrary to our own?

What does it say about the bottomless hypocrisy of right-wing fanatics that they will spew and froth about an invitation extended by Notre Dame to the President of the United States, ostensibly because he is pro-choice, when they were notably silent on the subject when another Catholic institution, Boston College, heard from then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice...who also is pro-choice? (See Andrew Sullivan's post, "The Double Standards Of Theocons," in today's Daily Dish.)

Well, it says there's a lot of two-facedness, a lot of silliness, a lot of headline grabbing (I know: I'm not helping), and not a whole lot of Christianity obvious in the anti-choice movement.

To his credit, the president of Notre Dame, Father John Jenkins, has yet to capitulate to the noisy, frothing ones. According to an item in The Observer Online:

University President Fr. John Jenkins responded to criticism regarding the announcement of President Barack Obama as the 2009 Commencement speaker by clearly making a distinction between honoring the president and supporting his political views.

Jenkins made it clear in an interview with The Observer Sunday the University does not "foresee circumstances" that would cause Notre Dame to rescind the president's invitation.

"We have invited the president and he's honored us by accepting," he said.

The article further says:

"We are not ignoring the critical issue of the protection of life. On the contrary, we invited him because we care so much about those issues, and we hope for this to be the basis of an engagement with him," Jenkins said.

"You cannot change the world if you shun the people you want to persuade, and if you cannot persuade them show respect for them and listen to them," he said.

Quite a far cry from the wild-eyed crowd, whose red-faced response to contrary opinions seems always to damn, to decry, and to shun.

Especially if those opinions are held by a member of the Democratic Party. President of the United States or not.

I like Sullivan's conclusion to the nonsense:

Seriously who do these people think they're persuading any more?

Dig THIS, Digg!

A little while ago I sent the following comment to Digg.com. It’s in reference to my post of a few days ago in re Digg’s “bury” function being abused to flag virtually all negative or unflattering article about the McCain-Palin ticket as “possibly inaccurate”:

I have noticed lately that articles critical of McCain-Palin (and in at least one case, an article COMPLAINING about criticism of McCain-Palin) are almost invariably accompanied by "[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]." These are not exclusively blogs or opinion pieces, but news reports from reliable news organizations. (Example:" Palin bills gov't for travel expenses while staying at home" from the Washington Post; "Polls admit to asking a higher number of Republicans" from the Huffington Post; "Sarah Palin's Alaskonomics" from Time; and many more.)

It is clear, then, that the "bury" function in Digg.com is being abused by McCain partisans, and possibly even operatives, who are attempting to cast doubt on anything that may be construed as negative or unflattering about their candidate.

In this, Digg.com is complicit. The "bury" function simply means I DON'T LIKE SOMETHING, not that it is inaccurate. But Digg's policy is to record "bury" clicks and then, at some magic tipping point, announce that the article in question is "possibly inaccurate."

"I don't like this" does NOT equal "This is inaccurate."

Someone could post an article that says Monday follows Sunday, and if I organized enough Diggers (as evidently the McCain camp has done) and instructed them to "bury" the article, that article would eventually turn up as "possibly inaccurate"...even though Monday DOES follow Sunday!

Clearly, Digg needs to reconsider the "bury" function. It seems to serve no real purpose, and in this election season is obviously being abused. I strongly encourage you to stop this abuse by terminating the "bury" function, at least until after the presidential election.

Failing that, I strongly encourage you to do away with the "possibly inaccurate" assertion, and go with the much more accurate disclaimer "Buried by XX Diggers," since "inaccurate" is, well, inaccurate.

I’ll keep you posted on what sort of a response I might get.

What's the Subject?

So this is at The Moderate Voice today:

September 2nd, 2008 by CAGLE CARTOONS

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

A glance at the comments posted there illustrate to my satisfaction that those who left comments didn't get the cartoon. The comments are largely on two points:

A. She's a girl who made a mistake.

Granted.

B. Everyone should just leave her alone.

Um, the cartoon isn't about her. It's about her mother. Specifically, it's about her mother's blind obedience to the We Know What's Best for You wing of the GOP, that noisy and noisome branch of the party that seems to feel it is its God-given right--nay, duty--to prescribe and proscribe for everybody else, and yet feels no need to be held to its own philosophies. Its members preach what should be done about public education while sending their kids to private schools. Its members are opposed to universal health care for the poor while enjoying broad healthcare coverage for themselves. Its members insist that "abstinence only" is an appropriate program--the only appropriate program--for other people's kids while their own are obviously not practicing it.

It's not about the Palin girl. It's about the Palin girl's mother and the deep hypocrisy that guides her and endears her to the GOP base.

Wisdom from Bill O'Reilly

One thing about Bill O'Reilly and Faux News: They never cease to entertain. Here's this from Daily Kos:

Bill O'Reilly on teen pregnancies
by kos

Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 01:50:28 PM PDT

He was for blaming the parents before he was against it.

On the pinhead front, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. The sister of Britney says she is shocked. I bet.

Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her or even over Britney Spears. Look at the way she behaves.

Last night, O'Reilly was beside himself that anyone would publicly discuss Bristol Palin's pregnancy.

Then again, hypocrite extraordinaire O'Reilly never met a glass house he didn't shatter.

Indeed. One of the great joys of the McCain camp's bizarre selection of Sarah Palin as their VP candidate is watching right-wingnuts trip over themselves to explain away all of the hypocrisy that the selection brings with it. O'Reilly's backpedaling above, for instance. Or various local and national GOP politicians trying to explain that now "experience" doesn't really matter at all...never mind what they've been saying about Barack Obama all these months.

Amazingly, they seem capable of doing all of this with a straight face, which makes me think they've been at it so long that they really don't know what lies, dissembling, hypocrisy, and smears are anymore!

McCain's Ugly Campaign

Eugene Robinson in this morning's Washington Post ("So Much for St. John") got me thinking, which is about par for the course with him:

It's awfully early for John McCain to be running such a desperate, ugly campaign against Barack Obama. But I guess it's useful for Democrats to get a reminder that the Republican Party plays presidential politics by the same moral code that guided the bad-boy Oakland Raiders in their heyday:"Just win, baby."

The latest bit of snarling, mean-spirited nonsense to come out of the McCain camp was the accusation, leveled by campaign manager Rick Davis, that Obama had "played the race card." He did so, apparently, by being black.

Not that anyone cares, but I'm extremely disappointed in John McCain. I was one of those naive souls who, eight years ago, thought he would be okay on Pennsylvania Avenue should he arrive there...which at the time seemed a disctinct possibility. He struck me than as someone who, as my father would have said, had his head on straight. He was, after all, a moderate. A maverick. A straight-talker. Even an unrepentant leftist like me found him the least-worrisome of the field of GOP contenders that summer.

(The GOP, of course, went and nominated the most worrisome of the contenders, but we all know that story.)

I'll be the first to admit I'm naive...but I'm not completely naive. I don't think that Straight-Talk McCain was a complete
fabrication. If so, he was pretty damn good at it. But the McCain we see today, Mud-Sling McCain, quick to disparage, quick to cast aspersions, quick to imply, quick to lie, seems so completely formed that I have to wonder about the man's personality. I mean, he didn't seem phony eight years ago when he was Straight-Talk McCain, and he doesn't seem phony now that he's Mud-Sling McCain.

So which one is real and which one the mask?

Or are they both real?

Or are they both masks?

Or is it simply that, having missed the brass ring the last time around, McCain this time decided to follow that time-honored tradition of doing anything--any...damn...thing--in order to win?

We wouldn't have dirty politics if it never worked.

As Robinson rightly points out:

Negative campaigning is not a pretty thing, and it should be beneath John McCain to stoop so low. But Democrats would be foolish to forget that sometimes it works.

Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Paul Krugman has this to offer:

Most criticism of John McCain’s decision to follow the Bush administration’s lead and embrace offshore
drilling as the answer to high gas prices has focused on the accusation that it’s junk economics — which it is.



A McCain campaign ad says that gas prices are high right now because “some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.” That’s just plain dishonest: the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration
says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn’t lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak the extra production would have an “insignificant” impact on oil prices.

What’s even more important than Mr. McCain’s bad economics, however, is what his reversal on this
issue — he was against offshore drilling before he was for it — says about his priorities.


Back when he was cultivating a maverick image, Mr. McCain portrayed himself as more environmentally aware than the rest of his party. He even co-sponsored a bill calling for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions (although his remarks on several recent occasions suggest that he doesn’t understand
his own proposal). But the lure of a bit of political gain, it turns out, was all it took to transform him back into a standard drill-and-burn Republican.


And the planet can’t afford that kind of cynicism.

Whichever McCain is the real one--if either of them is, or if there even is a real McCain--the one who currently is running for president is exactly the one we don't need. And when I say "we," I don't mean just the United States.

Conservative Hypocrisy Revisited

Speaking of that post from AlterNet (as I was below), "Anti-Choicers Are Communists!," posted by Amanda Marcotte, raises an interesting point, one on which I've reflected myself on occasion, viz., how does a group of people who claim to prize independence and individuality, whose very mantra is "Get government off our backs!," who insist it's every dog for itself out there (no "nanny society," thank you!) justify its constant harangue for government to step in and tell women what they may and may not and must and must not do with their own bodies? How do they justify their slavering desire to have government tell women's doctors how to practice medicine? How do they square their disdain for anything that smacks of helping anybody with their insistence that having the government forbid women from making their own health-care decisions is in fact "protecting" women (from, apparently, themselves)?

Nanny society, indeed.

But the Marcotte post takes things further. She writes:

Now there [Romania] was a state that Leslee Unruh, Phill Kline and the whole cast of panty-sniffing misogynists could really get behind. Modern American anti-choicers make the same argument used in communist Romania to deprive women of basic rights: We aren't having enough babies to sustain the economy! Under Nicolae Ceausescu, contraception and abortion were strictly banned unless you had already had four children and done your biological duty to the state. In a strong echo of our modern anti-choice community's disconnect between what they actually think and what they say they think, it was widely believed that the contraception and abortion ban of Romania mostly functioned as a way for men in power to get off on controlling women. It certainly didn't do anything to lower the abortion rate -- under this regime, they had one of the highest abortion rates in Europe. Highest maternal mortality, too, which was a direct result of the high illegal abortion rate.

That's the utopia they're looking at with their communist-borrowing strategies. A world where a misogynist's nose is in every panty drawer, and women who run the risk of dying every time they have sex.

You should read the post for yourself. It's short, but it links to other posts from which Marcotte draws and which buttress her point, viz., the we'll-do-your-thinking-for-you crowd borrow pretty heavily from the very type of totalitarian Communists regimes that they have always professed to despise.

Might they protest too much?

False Witness

For reasons mysterious, I am still and yet again astonished by so-called Christians who seem content, nay, eager, to lay aside their Bibles and their Ten Commandments and the stated principles of him who they claim to revere in order to slander, degrade, and repudiate any and all who aren't in lock-step with them and their opinions, philosophy, and prejudices.

Latest case in point: Yesterday Hindu Chaplain Rajan Zed said the prayer with which U.S. Senate sessions typically open. This was the first time that a Hindu prayer opened a Senate session.

Naturally, "Christians" were outraged. A "Christian" family in the gallery disrupted the prayer and had to be removed by the sergeant-at-arms.

(Side note: A couple of years ago, on a visit to Washington, D.C., we were treated to a tour of the Capitol by a staffer from Senator Tim Johnson's office, which included a short stop in the Senate gallery. We were instructed beforehand to be absolutely silent (even though they weren't really doing anything at the moment); I said afterward it was like being in church, only more so. Indeed, one of the ushers, or bouncers, or whatever he was, went over to some clown who was wearing his stupid softball cap and made him remove it. So for a family to disrupt the proceedings--especially, I would think, during the opening prayer--strikes me as fairly extraordinary.)

What was the objection? Well, that those heathens in the U.S. Senate were kicking off their business with a prayer by someone who "does not pray in Jesus' name."

Here's a sampling of some of the un-Christian rhetoric foisted on an unsuspecting Senate by Chaplain Zed:

"We meditate on the transcendental glory of the Deity Supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of the heaven. May He stimulate and illuminate our minds."

"United your resolve, united your hearts, may your spirits be at one, that you may long dwell in unity and concord."

"Peace, Peace, Peace be unto all."

Well, clearly, these are all un- if not anti-Christian messages. When did Jesus ever say anything about peace? Where in the Christian Bible does it give any indication that God is everywhere? Where in Christianity do we find any exhortation that people need to get along for the common good?

(Hmm…actually, you may have me on that last point.)

So one wonders what the brouhaha is all about. I suppose…

A. Zed is neither a Christian nor a "Christian." Duh. (The distinction between the two is this: the former is someone who genuinely strives to follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and who probably accepts him as the Son of God and Savior of the World; the latter is someone who has a list of the "right" words and the "right" action that he or she uses to judge whether someone is a "real" Christian. You might be a God-fearing churchgoer who accepts and lives out everything in the first clause of the previous session, but if you don't attend the "right" church or use the "right" shibboleths, you are not a "real" Christian.)

B. Zed did not use the phrase "in Jesus' name." See above re shibboleths, as well as re Zed being neither a Christian nor a "Christian." Also he referred to the Creator as "the Deity Supreme" and not "God"…as, apparently, God intended.

C. Zed is not the "right" kind of chaplain: See, my guess is that the "Christians" who tried to shout him down would have made a scene even if he had been a Christian chaplain…but the "wrong sort" of Christian, i.e., a Christian and not a "Christian."

D. These "Christians" persist in perpetuating the fiction that the United States was founded by "Christians" just like them, and that that "Christian" land has been wrested away from them by godless liberals, Democrats, and homosexuals who are either not "Christians" or the "wrong sort" of Christian and who tend to use words like tolerance and ecumenism and cooperation instead of "in Jesus' name" or "personal savior" or "born again."

E. Some people are always spoiling for a fight.

One might by now be thinking that the title of this piece, "False Witness," pertains to D above. Sort of, but not precisely. I was more taken by an item I came upon online while reading about the hullabaloo surrounding Zed's prayer. It starts with this provocative headline:

Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid Refuse to Allow Chaplain Who Prays "in Jesus Name," but Welcome Hinduism to the Floor of the U.S. Senate

And then comes this intriguing byline:

By Press Release: Wanda Sanchez on Jul 12, 07

"By Press Release"? What the heck does that mean? And a press release from where? Ordinarily one expects to see sources for a press release. And who is Wanda Sanchez? Who does she work for? What are her credentials?

I read on:

WASHINGTON, July 12 /Christian Newswire/--

Uh-oh. Christian Newswire. AKA "Christian" Newswire. This can't be good. But onward I press:

WASHINGTON, July 12 /Christian Newswire/--A Hindu chaplain will pray a Hindu prayer on the floor of the U.S. Senate for the first time in history. But yesterday, staffers from the offices of Senator Clinton (D-NY) and Harry Reid (D-NV) both denied a request for equal access to a chaplain who prays "in Jesus name."

And it goes on from there, in the same vein, viz., they let in pagans but keep out "real" "Christians." Read the whole thing for yourself here (where I first found it), or on the "Christian" Newswire here. And note ye this: No sources are given for this alleged "news" item. It's a complete rant. One is especially leery of such statements as

"Yes, we sponsored today's Hindu chaplain from Nevada to pray Hindu prayers on the Senate floor," admitted Reid's staff, "but we won't sponsor you because you're from New York ," they told Chaplain Klingenschmitt.

"Reid's staff"? They all gathered together and delivered the message in unison? One begins to pick up the sweet aroma of fiction.

And there's nothing in the "press release" that enables one to verify any of it. Googling some of the phrases in the "release" produces a few hits…but all of them right-wing blogs that have simply picked up the piece and slavishly passed it along as more "evidence" of how those godless liberal Democrats are trying to destroy "Christians." Nor does one find any clue to the identity of "Wanda Sanchez."

Well, I'm certainly a liberal Democrat, and not a "Christian," and probably not even a very good Christian, but I do seem to recall something in the Bible along the lines of "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." I'm pretty sure that translates to don't lie about other people.

And so, the question of the day: If the Ten Commandments come from God; if Christians believe that God's Commandments are to be obeyed; and if the Eighth Commandment prohibits lying about people…then why don't "Christians" feel obliged to honor God's Commandment?