Catholics in the News
September 16, 2010, 8:23 am
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Christine O’Donnell: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/us/politics/16odonnell.html?_r=1&ref=politics
Newt Gingrich: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/us/politics/16bai.html?ref=matt_bai
Well, it sure is a big church.
Oh, and let’s not forget Walter Kaspar, the unfriendly ghost.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/sep/15/cardinal-kasper-vatican-true-beliefs
As the stories illustrate, it is not just liberal Catholics who pick and choose.
Some ‘elephants’ are knocking down/pulling on the poles holding up the Roman Catholic big tent.
This is very telling: “a Roman Catholic who for a time considered herself an evangelical”. She doesn’t seem to have dropped the fundie baggae – seems she’s a bit of a creationist.
http://vox-nova.com/2010/09/15/catholic-and-creationist/
In illustration of Margaret’s point, from the article:
“Ms. O’Donnell has taken positions against federal financing for stem cell research, is opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and favors tough penalties against businesses that hire illegal immigrants. She has also suggested in past television interviews that evolution is soft science, and questioned the utility of financing AIDS programs.
[...]
“In the 1990s, Ms. O’Donnell, a Roman Catholic who for a time considered herself an evangelical, founded SALT (the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth”) and appeared on MTV’s “Sex in the Nineties” to explain the values of chastity. ”
She’s Roman Catholic, but based on that sketch of her views, they align more closely with an Evangelical worldview (imho).
A candidate who brings together the Religious Right and the Tea Party wings of conservatism is a step ahead.
It seems that she’s also a literary critic:
http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/index.html?story=/mwt/broadsheet/2010/09/16/christine_odonnell
Clearly a summa cum laude graduate of the Sarah Palin School of Cretinism.
Hi Jim, A step ahead of what???
Mccarraher: Your comment was disgusting.
Glenn Greenwald weighs in with a twist on O’Donnell:
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion, at least for me, that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, much of the discomfort and disgust triggered by these Tea Party candidates has little to do with their ideology. After all, are most of them radically different than the right-wing extremists Karl Rove has spent his career promoting and exploiting? Hardly. Much of the patronizing derision and scorn heaped on people like Christine O’Donnell have very little to do with their substantive views — since when did right-wing extremism place one beyond the pale? — and much more to do with the fact they’re so . . . unruly and unwashed. To members of the establishment and the ruling class (like Rove), these are the kinds of people — who struggle with tuition bills and have their homes foreclosed — who belong in Walmarts, community colleges, low-paying jobs, and voting booths on command, not in the august United States Senate.”
Whole thing here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
Hi, Margaret – that was dashed off hurriedly; I just meant that she might be able to unite and motivate a couple of different factions of conservatism. It took McCain and Palin together to accomplish that – and they might still have missed on the deficit hawk/Tea Party faction.
There was a Belladonna in Middle-Earth?
Interesting how Tolkien can be taken in so many directions. “Behind every successful man is a woman” doesn’t seem to quite do justice to Arwen. (Queue Jean rolling her eyes :-)).
One Catholic sees masturbation as a major cause for concern while the other wants to revert to the Crusades. It may be a big tent but these two are in a tent that needs folding. But it is the age when a person like Gleen Beck can launch a religious crusade and claim that God ordered it.
Bill, your post gives me a chance to bring up Taylor Branch’s fascinating Sept. 5 NY Times op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05branch.html?pagewanted=2&ref=contributors), about which I’ve seen no reaction in the blogosphere.
Branch builds a case that Beck’s conversations with Alveda King and through her, his exposure to the 10 point pledge of nonviolence used during the civil rights movement, shifted Beck’s August 28 rally away from its original political focus and towards a more “spiritual” focus.
Here’s Branch’s closing paragraph:
“Glenn Beck calls himself a damaged product of family tragedy, failed education and past addiction — mercurial and unsure, like many of his hard-pressed audience. He may never follow through from his “new starting point” into constructive politics. Even so, he made peace for one day with the liberal half of the American heritage. That is a good thing. Our political health, in the spirit of Dr. King’s march, requires thoughtful and bold initiatives from all quarters.”
Mccarraher: Your comment was disgusting.
Eugene Mccarraher is an extremely provocative thinker, and I am delighted to see he is posting here.
I just stumbled upon a three-part interview with him that I have not read yet (I am at the office), but I am eager to read it.
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss: An Interview with Eugene McCarraher
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
There was a Belladonna in Middle-Earth?
The article doesn’t say, but I can only assume O’Donnell was referring to Belladonna Took, the mother of Bilbo Baggins.
This is becoming (or is just becoming more obvious) a church of gollies and ghosties and things that go ughhhh in the night!!!
Michael J. Kelly: One of the legitimate uses of the word “cretin” (or “cretinous”) is to indicate a stupid person, otherwise known as an imbecile, idiot, etc. So my point stands.
David Nickol: Bravo on your impeccable taste, and thanks for the free publicity.
Christine O’Donnell certainly seems to be running a very odd campaign. She took her website down the day after she won the primary. Here is a cached version of the old one:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9o85rGdLuRwJ:christine2010.com/meet-christine/+http://christine2010.com/&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
She has a new one now which only has a button to donate.
I was trying to find some actual policy planks, but her positions seem to be just generalizations.
Politico had a piece on her odd approach to running her 2008 campaign. (Especially around finances). It also noted her completely unfounded aspirations to be the keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention in 08.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42321.html
Irene Baldwin, thanks for the link to her disappeared site. Interesting, if true:
“Christine O’Donnell is a nationally recognized political commentator and marketing consultant. She appears weekly, sometimes daily, on national news outlets such as the Fox News Channel, CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC and ABC, including major ratings hits like “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity & Colmes,” “The Glenn Beck Show,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “Entertainment Tonight.” Christine is also a frequent radio talk show guest-host on WGMD in Rehoboth Beach and WDEL in Wilmington, DE.
As part of a delegation of journalists, Christine toured the middle-eastern country of Jordan as a guest of the Royal Jordanian government. Having witnessed firsthand the oppression in the Middle East, Christine describes this journey as truly a life changing experience and says it deepened her commitment to the women’s movement.
An effective communicator, Christine is known for her skill in winning over even those who disagree with her most. Liberal Bill Maher stated, “I don’t know how many times you’ve been here but it’s always a good show when you’re on.” Even Democratic strategist James Carville was forced to admit of Christine O’Donnell “Now, this is one hip woman,” on CNN’s “Crossfire.”
During her 20-year career, Christine has served as a social advocate in Washington, D.C., participating in regular White House and Capitol Hill strategy meetings and leading delegations to the United Nations to lobby on behalf of pro-family global policies. She’s successfully debated Cabinet members, lawmakers and international leaders.”
Busy girl!
Here is Karl Rove on O’Donnell, as reported by Glenn Greenwald at the link Margaret provided above:
“One thing that Christine O’Donnell is going to have answer is her own checkered background . . . . These serious questions: how does she make her living? Why did she mislead voters about her college education? How come it took nearly two decades to pay her college tuition? How does she make a living? Why did she sue a well-known conservative think tank? . . . . questions about why she had a problem for five years paying her federal income taxes, why her house was foreclosed and put up for a sheriff’s sale, why it took 16 years for her to settle her college debt and get her diploma after she went around for years claiming she was a college graduate. . . . when it turns out she just got her degree because she had unpaid college bills that they had to sue her over.”
Note that he asks “how does she make her living” twice. The irony is just delicious … usually, when a politician is asked, ‘how does s/he make a living?’ it’s because nobody can figure out how they got so rich (cf Charles Rangel). In this case, Rove is flummoxed that a politician can be this poor. (Greenwald treats that approach the way it deserves to be treated – do read it).
One of the things I love about the Tea Party movement, felt for now mostly within the Republican Party but, I fervently hope, by the country as a whole in November, is that its currency is votes, not campaign cash.
JP: “One of the things I love about the Tea Party movement, felt for now mostly within the Republican Party but, I fervently hope, by the country as a whole in November, is that its currency is votes, not campaign cash.”
Not campaign cash? Don’t think so. See Jane Meyer’s essay: “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all#ixzz0znqHmTT5