The people in my mother’s family, on the whole, have always been warm-hearted, decent and tolerant. But the 1968 Trenton riots threw two or three into a state of race paranoia. They weren’t in that state all alone, either. My mother’s boss, a middle-aged insurance man who’d never in his life shot anything but the breeze, took to packing a .45 under his suit jacket. In 1969, my grandparents died in a house fire. When my grandfather’s will was read,... Read more
Say whatever you like about Tim Tebow — and my friend, the Broncos fan, says a lot, not much of it good — the man is a regular Colorado gold rush for bloggers and pundits. Three days ago, in exchange for six lines of copy, a two-paragraph block quote and a link, the Friendly Atheist got 358 shares. Thanks to Tebow, we knights of the keyboard (unrequited hat tip to Ted Williams) can work smarter, not harder. Yesterday in the... Read more
Today I turned 40. No longer will I be eligible to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. For any broader meaning, I’m stumped. The bromide “40 is the New 30” — which would have started looking mighty wise about now no matter what — may reflect a scientific reality. People are living longer, so middle age starts later. Warren Sanderson and Sergei Schcherbov of the Austrian Institute of Demography found that, in 2000, the average American was 35.5, and could... Read more
A few months ago, Peggy Noonan made my day — my whole week, in fact — by accepting my Facebook friendship request. I’d always thought she was a good soul and a true lady. I looked forward to reading status updates like “Just threw on my jammies. Am sitting up with a glass of Merlot, wondering when everything turned into a bunch of political BS about narratives. ;)” Well, some hopes rise just to be dashed, I guess. Since we’ve... Read more
If you want to quit worrying about your looks, there are worse places to be than the Catholic Church. That’s a broad statement — probably overbroad, and probably over-positive. Naomi Wolf once saluted Islamic dress as a liberator of women from the “intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualising Western gaze,” and from the tyranny of mass-media beauty standards. Her caveat, that “choice is everything” when it comes to the advantages of wearing hijab, appears as an afterthought. Wolf barely considers that family... Read more
I keep a close watch on myself to make sure I don’t succumb to magical thinking. Irrational by nature, I’m easy meat for the false promise of instant illumination, unearned insight that will spare me days, weeks or months of weighing costs and benefits. There’s a Mexican rancho market only a short distance from me, but I generally stay away — I’m afraid I’d get thrown out for reading the tripas they put in tacos. There was that time, about... Read more
The Vatican has finally given Wikipedia its nihil obstat, imprimatur. To provide biographical material on the 22 cardinals to be elevated in Friday’s consistory, it cut and pasted information from the online encyclopedia. In some instances, reports the U.K. Guardian, Wiki’s entries took a tone “that does not match the Vatican’s style.” Of Willem Jacobus Eijik, archbishop of Utrecht, Wiki says that his “strong tendency to conservatism, specially regarding abortion and homosexuality…has made him one of the most talked about... Read more
When I say I have a crush on Thérèse of Lisieux, I’m two-thirds joking — but only two-thirds. The fact is, she reminds me of a woman with whom I carried on an extended flirtation just before leaving grad school. Both wrote beautifully, but in such girlish voices that it never occurred to me to feel threatened. Both had a talent for making themselves the heroines in their own melodramas, but without going completely off the diva end. (With a... Read more
In most cases, playing Christmas music after Christmas is in even worse taste than wearing white after Labor Day. This video from Quinhagak, Alaska, demands a dispensation from that rule. The inhabitants of this village on the Kanektok river — major industries fishing and canning, per capita income $8,127 — pull off this masterpiece by keeping it simple. They hold up signs with the words to “The Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. It works: it’s funny and charming and sweet.... Read more
Ah, Nemesis. Swift-flying, gimlet-eyed hangwoman of the gods. You really got me good this time, didn’t you, sugar? Friday started out just great: not only had I mentioned Michael Voris in an opinion piece without being lynched, the piece was actually turning out to be a hit. This I knew because every hour or so, the number of Facebook likes reflected on the button at the bottom of my page increased — sometimes by three or four, sometimes as many... Read more
Diary of a Wimpy Catholic
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In