Hollywood Job Openings:
Who knew Hollywood produced so many esoteric jobs? Jonah Goldberg explains to the extent an explanation is possible.
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The New Birchers - that's who leftists have ironically become. Heard a caller on a local Christian radio show explain how President Bush will be remembered in fifty years the way Hitler is today. He also said Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened. Finally I've figured out who these folks remind me of - during the '50s, paranoid members of the John Birch Society claimed that Eisenhower was a Communist agent and that the Hungarian revolt in '56 staged by the Communists to find out who the real anti-Communists were. Unfortunately there seems to be a much greater number of New Birchers than old ones.
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Saw an interview with ex-CIA'r Gary Bernsten, who was pulled out, abruptly, by his superiors from Afghanistan in 2000, shocking the allies he'd made who were relying on his continued presence. It seems, sadly, one of the defining characteristics of America is she doesn't honor her commitments. I used to attribute this to the switch of Administrations, where something Ronald Reagan might've committed to might not be honored subsequently by George Bush or Bill Clinton. But I'm beginning to think it's much more basic than that. It's simply a representation of who we are, the lack of follow-through and commitment not suprising in a society that adores keeping its options open and finds commitment distasteful, shown in part by high divorce rates.
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Joseph Bottum considers the recent proclamation by Catholic Congressional Democrats:
What’s the political gain of claiming Catholicism at a time when the American Church is still reeling from the scandals that broke in 2002?
A general rule is that you should trust people to know their own best interests—or, at least, trust professionals to understand their own professions better than outsiders do. No one gets elected to Congress by being a complete idiot–about politics, at least. There is, I think, a glamour that attaches to Catholicism right now. A lot of mud, too, of course. But the intellectual force of Catholic analysis and vocabulary seems to have touched an awful lot of America’s contemporary political debate, and the 55 signers of the “Statement of Principles” want in on it all.
In one sense, this is just another entry in the Democrats’ general attempt to reclaim religion. But in its peculiar Catholic iteration, the problem of abortion wrecks the logic of the statement from its very first moment. Until the Democrats find a genuine way to be pro-life, they will not be able to deploy Catholic intellectual resources—or claim the prestige of doing so.
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