“Christian Entertainment” I

Last updated on: June 16, 2004 at 2:59 pm By Fred Clark

I want to respond at length to Amy Sullivan's article, "Jesus Christ, Superstar," in the June Washington Monthly. I'm a big fan of Sullivan's writing and her perspective, but I think this article is a big-time swing and a miss. Her thesis is that the Left Behind books are so popular because they fill a void — the absence of "Christian-themed entertainment": "Sometime in the 1960s, religiously-themed entertainment simply disappeared," she writes. I disagree — emphatically. I'll explain why in... Read more

L.B.: Sorrow Floats

Last updated on: October 17, 2014 at 6:45 pm By Fred Clark

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Left Behind, pp. 48-49 Rayford Steele finally reaches a pay phone and places a call to his home. He’s already read the plot summary on the back of the book and, realizing that he’s in a novel about the “Rapture,” knows that his born-again wife Irene won’t be there to answer his call: His answering machine at home picked up immediately, and he was pierced to hear the cheerful voice of his wife. “Your call is important to us,” she... Read more

The End of Wonkery

Last updated on: June 12, 2004 at 7:37 pm By Fred Clark

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Some interesting comments today in a triple play from Atrios to Kevin Drum over to Brad DeLong and back to Atrios, 6-4-3-6. The subject is "wonkery" — which is to say the continuing relevance or irrelevance of debating policy on the merits of that policy. Here's a summary: Atrios: I've declared "the age of wonk" has been over for some time. There's little point in having serious policy debates about anything. Kevin: I happen to love policy wonkery, but I... Read more

Cain & Abel, Church & State

Last updated on: June 11, 2004 at 5:46 pm By Fred Clark

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There's an old joke that the difference between "crazy" and "eccentric" is a million dollars. After reading (via Atrios) John Gorenfield's Gadflyer report on the waxing influence of the Rev. Moon, we can revise that upward: the difference between stark raving bonkers and eccentric seems to be a billion dollars, liberally shared with sympathetic politicians: Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared... Read more

WWGBD?

Last updated on: June 10, 2004 at 2:56 pm By Fred Clark

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Buzzflash is angry. This isn't anything new — the hyperpartisan Drudge alternative is always angry. They tend to make Lewis Black seem mellow. Yet even by Buzzflash standards, this seemed to stand out: Despicable: Fed Reserve Says Banks Can Continue to use Hidden or Delayed Notice Overdraft Charges to Rip-Off "poor and middle-income people;" Rich Folks Usually Get Overdraft Protection for Free If you follow that link, you'll see why they're so angry. It takes you to Alex Berenson's New... Read more

Chalabi and Miami

Last updated on: June 9, 2004 at 5:12 pm By Fred Clark

I've just finished Jane Mayer's looong New Yorker article on Ahmad Chalabi, "The Manipulator," about which more later. This paragraph, in particular, struck me as a reminder that Chalabi is hardly the first of his kind to have such an influence on American foreign policy: Ahmad Chalabi was born on October 30, 1944, into one of Iraq’s wealthiest and most influential Shiite families. When the 1958 revolution forced his family into exile, it lost much of its fortune, including what... Read more

Moral equivalency

Last updated on: June 9, 2004 at 3:39 pm By Fred Clark

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"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster." — Friedrich Nietzche in "Beyond Good and Evil" Take Back the Media draws our attention to these Ten Commandments yard signs by Georgia artist Bill Fisher. The signs, if you look closely, actually list "Ten of the Commandments of the Geneva Convention[s]." Specifically, it lists some of the rights and protections afforded prisoners of war. That's all the signs do. They make no... Read more

The Goblet of Fire

Last updated on: June 9, 2004 at 1:10 pm By Fred Clark

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So yesterday I finished plowing through the fourth book of J.K. Rowling's series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Good stuff, that. Two passages in particular were timely enough that they had me turning to the front of the book to double-check the copyright date — 2000. The book was written before 9/11 and before the march to war in Iraq. Yet in these passages, Rowling seems far more prescient than her Professor Trelawney ever hoped to be. (Warning:... Read more

The knuckleball

Last updated on: June 8, 2004 at 4:18 pm By Fred Clark

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So I got up early in hopes of projecting an image of the sun onto a white piece of paper in order to see a tiny black dot crossing the sun. Unfortunately, the northeastern sky was full of clouds, so I went back to bed and will try again in 2012. Astrology enthusiasts would probably say that a transit of Venus on my birthday is a significant portent of … something — but I don't listen to astrology enthusiasts.* And... Read more

Biggest tax increase ever

Last updated on: June 7, 2004 at 12:37 pm By Fred Clark

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Ronald Wilson Reagan who used to ride a watersmooth silver stallion, Jesus he was a handsome man died Saturday at the age of 93. This remembrance by Lou Cannon in The Washington Post is a good summary of the man's long, remarkable life. Despite all the star-spangled hagiography over the weekend, some of the former president's lasting accomplishments were overlooked. I want here to highlight three of Ronald Reagan's presidential innovations: 1. The helicopter press conference. President Reagan invited the... Read more