Barack Obama: Bully and Cad?

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Remember back when right-wing bloggers were terrifying each other, predicting that President Obama would build America’s first gulag archipelago? (What’s that? Ah. Sorry, Japanese-Americans. Make that America’s second gulag archipelago.) Well, critics are making a case that his administration does, in fact, threaten Americans’ traditional civil liberties. The twist: both the critics and the alleged victims are coming from the Left. Yahoo! News reports that “a large group of noted whistleblowers” including Pentagon Papers leak Daniel Ellsberg, has drafted a... Read more

How to REALLY Write for First Things

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

For the past two years, I’ve had a passionate love-hate relationship with First Things. When the Best Spiritual Writing: 2010 anthology came out, I counted no fewer than three First Things imports — one by Amanda Shaw, another by Joseph Bottum, and a third by the man himself, FT founder Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Possibly there were more. The essays were splendid, but they are not exceptional. First Things is one of very few publications that’s unapologetically highbrow. The typical... Read more

…Then Someone’s Not Being: A Reply to Elizabeth

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Today, in First Things, my mentor, gaffer and friend Elizabeth Scalia does a very gutsy thing. She talks about homosexuality in a way that affirms nobody’s orthodoxy: Wondering whether being born gay might constitute a “call to otherness,” she continues: I have a theory that our gay brothers and sisters are, in fact, planned, loved-into-being “necessary others,” and that they are meant to show us something of God from a perspective that we cannot otherwise broach. I suspect art is... Read more

Is Sexual Addiction A Feminist Victory?

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Hanna Rosin, writing for Slate, thinks it might be, but allows she’s betting against the house: When Tiger Woods checked himself into the Gentle Path sex addiction clinic, many women writers and activists reacted with suspicion and rancor. Lemondrop asked if the treatment is “merely a way for philandering men to pay lip service to their outraged wives?” Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon found the diagnosis “nothing short of maddening.” A group of female protesters in Australia showed up at a... Read more

St. Francis, My Father, and Me

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

I don’t normally write anything heart-warming, but last Thursday, the day my weekly Patheos column was due, I found myself pressed for time. So I wrote about how my devoutly Freudian father became enamored of St. Francis of Assisi, and how that infatuation infected me. Most people venerate St. Francis for his love of the poor, or for his death-defying attempt to bring the Fourth Crusade to a peaceful conclusion. Me, I’ll always think of him as the patron of... Read more

Why I Think Mormons Are Swell Eggs

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Newsweek reports that America is “having a Mormon moment.” Followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are all over the news, but still, it seems, a long shot for the White House: No question the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is “having a moment.” Not only is Romney running again—this time, he’s likely to be competing against his distant Mormon cousin Jon Huntsman Jr. The Senate, meanwhile, is led by Mormon Harry Reid. Beyond the... Read more

What do Phil Spector and Sarah Palin Have in Common?

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

They’re both gun lovers who look good in heels? Well, yes, but less obviously, they’ve both found a passionate and eloquent defender in playwright David Mamet. Not only has Mamet written an exculpatory drama on the music producer for HBO, he’s also hawking Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, an account of his own rejection of “mindless” liberalism in favor of conservatism. Among the reasons he offers interviewer John Gapper: the Left’s betrayal of Israel and the corrosive... Read more

Gepetto: Helicopter Parent

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Slow news day — or at any rate, slow brain day. This McSweeney’s piece by G. Xavier Robillard is a howl. Enjoy. FROM: [email protected] TO: Sunnydale Elementary Listserv RE: Hello! Hello parents, I’m Geppetto, and I’ll bet I’m as excited as anyone to get the class list for Ms. Hudson’s kindergarten. Can you believe school starts next month? In the class list I noticed that my son’s name is listed as Pinocchio. This is incorrect. Though many of his playmates... Read more

The Politics of Penis Shots

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

So help me, this country needs more sex scandals. Every time a famous man does something untoward, every cultural critic fires back with an article on What Women Really Want. I’ll bet that also happens when a famous woman does something untoward — and, for that matter, whenever the Phoenix Cardinals lose. The mystery of What Women Really Want is so deep, it’s never the wrong time to show up with dynamite and a backhoe. Yesterday in Salon, Tracy-Clark Flory... Read more

A Basset Is An Asset

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

If a hard-hitting pundit like Elizabeth can post cute pet videos for filler, then a tyro like me would be over-scrupulous not to. I’m a dog person with no dog. For the moment, that’s right and proper. I live in an apartment and keep weird hours. I doubt a dog and I could make each other very happy for very long. But mark my words: one day, I’m getting a basset hound. They’ve got everything to reconnmend them: sweet, unfemanding... Read more