Joy.
It gives me great joy to announce to you who have not heretofore read it…that the “Sun-Times” newspaper group LOST $168.8 million in the third quarter with ad sales DOWN 19%. It will be sad to see Sneed go but she’ll make tracks back to the “Tribune.” Other than that it’ll be so fulfilling to see the following turned out on the street: the obnoxious, brash, loudmouthed secularist and anti-Catholic Neil Steinberg who never tires of reminding us he is an obnoxious, brash, loudmouthed, secular anti-Catholic…
…Mark Brown who will be relieved of his deadly dull foundry-style work of commenting on city news in the most unexciting, prosaic and unimaginably style-less prose extant…Carol Marin who soon will be deprived of drawing conventional conclusions after many others have in earlier pieces (Emanuel was a good choice!) in cliché sentences and down to only two news commenting paying jobs where she can easily crib her thoughts from other liberals, on NBC and WTTW…Stella Foster who only got her column because she was Kup’s secretary and who uses it to salute her black pals…Mary Mitchell who will have to take her hate whitey campaign to other venues. Zay Smith whose charming Q-T is biting, provocative…and for the life of me I don’t know where he’s going to land because the “Tribune” has no sense of humor…
…Rev. Jesse Jackson, that great exemplar to the black community replete with extortion, illegitimacy-siring and hate, who will have to let his ghost writer go…I would be sorry to lose Steve Huntley but he may be ready to retire anyhow…I would also miss David Roeder on the business page but definitely not the bubble-gum chomping adolescent religion columnist who is incapable of growing up, Cathleen Falsani..nor Bill Zwecker…probably Hedy Weiss. Roger Ebert may have garnered prizes for his movie reviewing but he is a dim candle next to Joe Morganstern of “The Wall Street Journal,” and Morganstern is not a frustrated political commentator. Most of all in the no great loss category would be editor Michael Cooke who drove this enterprise into the ground, after he was fired as editor of “The New York Daily News” where they stopped him from doing the same thing just in time, dogged in his attempt to make it a black chauvinist paper (which blacks saw through as a cynical and dishonest device and didn’t reward with their patronage).
The extraordinarily good ones will find work—Fran Spielman, Lynn Sweet, Pulitzer prize winner Jack Higgins and the investigative staff--replenishing the anemic “Tribune” for a time. But only for a short time until its billionaire sugar daddy Lucifer with slit eyes, red-rimmed hair and goutee will board his motorcycle and WRRRRRROAR off leaving corporate toady R. Bruce Dold free to go where he belongs to Hill & Knowlton where he will continue doing what he has been, taking orders.
Speaking of Newspapers…
Michael Miner in this week’s “Chicago Reader” reports on a talk about the future of newspapering delivered by veteran journalist John Darnton who spent 40 years at “The New York Times.” In short, the future is behind it and both the “Sun-Times” and the “Trib” are likely to be out of business replaced by Internet journalism. But eventually Darnton’s old NYT bias came through. Miner: “Internet journalism is good at aggregation, linkage, documentation and verification—for instance it can demystify an unknown like Sarah Palin. But when the truth is buried, he said, the blogosphere doesn’t dig.” Sarah Palin, ah there’s a subject destined to warm the cockles of liberal hearts. Of course, Sarah Palin. When the truth is buried, the blogosphere doesn’t dig. Unmentioned was how bloggers unveiled a signal journalistic fraud circulating with CBS News and Dan Rather. As well as the entire disgraceful CBS story to vilify George W. Bush. Darnton just happened to forget to mention it. And Miner didn’t think to mention it either in his column.
I refer to the sleazy attempt of Dan Rather of CBS to circulate the tale that George W. Bush was absent a lot during his Texas Air National Guard service. False documents were foisted on Rather by Mary Mapes which caused her dismissal and Rather’s ultimate departure. Conservative bloggers checked the accuracy of the typing on the so-called reports and found they were fabricated. Not a mention of that by Darnton. In the pre-Internet days the Mapes-Rather story would just have been put on the air without verification.
Darnton sounds like a typical NYT product—so cross-eyed Dem liberal he can’t see straight and does not even think of mentioning this significant triumph for the blogosphere. I’m rather surprised Miner didn’t think of it himself as he’s a reputable journalistic product. But when you work for a lefty throwaway like “The Reader,” you can get careless.
Then, before I forget it…this gem. “Darnton worries that a `generation of illiterate news consumers’ will be created, consumers who don’t know how poorly they’re being informed because they’ve forgotten (or never knew) what good journalism was.” Did he mention this with a straight face without cracking up? With his paper neglecting to focus on the stunning example of a Democratic veep candidate with two prior brain aneurisms telling Katie Couric how FDR steadied the populace after the stock market crash of 1929 by going on coast-to-coast television? Instead concentrating on Palin’s wardrobe? And he worries about illiteracy? What a laugh.
57% Catholic Vote for Obama.
Fifty-seven percent of all Catholics voted for Obama…which is not the fault of a small but hardy handful of bishops who courageously pointed out the stakes. Others…the big-name prelates…generally turned out evasive letters that have to be studied with a jeweler’s eye to gain real import. How many of wishy-washy closet liberal pastors spoke that way from the altar is unknown. But then one out of four Catholics don’t go to Mass at all. But there’s more. A major symbol of the church’s disinclination to disturb “unity” by making a fuss over principle: His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan of New York (an Oak Park native), resplendent in his crimson robe (the color of blood so as to remind all that if the duty comes to the fore he should become a martyr but why spoil regal trappings with that depressing thought), tittering politely over drinks with Barack Obama, at the Alfred E. Smith fundraising dinner, yes with Obama the reincarnation of King Herod who believes in not allowing babies born of botched abortions to find any nourishment or medical comfort.
John McCain was there, too, but of course his presence wasn’t stressed by the media. You Know Who was front and center in the mainstream media featured with the cardinal. Present in rapt admiration of Obama were Katie Couric with a walnut sized diamond weighing down her hand and Brian Williams…both very interested in Catholic theology, of course like “hey, what do you suppose Obama’s whispering to Egan?”
But listen, it was a FUND-RAISER for the CHURCH which makes everything all right. That’s of PARAMOUNT CONCERN as it was here when Hillary Clinton in mid-campaign was invited to speak at Mercy School for Boys & Girls by liberal Dem Fr. Scott Donohue who couldn’t imagine there would be a stir, money-raising holding the sway it has today, the Democratic party being so embedded in the archdiocese beginning with Jimmy Lago. Chancery officials contradicted themselves as to whether Cardinal George (a) signed off or (b) found out too late and couldn’t sign off. Probably both (a) and (b). And maybe (c), (d) and (e) as well.
Political risks are likely to be taken in some Church quarters when dough is involved. It causes lots of red-robes to rise above principle. A notable bishop out of town once confided in me that if a bishop dallies with a woman or two, Rome can find forgiveness…with an stray boy or two, Rome can find it possible to look the other way…but when you SCREW UP ON THE MONEY, there’s NO ABSOLUTION. The offender is transferred speedily out of his diocese--which is why Samuel Cardinal Stritch spent his last days in exile in Rome, applying the Dewey decimal system to the Vatican library. He was exiled because he had screwed up on the money from the Chicago collections big-time. Illiterate accounting led a layman to run off with a cool million before the ecclesials could get their hands on it, a story that has still not been covered many decades later.
Red-robed cock-robin Egan, raising his beefy heavy-ringed hand as a reputed “prince of the Church” in a dual cocktail salute with Obama, knows what the real priorities are: big bucks. Assuredly hefty contributors to Catholic Charities (largely subsidized by government grants that water down the Church’s stand on key moral issues) would have been offended if Obama had been dis-invited with a serious downturn of dough at the gate. In 2004, when he was criticized for inviting John Kerry, the Catholic pro-abort attend with pro-lifer President Bush, Egan scrubbed both attendees…an exercise in true cowardice under fire, punishing the principled presidential pro-lifer along with the pro-abort. But it was a rotten marketing idea since the proceeds diminished accordingly. They learned after that when the dough didn’t rush in.
So this year with the prelate photographed sitting next to Obama, THAT was a coup that raised big bucks. And that’s what it’s all about in the big city archdioceses including here. Show me the money.
Paraphrasing Hilaire Belloc “where big city Catholic sun doth shine, is found money-raising and the Dem political line/ At least I’ve always found it so/ Benedicamus Domino.”
Wait for the next “gaffe” to occur here when another liberal Dem priest…not Donohue this time, he’s HAD his turn, someone else… decides to invite a big Dem pro-abort to kickoff a money event. Maybe Biden, maybe Pelosi. Maybe Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr. who made his peace with the pro-aborts by joining “Catholics for Obama” a marked departure from his late father, the Democratic governor, who was ostracized because he wouldn’t endorse pro-abort Clinton. The invitation will be made, a speaking date accepted and then—oh! We didn’t imagine that would offend people! Same apologies will follow: oh, dear! How did we goof this up? We’ll send out letters of apology to those offended after the money is collected and tabulated—as did Donohue. Maybe those in the pews’ll forget when we try it again in succeeding years.
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