Saturday, May 6, 2006

Personal Asides.

SZ200_Lynn Sweet
David Graf asks what an authenticist Catholic is. John Powers answers him. In these times of turmoil, it’s used to define followers of John Paul and Benedict XVI, in contradistinction to those who play cafeteria church. Calling them “traditionalists” confuses them with followers of the late Archbishop Lefebvre who challenged Vatican II…Mike Miner has the answer for the guy who rode the nuclear bomb down on the USSR waving his Stetson: Slim Pickens. Mike also tells us something I for one didn’t know: that Peter Sellers was supposed to play that part, too, but it was recast after he had a heart attack.

Finally, my best once again to Lynn Sweet who I bumped into on a quick trip to Washington, D. C. She is still the best in the business for a journalism that must be interpretative: in her and her paper’s case, Democratic. After the paper put the first news of Patrick Fitzgerald on page 34, she brilliantly came up with a rationale for the Kennedy troubles—drug addiction, womanizing, scuffles with police, drowning et al—from cousin Chris Kennedy who manages the Merchandise Mart. It’s in the genes. That spares us from imagining it was their personal responsibility.

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