I love this picture of Hillary Clinton. The first is because she looks fantastic. She looks like an attractive, smart middle-aged woman, and that open palm is re-assuring. No men are going to beat up on Hillary, that’s for sure! She’s honest, but good for a smack! But the other reason I love the picture is because with the lighting, that black background, she looks like she’s playing Rose Hovick and a Vegas production of Gypsy, and she’s doing her... Read more
My son Buster’s pet peeve is the way fathers and young men are portrayed on television either by advertisers or in sitcoms. Overall it seems to Buster that in sitcoms men are fat, sloppy, stupid, lazy, sex-obsessed and unable to function without the help of the fit, very together, stylish, driven, educated and sex-sensible woman. In ads, young men are brain-dead, game-playing couch-potato louts or stupid, monosyllabic Jeff Spicoli knock-offs, and in ads fathers are routinely portrayed as profoundly mindless,... Read more
Jonah Goldberg is offering debate moderators some fair and interesting questions they can ask Hillary Clinton, if they’re not afraid of accusations of sexism, or of Hillary supporters suggesting that they be shot. I hope some of them (or some intrepid reporters out there, on the campaign trail) do gird up their loins and inquire: After the Philadelphia debate, your campaign tried to explain away your lackluster performance by implying your male competitors were unfairly “piling on” because you’re a... Read more
As I mentioned last week,this blog has – for the third year in a row – incomprehensibly been named a finalist for the Weblog Awards. I thank those who nominated me in the Individual Blogger category, and thanks to Kevin Aylward and the Wizbang gang for selecting me as a finalist, but honestly…I don’t understand it. I just went over to the voting site to cast some for my favorites, and, in perusing the lists of great blogs in various... Read more
I wasn’t going to “pile on” Poor Hillary Clinton about her crash-and-burn in the last Democrat debate. Everyone else was writing about it – which is what happens, when a candidate gives himself or herself away – so I didn’t feel the need. I simply amused myself watching the video of her head bobbing, bobbing, bobbing in agreement with Tim Russert…until it stopped. But it seems Poor Hillary is feeling “piled on” by those mean boys. The boy reporters who... Read more
Rocco at Whispers in the Loggia beat me to it and has highlighted Deacon Greg Kandra’s excellent Homily for All Sainst Day. But I’m going to quote Kandra, too, anyway: Shortly after he converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s, Thomas Merton was walking the streets of New York with his friend, Robert Lax. Lax was Jewish, and he asked Merton what he wanted to be, now that he was Catholic. “I don’t know,” Merton replied, adding simply that he... Read more
It occurs to me that there is a delicious irony playing out before our very eyes, and no one seems to have spotted it, and here it is: President Bush, using dubious (but largely agreed-upon) intelligence, and inspired by his view – a view some would call “alarmist” – that terrorism is the greatest threat to humanity life and liberty on the planet, went to the UN and called for international movement to depose Saddam Hussein and engage Al Qaeda... Read more
Okay, I’m going to say it. I am a Catholic, and my vision of a perfect America would be that everyone was Catholic. I wish all Americans were Catholic. I wish all of our separated brethren, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Fundamentalists, the Evangelicals, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans – all of ’em – were Catholic, because they’d be “complete” Christians – they would have the fullness of Christ and unity within the Church as Christ founded it, one,... Read more
Due to a large family reunion project that finally went off without a hitch this past weekend, blogging has been light and my email has been heavily piling up. Today I have sentenced myself to some time in Solitary Confinement within the Email Chamber of Horrors and Funny Dog Photos, and I’m going to try to wade through most of it; if you’ve written and I haven’t responded, well…I’m trying. I may not ever get to all of it. I... Read more
Jay Nordlinger’s column is one of the few places I’ve seen extensive coverage of President Bush’s little-mentioned, must read speech in which he dares to talk plainly about the much distorted realities of Cuba and communism. Says Bush: Cuba’s rulers promised individual liberty. Instead they denied their citizens basic rights that the free world takes for granted. In Cuba it is illegal to change jobs, to change houses, to travel abroad, and to read books or magazines without the express... Read more
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