CHURCH’S GREGORY DECLINED OFFER OF LEGAL HELP ON PEDOPHILIA.

         In the midst of another round of pedophilia scandals involving the U.S. Catholic Church…with the archdiocese of Philadelphia putting on leave 21 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors—and this following a blast to Philadelphia ecclesial authorities by a local grand jury which accused the hierarchy of allowing 37 deviate…the only proper word to apply to their behavior… clerics to remain around children despite “substantial evidence of abuse”—came a highly revelatory revelation that turned up in a discussion I had last week with Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke.   Yes, she and I are often to be found on different pages of theology—but this, my friends, is not theology but moral conduct.

        You will remember that she was a leader of the so-called “Board of Review” that was set up by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) following the explosive findings about laxity in handling clerical pedophilia in Boston.   She never made permanent Chair because she refused to be rolled by the ruling prelates.  Instead she and Robert Bennett, the prominent Washington lawyer who had spent $1 million of his own money to ferret out abuses, were stonewalled by the ruling junta installed at the USCCB’s marble palace and went to Rome to interview then Josef Cardinal Ratzinger,  Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

        When she returned Justice Burke was confronted by Bishop Wilton Gregory, bishop of Belleville, Illinois-- then president of the USCCB--for supposedly exceeding her authority.   It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to appreciate why Burke was never made Chairman of the Board…Gregory having been earlier a Chicago auxiliary bishop skilled soothing the roiled waters of controversy as only a Chicago-inured Squid-influenced operative can.  

       It was Burke who got the lesson of her life in ecclesiastical duplicitousness when she personally interviewed each prelate on his familiarity with deviant goings-on in his diocese.   She interviewed one supposed paragon, who when asked if he knew of any associations with people who were convicted of sexual abuse stoutly declared he did not. When it turned out that one deviant was actually living at the archbishopic mansion… “doing research”…she called him in and said “you lied to me, didn’t you?”

      (I wrote this up at the time in The Wanderer , the nation’s oldest national Catholic weekly).

       No, he said. The man you have reference to was not convicted—but confessed.
      How’s that for parsing?

    The other day she told me flat-out and gave me permission to use it publicly that Bennett who draws $5,000 an hour for his legal services, had offered to make his services available to Gregory for one year free of  charge—but was turned down.

       This Church I love and believe in has survived for 2,000 years because, as convert Bob Novak said, it is divine. Else how could it have managed through eras of bad, intemperate and sacrilegious   popes all the while saints like Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas blossomed in moral and spiritual life…and now is floundering through a cycle of personally dedicated and highly intellectual popes but still inattentive for one reason or another while the seminaries and priesthood have been flooded with lavenders?    A litany of prelates wailing that the system is crying to heaven for vengeance has produced only a laggard tide of lying, deviousness and irresponsibility.

         She has postulated in a series of speeches a rigorous program of penance for prelates—the shedding of royal capes and garments to underscore their high office…the reliance on black cassocks.

        To which I add another possibly very confrontational and controversial one.  Why, I ask, are we rushing through the likely canonization of John Paul II when, regardless of whose fault it has been, so many abuses were allowed to go unpunished and fester on his watch?   When so many weak vessels were appointed to the bishopric despite the fervent pleas of many people in the pews who knew their records?  When it is commonplace that the prelates who were picked came from the casual approval of the top paper on a stack one-inch high…which was attested to me personally by a priest who had been on hand and working at the Vatican—which could signify at the least a disregard for investigation and probity?

         Can it not be seen as a travesty of accommodation when a pontiff appointed to almost supreme position by his predecessor then presides over the elevation to canonization in a remarkably short time after death?  I fully acknowledge the role John Paul II played in the harnessing of the forces of good against Communism. I met him briefly and was edified…but folks we’re not talking worldly honors here—but canonization.

        I have asked this earlier and ask it now: What is the rush? What are the motives behind moving so swiftly?  Is this an attempt to add yet more garish folderol…swinging sweet incense burners…to use all the perfumes of Arabia to sweeten the atmosphere?

       Again…I have the greatest admiration for John Paul II…for his amazing charisma, his undeniable sanctity in the face of so many trials…for his certitude and forbearance.  I accuse him of nothing but possibly in the case of inability to root out deviant sin that indubitably extended far before his time—sin of which he could well have been unaware since he came from a period of persecution in Poland where Communist overlords calumniated good priests—causing him to doubt such charges.

       But I say again…what’s the rush behind what could be a terrible precedent for appearance sake—predecessor names successor…successor leads canonization for predecessor.  The job of canonizing some people of great sanctity who lived in the Middle Ages is on indefinite hold.  Why JPII and why now?   Do we have an assembly line process here?  Have we checked out the appointment of bishops…or are we relying on George Weigel who wrote two authorized biographies about which bishopric appointments are either unmentioned (Vol. I) or glossed over (Vol. II)?

         Okay—now you can douse me with a gallon of Holy Water to chase away this cynicism…and call the exorcists—but I mean it and while I support infallibility of pronouncement on faith and morals… am not impressed with the Holy See’s worldly perspicuity.  After all we still have the same mopes running L’Osservatore Romano don’t we—the paper that either is the official voice of the Church in Rome….some say it is because it gets exclusive crack at publishing all papal pronouncements…and some say it isn’t because it cooks up its own formulae for end-of-life disquisition at odds with theological canons…that and running lists of the great 100 rock-and-roll albums of all time.  Why has that been allowed to go on?  Because some Cardinal’s nephew is in the higher ups?  Don’t be too quick to knock that one in the head.

    
         

Held for Questioning…

     WISCONSIN LABOR RIOTS WILL LIKELY TIP THE U.  S.  TO THE RIGHT.
     Q.  Your impression of the political reaction to the Wisconsin public union imbroglio?

     A.  The big MSM news services are misplaying the effect of the story.  They say that since Wisconsin was the political seedbed of political reform, the riots at the state capitol will detonate a voter backlash against the GOP: That’s what Yahoothe liberal Internet service says and to some degree the whimpering AP: agrees. Wrong.    The play of history presumes public reaction will go to the right—and with a vengeance.  The nearest yardstick at hand is the experience of the 1960s with the demonstrations and burnings when Martin Luther King was assassinated followed by the melee in Chicago during the national Democratic convention.  Riots and cops forced to carry limp demonstrators have the opposite effect. The country was basically center-left in 1968 following the landslide for Lyndon Johnson in 1964.  The civil rights and anti-Vietnam violence presaged that Landslide Lyndon beset with primary challenges from Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy basically couldn’t win again.

       Q.  What does it do to the presidential prospects of the Republican party?
       A. Basically, the calculus was changed last night with the riot police called to the state capitol in Madison. The so-so Establishment list of candidates has been diminished.  Romney…Palin…Huckabee…Newt (“I committed adultery because I got so swept up in love of my country!” Gingrich…Paul…Bolton…Barbour…Daniels—the short, bald little motorcycle-riding auditor come to examine the books who so intrigues that centerpiece of conservatism David Brooks… all seem to be treading water, irrelevant—locked in another era. 
     The exciting new breed begins with Christie of New Jersey…continues with Pawlenty of Minnesota…and extends to Scott Walker of Wisconsin who as result of the masterly passage of the union defanging bill is at least a grassroots conservative celebrity on the scale of the early Palin…all three of whom represent the spirited gutsy clash of ideas of today—embattled pro-taxpayer governors who faced great odds with Democratic liberal majorities.
       I would imagine a draft for Christie could begin at any time now…and a spirited countermove launched for Pawlenty. You can judge by the virulently liberal New York Times which launched a page one onslaught against Christie—fearing his spectacular rise.  To my mind, Pawlenty is at least as attractive and armed with greater resources since he completed two terms as governor and Christie is in the middle of his first.
      Q.  Then you think all this palaver about the Republicans entering 2012 with a weak bench is…                  
      A. Last week’s story…and in fact last week the weak bench story did in fact palpably  exist.   But you can’t see what’s happening in Madison without projecting hugely favorable grassroots support for those who defend law….who object to scatterbrain, lip-synch Democratic liberal lawmakers paid to legislate who absconded their duties.  And also the overage, cliché-ridden, trembling, fist-shaking vindictive  old man Jesse Jackson…the bogus “inheritor of King” with catsup splashed on his sweater purportedly representing King’s blood…Jackson now on all TV screens, a vulture of misappropriated “civil rights valor”…his credentials theologically and of character always in doubt… who appears whenever there are media opportunities to exploit and vanishes when they disappear (ala his selection of Carol Moseley Braun)…is as cynical a protagonist and as undisciplined an opportunist as is possible to find in American history.  And in Washington far away what do we find our president doing?
       Q.  Running a White House conference against bullying.
       A.  Exactly…a conference tailored to appeal to gay activists who have touted this so called phenomenon to win support.  That conference is emblematic at the sadly out-of-touch liberalism Obama and the mainstream media represent.  Here violent union hoods paid with our tax dollars are breaking down the windows and threatening death to legislators who didn’t vote “correctly”—public workers fortified with phony doctors’ excuses for missing work…errant lawmakers who evaded their sworn and paid duty…and Obama is concerned about bully-boys in high school who are unkind to their more sensitive colleagues in classroom situations.  Just as in the 1960s there is a sudden convergence of other issues ratifying the need for political change.
        Q.  …such as?
        A.  Such as the ridiculous situation involving public radio where one executive admits it would be salutary if there be no public funding…playing into the hands of the Republican House appropriators and is fired…his CEO who sanctioned the firing of Juan Williams over the phone…losing the confidence of her board and stepping down—and replaced by one who is a contributor to the Democratic National Committee…its institutional contributions executive setting up a way to launder a supposed $5 million of funds from bogus Muslims. Here pathetic little Danny Schmidt president of WTTW attired in this $2000-plus suit pleading on air courtesy taxpayer facilities for his $450,000 a year job paid for partially by your tax dollars.  All these things happening and our largely compliant media—the two big papers…three, really with the Daily Herald…horribly out of touch, out of sympathy with the tenor of the people.
      Q. So you think out of this will come…
      A. Again: A  Draft Christie for President committee shortly.  Expect to hear much more from Pawlenty.   The situation is fluid but as an old Minnesotan I am for Pawlenty-Rubrio.
    

ASK ME YOUR QUESTIONS AND I’LL TELL YOU NO LIES. THE SICKO MEDIA FASCINATION WITH CHARLIE SHEEN—TO CATCH HIM COMMITTING SUICIDE ON FILM.

       Q.  What is it about our media’s fascination with the raving mad Charlie Sheen? The man is obviously zonked out on drugs and alcohol and in addition is obviously seriously demented.   Where is the news story in this repeated coverage?
     A.  No one has specifically commented on this but this is our culture of death gone totally bankrupt…since this guy is headed for a complete crackup and in fact said late yesterday he was losing his mind.  The interest in Charlie is frankly not so much the media’s fault as the largely pro-death fascination that an increasing number of people have in this arid, pleasure-crazed godless society.
          So I’m not letting media off the hook but the sickening interest is beyond the media and is pornographic—the fascination of our crazed society, quivering with anticipation when a guy is moving closer-and-closer to suicide. It is the same thrill as a guy in a crowd of bystanders … calling up to a poor lout standing on the ledge the Willis Tower threatening to jump…and yelling “go ahead and jump, sucker!” hoping for a thrill to see the body tumble to earth and hit the street, the guts splashing too and fro.  The carnal media are there to exploit that pornography, assuredly—but it is the pro-death society…viewing lives as mere convenience…that has seeped into our once Christian…now post-Christian…ethic.  The crowds that jammed into the Roman Coliseum to see lions devour Christians were the same.  So don’t blame the media exclusively—but our sensation-crazed culture of death society.
       Many, many  years ago…67 to be exact…I was a small town newspaper reporter covering a small county fair. At these fairs there were carny attractions…a tattooed woman…a two-headed frog…a transvestite willing to disrobe for the gawkish stares of the rural hayseeds. 
       At this fair there was a narrow, precariously-built wooden ramp constructed 94-feet high. Twice a day each hot summer evening a rider would show up at the top, mount a unicycle…fix his eyes on the horizon…and with the crack of a starter’s revolver roar down the wooden ramp at a high degree of speed—his eyes trained on the horizon.   Every so often a unicycle would go off the track and a guy would either be killed or seriously maimed….and the small town newspapers would have photographers poised to catch the accident. If no accident, no story or photo in the next day’s daily.
      One summer night I was interviewing the guy before he made his last ride for the evening.  I was doing this interview with him before crowd of some 200 or so for my paper’s small town radio station.  The guy said:
       “How do I do it?  Strange you should ask. See this guy over here?”…pointing to a village rustic with gaps in his teeth,  devouring pink cotton candy from a spindle with a dazed Alfred E. Neumann grin.  “At the start of my run I focus on one guy in the stands.   He’s always in the same spot—in a seat high on top.  The point is to fasten your gaze on a fixed spot and stare at him as you roar all the way down.  His constancy and my complete attention on him is the trick.”
         Pointing to the guy he said:
         “You’ve been to my performances yesterday afternoon…last night…and this afternoon, have you not, my friend? I’m fascinated by you and all the others I watch.  What is your name?”
          The rustic grinned, flushed with pride at being recognized in front of the crowd…none of whom had ever before given him a thought—now aware that he was an integral part of the act.
         The village rustic giggled and said his name in a proud, steady voice.
         The driver repeated it.  “Folks,” he said, “meet [repeating the rustic’s name] a fixture of stability who is just as important to my completing this ride as I am myself.  Whether I make it or die depends on him.
        “And presumably you’ll be sitting in the same seat at the top of the stands when I climb on my unicycle.  And I’ll be looking at you tonight as I ride down the ramp.”
        With that our session was over and I signed off the radio…thinking, wow this thrill driver must either be naïve to the point of being committed or will soon be a dead man.
       Sure enough Alfred E. Neumann took his seat at the top of the stands; the driver eased himself on the unicycle.  They waved at each other and the precarious descent started….roaring down the track.
        Then, predictably, Alfred E. Neumann arose, waved his sweater so as to distract the driver and disappeared.  
         All those of us who had been in the audience for the radio program gasped—but the driver on his unicycle roared down the ramp happily.
         Afterward I got the driver and asked if Alfred E. Neumann’s distraction bothered him.
       “Naw,” he said as he removed his helmet and goggles.  “We try to pick out at least one jerk like that—and they never disappoint. They get up, wave and often jump up and down to make us lose our concentration…hoping we’ll crash and allowing them a cheap thrill from causing our deaths. .  What I really do is focus on an inanimate object—a flag,  a sign….I’m not going to tell you what. “
        That kind of perverted thrill is behind the mass interest in Charlie Sheen—and it’s just as sick as it was manifested so many  years ago at the Benton county fairgrounds in central Minnesota.

Ask Me Your Questions…

WELL THAT’S SETTLED—CALLISTA HAS NOT BEEN MARRIED BEFORE.
        Q.  So?
        A. I hinted erroneously yesterday that Callista Gingrich may have been married before she married Newt.  But I was wrong. Lo and behold, Gingrich Communications contacted me and asked if I would please post this fact.  I said yes and here it is.  It means that Callista’s Catholicism is valid….she did not divorce an earlier husband to marry Newt. And Newt’s is okay too since he became a convert to the Church.
         Q.  So now you’re for him?
         A.   I would not be for him if a battalion of angels swept him up and deposited him in the Apse of St. Matthew’s in Washington.  I tend to believe the Republicans should match up a merger of a vital young governor who has faced the churning waves of state insolvency and has dealt with a hostile Democratic legislature—has a strong social issues posture, no kids dancing in thigh-high net stockings, no one-time pro-abort, one-time cap and trade, no one worrying about Natalie Portman’s premarital pregnancy, no one whose wife left him and their three kids, got divorced, remarried,  then changed her mind and returned to husband and three kids—too complicated--no U. S. senators…but the nominee teamed with a young congressman-budget expert with the solid social credentials.  No Romney, no Newt, no Huckabee, no Palin, no Paul, no Mitch, no kidding.
         Q.  You’ve seen that the vice president of fundraising at NPR was canned for saying that he thinks public funding of the network is more disadvantageous to it than not?
         A.  Yes.  Shows what happens over there when you speak truth to power.  He added that is it just as unreasonable to expect there be no feminist voices over there or Islamist voices. Plenty of both.       

Ask Me Your Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies…

IF YOU WERE IN DANGER OF LOSING YOUR $450,000 A YEAR JOB AND RAN A PUBLIC TV STATION YOU’D BE BEGGING FOR HELP, TOO.
        Q.   My goodness, Dan Schmidt,  head man of WTTW-TV seems really engrossed in the battle to save public television via congressional appropriations.  His TV spot where he pleads for viewers to write their representatives is compelling.
       A.  As well it should be. Fancy Dan is an ace at using taxpayer paid facilities…monies appropriated from the past year…to hustle for continuance of his estimated $450,000 a year salary.  Don’t forget some of the money goes to pay Carol Marin who has two other highly paid media jobs already—political editor of The Sun-Times and reporter for NBC-TV Channel 5.   We’re so hard up for Lefty analysts and commentators…including  CINO and anti-Catholic one who scorched a Catholic bishop for correcting renegade Pat Quinn on his fallacious theology…that we’ve got to triple-up.
        Just remember when you see her tossing her russet locks before the cameras in `60s schoolgirl fashion,  you’ve got a hard-core pro-abort, pro-gay marriage propagandist there—and she has to pay her bills somehow: so what’s so bad about using taxpayers’ dollars in addition to her private swag?
          Q.  Newt Gingrich and Wife No. 3 Callista are promoting the sanctity of marriage ala Catholicism in Iowa getting ready for the 2012 caucuses.
         A.  Yes, it just seems like yesterday when Newt and his second wife Marianne were traveling the circuit looking fondly into each others’ eyes to sanctify marriage bliss.  Then he met Callista while cheating on Marianne…and he met Marianne while cheating on Wife No. 1, Jackie.  Now that he’s converted to Catholicism, Newt and Callista are the Catholic Couple of the Year (barf).  But theologians ought to have a problem with this before it gets too far along,  Catholic Callista was married to somebody else before she got involved with one-time Protestant Newt.  Newt hit the sawdust trail and converted—but what is Callista’s Catholic status as a divorced and remarried member of that Faith whose theology inveighs against it?  Anybody have the answer? Is he Catholic and she outside the fold?  
       Q.  Do you think Newt and Callista will make the sale with Catholics?
       A.  I do not. At least not with me.  I’ve been open to most considerations and have wavered between one and another.  Now I’m coming to the denouement.
        Scratch Newt. Nor do I think we’re really for a cornball 5 o’clock shadow evangelical Baptist ex-Arkansas governor twanging a 3-stringed guitar.  Or a 76-year-old baby doctor turned eccentric amateur economic quack who wants to end drug controls, allow his frenetic kid supporters to smoke pot, sever all U. S. intelligence operations, privatize highways,  pull back defenses to Fortress America.  Or an ex-Alaska governor whose largely unsupervised dancing daughter in  hip-length mesh stockings who will likely get embroiled in another pregnancy just in time for the 2012 nominating convention.   Or a prematurely orange-haired cuckoo tycoon who snarls “you’re fired” at trembling apprentices, brushes his hair forward to hide the receding hairline and eschews free trade in favor of stringent protectionism ala Ross Perot which will assuredly bring on a serious depression.  Or an Indiana governor who wants to rule out social issues when he is president, when Dems forthrightly do not…unilateral disarmament—sawing off millions of religious voters and letting them float out to sea… …favoring end-of-life cutoff that is hardly a tad of difference from that of Barack Obama.
       Q.  Or—who else?
       A.  A corporatist ex-Massachusetts governor who’s been on all sides of most questions…pro-abort…pro-life…pro-gay…traditionalist…pro-Big Government health care…anti-Big Government health care….whose religious beliefs entitle him to a piece of property postmortem on a nearby planet.
      Q.  Good God, man whom does this leave?
      A.  The prospect of top-notch intellectuals and government experts farther back on the bench…some of whom have been governors in capsizingly difficult times…some who have become budgetary experts in the House. 

EMANUEL: Thanks O God for The Pout and Fluorescent Eddie!

     Note: This is an enlarged and updated version of my last week’s column for The Wanderer, the nation’s oldest continually published national Catholic weekly. 

       The first thing Rahm Emanuel should do once installed in his mayoral  sancta sanctorum on the 5^th floor of city hall is to scoot everybody out, lock all the doors and once alone put on a tallis…aka a Jewish prayer shawl, the ancestor of our Catholic pallium…to give fervent thanks to Yahweh—the name of God that Jews don’t pronounce--who led his ancestors out of Egypt… to inspire the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. to spare Chicago and Emanuel by raising the prospect of Carol Moseley Braun for mayor.  

       As an afterthought Emanuel should murmur thanks for the Eddie Burke-stimulated residency issue which kept Rahm in the media spotlight not just here but across the country, rendering his opponents inconsequential mediocrities.

    But it was the great “I Am,” Jackson, who truly became Emanuel’s political Savior.   The fact that our supine media…terrified of any reportage that should seem racially evenhanded cannot bring themselves to pronounce The Pout as the glaring fraud he is and always has been…is a pathetic scandal of journalistic timidity and liberal white guilt.

      The Sun-Times can be shrugged off because it seeks to hype its readership by running the ghost ridden Old Fulminator’s columns for decades but The Tribune, with two exceptions, a publishing miracle --alive without guts, brains, backbone, testicles or soul--is a case apart.  

                  Jackson Leads Blacks to the “Upper Room.”

           Superannuated black racist Jackson pronounced that African Americans must elect a mayor to oppose anyone whitey might pick. With that he raised his arms upright like Moses and beckoned all black leadership to come together under his aegis, certifying onetime Cabrini Green resident ex-con (2 years for bank robbery committed  at age 17 and early-released because of his tender age) Alderman Walter Burnett  [27^th] ward: West Town] be made “consensus” chairman of the parley.   They would convene in an Upper Room and come out with the logical next black mayor.

       The Holy Spirit was not needed because His role was preempted by the Rev. Jackson.   And predictably inside the Upper Room there was dissension as Cong. Danny Davis of the West Side and Rev.-State Sen. James Meeks, pastor of 50,000-member South Side’s Salem Baptist…a publicly identified pro-life advocate and anti-gay crusader…argued their cases.   Former Senator (appointed by Rod Blagojevich) Roland Burris was invited but fortuitously backed out early figuring nothing happening there was going to enlarge his carved tombstone resume, leaving another ex-senator the favorite in Jackson’ s mind.  

         Jackson favored Carol Moseley Braun because she was, after all, the first black woman U.S. senator, first black ambassador to New Zealand and for a short-time an announced presidential contender in 2008. She had walked the corridors of power both domestically and internationally, the Messiah intoned.  

      Jackson’s oracular serenade enabled Carol to say she would never-ever quit for anyone else. She argued it was time among this vast sea of men for a woman to be mayor.  They reminded her a woman had been mayor—Jane Byrne in 1978 who was so unpopular she served only one term.   Carol responded yes—but she was a white woman mayor.  Everybody looked to Jesse for comment.

      Rev. Jesse nodded sagaciously, saying yes that is true, Jane Byrne was and is white. As it was in the beginning so it will be to the end of her life—she will remain white.  So it is indeed time for a black woman mayor.

       His political sagacity was ratified as Ms. Moseley Braun came in fourth on election day Feb. 22 with a whopping 9 percent.

         After Rev. Jackson’s strong support of Moseley Braun, black male contenders…granted none very good…started to pull out. West Side Cong. Danny Davis, recipient of a Ph.D in social aggrandizement or something that sounds close to that from an Arkansas rural black college , said he had a vast number of other things to do involving congress which included the Ways and Means committee steering the nation’s economy—a frightening prospect.

     Rev-State Sen. Meeks who earlier had offered to rise above principle on social issues in order to bind together One Chicago said he would be missed at Salem Baptist’s pulpit and in the legislature and so his first priority was to serve God there.  In fact the only thing useful in the black mayor search was to witness how naked ambition deflated Meeks’ hot air balloon on the social issues, clear to all but Andy McKenna, Jr., the mega-multi-millionaire inheritor of his father’s wealth who believed his image would be immeasurably broadened by helping to fund Meeks.

       Thereupon despite a scattering of minor league candidates, there remained standing only the indomitable Ms. Moseley Braun with her perpetually luminescent smile.  Rev. Jackson declared her the consensus black candidate and all adjourned the Upper Room.  Bad omen:  Alderman Burnett who was empowered by The Pout with the role of enforcing the Moseley Braun decision among all black voters, thought it over and a few days later defected to Emanuel.

        Now as Mayor Emanuel prepares to hang up his tallis in the city hall closet for use at another time, he can reflect how helpful  Jackson was in his winning with 55.2 percent, well above the 50-plus-one benchmark he needed to avoid an April 5^thrunoff…he winning 40 of the city’s 50 wards, getting more than  70 percent in the heavily populated lakefront wards, mopping up by more than 50 percent in wards with large black populations, racking up margins of at least 2 to 1 over Moseley Braun.  How in the world Victor Reyes and Mike Noonan got involved with her is a stunner: their reputations for savvy ended with her petition filing. 

     Due to Jackson, black voters gave more support to Emanuel than all of the other candidates combined—not to forget (or forgive) the grossly misleading David Axelrod TV commercial of Obama praising   Emanuel at his retirement as chief-of-staff but never officially endorsing him (more of this later).

        Emanuel’s nearest opponent with 24 percent was Gery (pronounced “Gary”) Chico, not invited to the Upstairs Room since he is white—but an entirely respectable candidate, Daley’s onetime chief of staff,   ex-president of the school board (not an impressive recommendation after Daley canned Paul Vallas for talking tough to the teachers unions) and ex-head of the park district, a multi-millionaire lawyer and backed by the city’s most powerful alderman, the immaculately white haired-coiffed Eddie Burke, Lord High Chairman of Finance.

       Chico carried the remaining 10 wards, primarily Latino-heavy on the Southwest Side where he was raised and the West Side; also the 19^th and 41^st both with large populations of what we Chicagoans call “police and fire” whose unions endorsed Chico, fearing (rightly) that their day of reckoning with a Mayor Emanuel is forthcoming.  

       Turnout was 41 percent, nearly 10 points lower than predicted. Chicago’s shrinking population—including tens of thousands fewer blacks—makes The Squid more dependent on the close-in suburbs where most of them…many returning to their ancestral roots in a newly warmly receptive South where right-to-work means more jobs.

      The only self-identifiable Leftist mayoral candidate, the city clerk, Puerto Rican-born Miguel del Valle came in third with 9.3 percent, his candidacy denting in only a few wards, notably  Hispanic-heavy Logan Square where he received the disappointing election results at a drinking party held appropriately at a saloon named Revolution!

      Where was the silent Mayor Daley in all this?  He never endorsed any candidate but precinct captains in his original 11^thward Bridgeport base went door-to-door with flyers and palm cards instructing the faithful to vote Emanuel.

       Daley’s rejoinder after election when he was asked who he voted for emitted what was mercifully the last hurrah semi-retardate bluster that has made him a legendary slow-wit among mayors…an embarrassing device he uses to save him from explaining anything difficult-- but which reaffirms his bully boy Bridgeport-born Little Lord Fauntleroy nyyyyaaa-nyaaaa squeaks: Huh?  How did I vote? Knock-knock…knock-knock! For a generation a debate has swirled over whether he’s (a) truly dumb or (b) uses this stuff as a device.  The jury’s finally come back—it’s always been (a).

                      After Defeat, Jackson Not Available for Comment. 

     And after the Emanuel victory where was the Messiah of the Upper Room? Out-of-town, in Madison, Wisconsin holding news conferences with striking public union workers and thus incommunicado until the heat blows over in Chicago when the tame guilt-obsessed reporters will be too respectful to ask if he bore responsibility for what went wrong. 

       However after the election some of the more mature elements of the press…including Laura Washington of The Sun-Times…opined that it is time to shuck off vestiges of the `60s civil rights-era leaders in favor of younger,  more modern and moderate black strategists. (Don’t count the Tribune’s Clarence Page or Dawn Turner Trice among them as they’re hired to tell us chalkies how it feels to be black—not to challenge the old “civil rights” Establishment.)

       Laura Washington hinted broadly that Rev. Jesse may have outlived his fame. Actually his fame should never have devolved as he had  been a media fraud from the time he claimed on network TV that the blotch on his shirt was Martin Luther King’s.

       Actually on April 4, 1968 at 6:01 a.m. when the shots killed King as he stood on the second floor balcony of Memphis’ Lorraine motel, the 27-year-old insouciant Jackson was a half-block away joshing with Memphis musicians who were to play at a midmorning rally.  But Jackson recovered from the shock quickly enough to book a flight posthaste to Chicago with a hired p.r. agent in tow to appear on the NBC “Today” show to attest he wore the bloody turtle neck shirt as heir to redeem King’s dream.

        King assuredly did not die in his arms (but Ralph Abernethy’s).  Only hours before the assassination had expressed…this recorded in Taylor Branch’s magisterial 3^rd volume civil rights history At Canaan’s Edge…King told a gathering in his motel room he had figured Jackson as a trimmer and opportunist and ready to ditch him soon. 

        The bloody shirt story is contained in Barbara Reynolds’ Jesse Jackson, the Unauthorized Biography. But Jackson’s theological ministerial status was also bogus.  His ordination papers are as murky as the unobtainable hard-copy version of Barack Obama’s birth certificate—always acknowledged but never actually seen.

       In fact the man viewed by many as the predominate spokesman for the black race flunked and/or dropped out of North Carolina AT&T, had a dispute about whether or not racism had to do with his not winning a football scholarship here (he saying he was deprived of a quarterback slot because of his race notwithstanding another black player was chosen for that position) and his leaving the liberal Chicago Theological seminary after only a few months.

     It is claimed he got himself named a minister by a nondescript Baptist congregation because of his civil rights demonstrations.   As there were lingering doubts about its canonical legitimacy he then received an honorary ordination at a black college. Close but still no cigar.       Finally to make things look really-really better he arranged a masters-of-divinity certificate from the compliantly liberal University of Chicago with no studies were required of him and 100% credit was given solely for his activism.

        Now if anybody were to ask, he would be forever known as “the Reverend.”

         The Jesse L. Jackson part was added earlier.

      He was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, S. C., the illegitimate son of the town’s most prominent boxer, Noah Robinson who was already married, having legitimately sired Noah Robinson, Jr. His mother married one Charles Jackson fifteen years later who gave Burns his surname.  Noah Robinson, Jr. came to Chicago and worked for a time with his half-brother Jesse (where as a Quaker Oats executive I knew him slightly) to rustle up contributors to the mission…but is now inconveniently lodged in federal prison serving a lifetime sentence for arranging a murder contract on three business partners.

        Jackson’s extraordinarily creative theological illiteracies led him to invent out of whole cloth interesting variations of the gospel such as the beguiling fiction that he told a largely secularly oriented Democratic National convention in 1984  that Jesus Christ was born to a homeless family—associating Him with Jackson’s  own illegitimate birth…a marvelous invention of sacrilegious hubris.   The convention clapped and clapped, apparently ratifying Jackson’s ignorance of the Hypostatic Union of Christ’s two natures, divine and human—not that many delegates ever heard of the  Hypostatic Union. Or if they had,  might wonder how much the dues are.     

         Emanuel Hustles the Mayoralty the Old-Fashioned Way.

        Confident that Moseley Braun’s selection was a pathway to victory and easily putting down residential challenges orchestrated secretly by Alderman Burke, Rahm Emanuel got elected the old-fashioned way by earning it: putting together a first-rate team via massive contributions.  Ever since I regularly worked with him on WBEZ on Bruce DuMont’s show there every Thursday night sometimes for two hours…when he told us he was hustling contributions for Bob Creamer’s Illinois Public Action consumer network and later what he himself described as “Jewish money” for Rich Daley,  I was fascinated that there was not a lazy bone in the kid’s body (he was then 27).

        When he attended my Quaker retirement party in July, 1991 he was morose.  G. H. W. Bush was president and popular and it appeared that the calculus of the electoral college had moved irremediably against the Democrats. He said “the only way I will ever be admitted to the White House would be to take the visitors’ tour or come as a waiter in a rented tux and pour drinks.” I was stunned at his pessimism.   To this guy, getting to the White House…as an insider.. was truly an ambition!  I never saw that in anybody else just turning 30.

      We all know what happened next.  The economy soured; Bush turned unpopular but not soon enough for the Dem heavy-weights to appreciate it. Bill Clinton decided to take a whack at the job in`92 and Rahm was hired to raise money for him in Little Rock; he was pessimistic that the contest would ever work out in Clinton’s favor.

     But of course it did—and Rahm was off to the big time, as political director. There he suborned any honor he had retained by orchestrating the dirtiest most amoral back-corridor series of threats to attempt to blackmail the House from impeaching his boss who had committed a serious crime of lying under oath.  That attempt not successful, he stabbed through the drawn curtains of the Senate to prevent conviction—here and there drawing blood…which secured the desired end.  Trent Lott wavered and Alaska’s old lion Ted Stevens told the chairman of House Judiciary: “Henry, I don’t care if you give us proof that this guy [Clinton] raped a woman and shot her dead afterward, you’ll never get a conviction out of this Senate.”

       Stevens was right.   Hyde paid the price for his nobility for bringing the charge heedless of his own political needs….and this ballet-dancing Brutus wielded the knife and shrunk back to the shadows.

        When the  Clinton years ended  Brutus the Assassin skillfully used his political contacts to learn how to be a do-it-yourself investment banker….followed by board membership on Freddie Mac, the acquisition of a personal nest-egg of $16 million plus with more on the way….election to the House…appointment to Ways & Means,  and more importantly as chairman of the “D-triple-C”: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, electoral arm for House Dems where he scored impressively, wresting a workable Democratic majority which can be largely attributable to him alone.

       He was on track to become a future House Speaker when Obama was elected….succeeding Nancy Pelosi…when Obama tapped him to be chief of staff.  He was not notably successful there but it was not his fault.  One gigantic mistake he did commit however: handing the packaging of the stimulus to Nancy Pelosi who decorated it like a multi-spending Christmas Tree.   While he counseled Obama to drop health care in favor of jobs-jobs-jobs after the Massachusetts Upset with Scott Brown, he behaved like a good soldier, running an auction bazaar for dubious senators—orchestrating the Louisiana Purchase for a foot-dragging Mary  Landrieu and the Cornhusker Buyout for a wavering Ben Nelson.

        His dissatisfaction with the politics of it all, however, soon soured him on Obama…and Obama on him—including the president’s mysterious pro-Palestinian policies on the Middle East.   And so he helped contrive with Bill Daley….who though earning $30 million as a top lobbyist was hungering for public policy visibility… a job switch that was bold and so dramatic it eluded the passive media. Notified early that Mayor Daley was seriously pondering retirement, he cut a deal with his brother Bill to quit chief-of-staff, go back and run for the office while Bill would take over the active management of the Obama reelection strategy from the insuperable post of chief of staff.

        Rahm returned home to an orgy of press speculation—thanks to Eddie Burke’s orchestration of a plan to block his filing for the post.  Burke’s legal thesis was right but the thought that one who served the city as a congressman and who was recruited to go back as presidential chief of staff could be sidelined by a finely drawn legal distinction dating from 1888 was entirely unreasonable.   Chicagoans have never cared a rat’s eyelash about legal fine print distinctions and would not begin now.  Especially since Jesse Jackson was in the wings touting a list of incompetents starting with Moseley Braun who everyone but the editorial boards understood could wreck the city more thoroughly in four years than Detroit’s Coleman Young did in twenty.

         Thanks to Burke and Jackson Emanuel saw his name elevated to marquis lights and the looming destruction lunging toward the city if Emanuel were not elected.  The Perfect Storm. To which for completion only was needed the usual spurt of phenomenal Emanuel energy.

         After getting his mega-wealthy brother Arie, Hollywood’s top actor agent to put together fundraisers in Beverly Hills and the skyscrapers of New York city and Chicago which raised $13 million, he spent big chunks of dough brilliantly.  He hired David  Axelrod to do his TV commercials.  The first problem was Obama who didn’t want to alienate anybody in Chicago…especially blacks…by endorsing Emanuel.  Axelrod brilliantly circumnavigated this by stitching the farewell speech by Obama at Rahm’s retirement party where the president didn’t endorse him into a vibrant commercial that seemed like he did.

        Proof came in the campaign when a Moseley Braun fan, black feminist JeNest Murry, took her young niece a first-time voter to the polls to cast a vote for Moseley Braun whom Murry told the kid could become the first black woman mayor.  She waited for the girl to cast her ballot and when she exited the polling booth asked how it went.

        “I voted for Rahm Emanuel” the girl said, “because that’s who President Obama wants us to vote for!”  I read this in The New York Times via the WTTW-foundation-funded News Cooperative…and continue to be fascinated about how much rich Chicago lore never gets in our papers.

      Another big wad of Emanuel money went to pay top organizers and strategists.  He decided not to rely on the old-style Squid precinct hacks but got younger, fresher, more highly educated, more entrepreneurial Loop savvy younger ones to add to the dese-dem-does old-line union hall slugs.

     Thus as mayor Emanuel is the main pilot of The Squid with his younger types moving into top political leadership positions.  He still has $2 million plus saved to campaign in runoffs for aldermanic candidates.  A plus: 30 percent of the new city council will be freshmen.

      The next council will choose its Finance chairman: to stick with Eddie Burke or go for someone new.   Like as not Luminescent Eddie will stay. And will his six-man, 24-hour taxpayer-paid police guards Rahm has promised to eliminate? They’ll stay too because Burke knows too much to allow them to disappear without squawking.

      And to reinforce that he needs them, just the other day Burke said he had received a death threat.  If perchance he would be shot---what is that historic Biblical line?  His blood will be on us!

     Meaning on Emanuel.

   So Burke’s cops likely will be sticking around.

Ask Me Your Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies--

“ GO U NORTHWESTERN!” IS THE FIGHT SONG. AND SCHOOL’S HYMN IS “QUAECUMQUE  SUNT VERA”TAKEN FROM PHILLIPIANS 4:8—“WHATSOEVER THINGS ARE TRUE.”
       Q. What was your reaction to yesterday’s news that Northwestern University put on a live sex demonstration for 100 students featuring an engaged couple which involved a motorized sex toy to stimulate female orgasm…orchestrated by Kenneth Melvoin-Berg,  co-owner of Weird Chicago Tours?
       A.  I was tickled.  Double entendre intended. 
      Q.  In the name of God why?
      A.  It was a magnificent demonstration of the vapidity of contemporary Higher Education [sic] which has so debased  learning which began solemnly with (a) the love of wisdom and beauty learned from the Greeks…to (b) the pronouncement of tradition and patriarchy derived from the Romans…past (c) the finding of the One God of Abraham (replacing many gods) by the Jews…beyond (d) early Christianity and the Greatest One of all ages, Jesus  Christ, from Whom charity and toleration were learned …into (e) the Middle Ages where Aquinas parsed Aristotelian thought into Christian form and Dante’s sublime poetry beckons to lead us as Beatrice led him to heaven and the vision of God….into the so-called Uplands of the Renaissance  where the arts—Shakespeare, painting and sculpture bloomed--but also where decadence began with the severing of philosophy and faith.
      Q.  Ah, there it began, did it?
     A. There it did but did not transform right away, but was alloyed with much good. The bad—the Inquisition demanded by Ferdinand of Spain from the Church and run not by the state not the Church.  The Renaissance was not what we think but was where much philosophy veered from its Aristotelian moorings.   It was here that much fallaciousness was born intermingled with the good that blinds us yet.
     Q.  Such as…?
     A.  That Galileo originated modern science by junking the deductive method and substituting it with the empirical.   Einstein later wrote of the claim in a preface to Galileo’s works, “I believe this….does not stand scrutiny”—Einstein claiming truly that Galileo had no proof the earth revolved around the sun since a “theory of mechanics was lacking” to originate later with Newton, concluding by maintaining that Galileo’s “temperament” misled him into formulating his error about the tides—stating repeatedly that it was an error he should not have entertained but that “his temperament…got the better of him.”   We can easily go on through the various periods…here no double entendre intended…to today—the Enlightenment and relativism, the debasement of Natural Law by Locke who saw it not in any absolute form but as a mere polltaker’s finding of what people believe…into the growth of nihilism that engulfs much of education today. Aha! We have just short-handed the trip the Old Benedictines had embarked on with me so many years ago!    We do not have to talk about it now—it’s completed!
          Q.  No-no. We will not let you off so easily.   But we have come full-circle on why you are tickled—because the Sex Ed thing precipitated a kind of crisis in secular education?
        A.  Well, that’s a big part of it—that so-called “sex education” is part of the curricula….that the lab experiment so completely ridicules the University which so richly deserves ridicule….that the University full of secular…godless….relativism first issued a press release defending the “class”only to  be contradicted by the president.  That the whole thing was conducted in the…get this…Ryan Auditorium which was named for the AON chairman as a device to get his money together with its refurbished  football field by stripping away the old name Dyche from which the original money ran out.  It tells such a wonderful story of educational and cultural debasement that is the modern factory that shouldn’t even be confused with a citadel of learning. But then there came the illiterate denouement—yesterday’s Tribune editorial which more fully illustrates know-nothingism in education than has yet been written.
         Q.  The editorial?  I read it but it didn’t…
         A.  …didn’t stay with you?  Of course it didn’t. Do any Tribune editorials these days ever do?   Well read it again.  It is so typical of what that paper is….trying to be insouciant but—pardon me but the late Everett Dirksen had a wonderful condemnatory expression of pure ignorance—he said “it’s as dumb as dog shit.” I apologize for the vulgarism.
        Q.  You’re forgiven.  You mean of course that the paper’s editorial on the matter and on education is…
        A.  “…as dumb as dog shit.”  Take a look at either how Bruce Dold or his people conclude:   “So we’re not going to get outraged.  College is about stretching boundaries, about preparing for adult life, about learning from bad decisions. Sometimes the bad decisions are made by the professors.”   Yep that’s what the  higher education is for.  What Northwestern is charging....up to $50,000 a year for:  stretch boundaries, prepares  you for adult life.  Adult life. As you watch a many nasal-ringed multi-tattooed idiot explore the body of his girlfriend with an artificial phallus attached to a rotating spindle as she emit shrieks of joy!    Adult life. Adult life. That “editorial” makes it all the funnier.  Together what they have done to the paper…through this awful little piece and Sam Zell’s Three Stooges marketing team (which topped this one in pornography)…is the icing on the cake.  Bankruptcy judges—please mercifully pull the plug!
      They don’t even know enough to understand what the tawdry little event produced—nor at what variance it is from demonstrably liberal education.
        Adult life!    Dirksen…oh Dirksen…thou shouldst be living at this hour!     
          
     
           

LIBERAL DECADENCE HAS DRIVEN THE DEMOCRATS CRAZY: RANGEL…SHEILA JACKSON LEE…REICH…FARAKKHAN…MICHAEL MOORE…,MATTHEWS…HINTZ.

                    Raving Lefty Radical Madness in the Air.

      The ancient Greek playwright Euripides [484-406 BC] had it right when he wrote “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” Comedy Central’s chief faux anchorman Jon Stewart and pretend “conservative spokesman” Stephen Colbert have been blowing on stone dead coals trying to catch a flame to roast Republicans--necessarily passing over Dems who are imploding before our very eyes with a madness which only turns calm to comprehend itself.   Take a look at the following news stories which have been sedulously avoided by the mainstream press and broadcast news…but which thanks to the Internet, talk radio and cable TV are slowly convincing many Americans that a screwball derangement has overtaken liberals who have captured America’s oldest political party.

         RANGEL.  The recently deposed Ways and Means Chairman (D-NY) who wept piteously on the House floor after having been found out as a tax cheat and trimmer has just thundered that striking public unionists in Wisconsin are treated like “slave laborers.” Nary a line in any major newspaper but any similarity between highly paid government monopolist workers who cannot be fired and who have the public by the throat to slave laborers working in the salt mines of Siberia pre-USSR overthrow must be mentally disordered.

       “STUPID M-F’ERS!” That’s what Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) called her staff as reports of shouting, cursing and near-physical violence trickles out of her office…including a tongue-lashing delivered to a staffer while her parents, on their first trip to Washington, sat by aghast.  The “M-F” words are used all the time, disgruntled staffers report.   Outbursts of temper led a staffer who was driving her to the airport to pull over to the side of the room, so upset was he with her verbal abuse—whereupon Jackson Lee screamed that she was being held prisoner and/or kidnapped. 

         REICH TO RICH—PONY UP!  Robert B. Reich, president Clinton’s secretary of labor and professor of politics and economics (yes—economics!) at the Goldman School, University of California-Berkeley has just advised “the rich” in the United States to prepare to share more of their wealth with the poor—or “the angry populace will take it from you.”  

       JEWS ARE PUSHING US TO WAR: FARRAKHAN.  Chicago’s  Minister Louis Farrakhan head of the Nation of Islam, who has toasted Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi as an excellent leader…despite Gadhafi’s tirades, fears of flying over water, insistence on staying only on the first floors of hotels—either that or pitching a tent on the hotel grounds—and who won’t travel unless accompanied by his buxom, blonde  Ukrainian “nurse” Galyua Kolautski…has just announced the insurrection in Libya against its ruler is a put-up job by U. S.  Jews who are pushing the U.S.  to launch a Middle East war. (Jon Stewart is himself Jewish but is nevertheless unmoved to put up a defense—as Farrakhan is buddy to Barack Obama’s ex-pastor and Obama himself). 

       MICHAEL MOORE :  BEWARE, RICH, YOUR MONEY BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE!  Liberal film “documentarian” Michael Moore has just warned the wealthy of the U.S.  that they should not use their money as playthings—else the impoverished masses here will see that their dough is taken from them…because all wealth here should be regarded first as a “national resource” and not misused for personal privilege.

         MATTHEWS’ TAKE ON  GINGRICH. With Keith Olbermann fired by MSNBC and gone to the exceedingly tiny Al Gore TV channel (viewers: 14,000)…where he begins each commentary “good afternoon, Al”…news now comes from his former lead-in,  Chris Matthews, who yesterday greeted news that Newt Gingrich is contemplating formation of a presidential exploratory committee by saying Gingrich looks like “a car bomber who loves to torture.” For perceptive commentary like that…rivaling Broder, Krauthammer and Kristol… Matthews is paid by MSNBC $5 million a year.

         “YOU’RE A F-----G DEAD ONE!” is what Wisconsin Democratic State Assemblyman Gordon Hintz (Oshkosh) shouted across the House floor to Republican Assemblywoman Michelle Lijeans (Winnecomme) after she voted for the Scott Walker package of restraints placed on public union bargaining.  

          **************************************************

    None of these explosions of liberal Democratic  madness were reported in ordinary, mainstream newspapers…including our rigidly politically correct Sun-Times, Tribune and Daily Herald… or on broadcast news whose editors decided you need not be told of these outrages.   That of course leaves Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and “conservative” imitator Stephen Colbert with only a few Sarah Palin jibes to recycle.   

FREE FOR THE ASKING; GINGRICH TO ANNOUNCE…LIBERALS HOP ABOARD ‘MY MAN MITCH’…THAT’S ALL.

 

                          Gingrich Readying Announcement.
     Q.  We know your views about Gingrich for President but--.
     A.  Well they haven’t changed.  Henry Hyde’s original statement made to me that he is 50% genius and 50% nuts and our job is to determine which idea is still holds.  That same assessment was made to me about Winston Churchill when I was at St. John’s College, Oxford as a visiting fellow thirty years ago by an aged man who shared High Table with me who had a member of Churchill’s war cabinet.  “He would come in often with the most frightening proposals—which could have easily lost the war,” he said. “Then out of the blue would come an inspiration!” The trouble with a half-nutty president—and we’ve had some—is that seldom are there counselors brave or powerful enough to shoot them down.
     Q.  Now a vacuum seems to be filling with Mitch Daniels.
     A.  Liberals will anything and everything to romance a  liberal Republican presidential candidacy…starting with Wendell Willkie in 1940….through the two Tom Dewey runs.  They won with Eisenhower but did not get in him the New Dealer they wanted.  They tried again with Rockefeller who could well have been nominated in 1960, tried again in 1964 but Rocky’s  divorce and remarriage got in the way; they tried and botched it with Scranton later that  year…tried to derail Nixon with Lodge in 1968 but that didn’t work.  The next serious attempt came in 1980 with a bevy of mushy moderates none of whom were equal to Reagan.  They thought they had a prize with GHW Bush but they found out differently with the nomination of Clarence Thomas.  They put up a prize waffler Bob Dole against Clinton recognizing that Dole would sell his grandmother’s gold fillings for cash.  They thought they had a clod in “W” but he was more an Evangelical than anything else.  Now it’s Mitch.   I tell you—don’t go near him.  He’s poison.
        Q.  Why?
        A.  He’s resolutely country-club…secular…anathema to the Evangelical base of the party without which no victories can be achieved.  I’m not talking about Catholics because my Church is already in deep schism and we must tough it out…lucky we have a good Pope where we didn’t at some points.  Earlier we had a few insouciant popes but saints in the convents and monasteries. Now we have vipers as modern theologians who have permeated the seminaries.  Ah but I digress—a habit of us octogenarian.
         Q.  Back to Mitch.
         A.  Disregard his social issues pedigree…he’s a pro-lifer etc.—that’s just for cover. Luckily he flubbed and showed his true bearings by saying social issues ought to be shelved because the economic stability comes first.  Show me how it’s possible to shelve social issues.  Judicial appointments like to the Supreme Court come up.  Does this mean you name pro-aborts so as not to initiate a ruckus? Or you invalidate Hyde as to please The New York Times and Pinch Sulzberger? Of course for Our Man Mitch!  Take a look at who’s for him—David Brooks!   Now that’s a real coup.  David Brooks who fell in love with Obama because Obama told him he read Niebuhr.   Do you think David Brooks will eschew Obama for Our Man Mitch?  But he’s gaining traction: favorable feature press with the Wall Street Journal.  That’s the worry, ladies and gentlemen. Keeps me awake for at least fifteen minutes after I say my obligatory Act of Contrition. Speaking of which it’s 11:10 pm and time to trundle off now.

CBS Big Foot Correspondent Schieffer Should be Fired for Journalistic Malpractice—Yet He Still Smiles Smugly for Defending Buddy John Edwards.

    The New York Times which shouldn’t be confused with an objective newspaper had a story yesterday with the headline: “Edwards Lies Low but That Won’t Last.”
          That former Dem presidential candidate John Edwards lies low is a given.  No contest.  
          And it adds with as much sympathy as it can muster for a lately beloved presidential possibility now reckoned a  liberal liar and glaring hypocrite that Edwards may be indicted soon by the feds in Raleigh, N.C. for allegedly knowing that some of the millions of dollars given by two wealthy donors to his presidential campaign was used to either support or hide Edwards’ now acknowledged paramour with whom he had a prolonged affair and with whom they conceived a daughter.
         The story you all know about how ten angels swearing innocence in stentorian terms couldn’t match Edwards’ eloquence up to the very minute when the National Enquirer caught him dead to rights…how this unutterably facile youngish appearing ex-Senator…polished, unruffled, entirely approachable…would lie-lie-lie without turning a hair.   Then the furtive visit to the girl friend when he visited L. A.  and his hominy grits aw-shucks Southern yawl twang confession about the trysts that occurred when his loyal and unsuspecting late wife Elizabeth’s cancer went into remission. And how Edwards looked at the cameras without blinking and said their love was imperishable.
       About how Edwards tried to get his lapdog aide to claim paternity; how the aide allegedly stole from the mistress a video showing them having sex.  All that is on the public news record.
       But politicians who lie, cheat on their spouses and show no remorse are a dime a dozen.   What isn’t is a veteran correspondent of known lefty bias who is still plying his trade under the big open Eye of CBS…carrying the title Chief Washington correspondent and host of “Face the Nation.”
         If there has ever been a villain, it is Edwards.  But the veteran correspondent of CBS known for his lefty bias, Bob Schieffer has been adroit in finding reasons not to investigate charges that verified by others became indisputably true.
        When he dies, Schieffer ought to be mummified and sent to stand in a celluloid tube at the Library of Congress—labeled Prototypical Example of the Liberal Journalist Who Has Misrepresented the Truth or Spiked It in Washington—genus Bob Schieffer CBS.  “It never occurred to him that by smothering inconvenient news to the liberal establishment he was doing wrong.”        
        Then written on the celluloid tube’s base would be what Schieffer told Don Imus after the John Edwards story broke in a source liberals find unpretty—the National Enquirer.
      “Well you know, I saw that this morning [the Enquirer story about the liaison and the illegitimate baby].  I believe that—I believe that’s a story we will be avoiding because it appears to me that there’s absolutely nothing to it. I’m told that another—a man says that the child is his [the aide Edwards hired to take the heat for Edwards]. So I guess—I guess we’re going to pass on that.  Unless you can come up with some new information on this, Don.”
      What happens to Edwards I don’t care about.   He’s dead meat along with his balderdash about there being Two Americas and he’s going to bind them as one in a herculean knot-tying achievement.
        What bothers me far more is that this so-called crème de la crème of Washington correspondents committed journalistic malpractice by airily dismissing a story that incriminated one of his good friends…and lives to laugh it off as a multi-million dollar trademark of CBS’s vaunted “integrity.”
       Oh  yes—add these words to the celluloid tube bearing the immaculately tailored mummified  Schieffer: the words he used when finding out that his close friend Edwards had been conning him and the news media:
       “Russ--just before we went on the air tonight, John Edwards called me and said he wanted to talk. He said that all this happened before he announced that he was running for president and that he told his wife  Elizabeth about it  then and that she forgave him.  He said because of that he thought it was just between them.  I’ve known John Edwards a long time and I asked him if I could talk to Elizabeth and she came to the phone. She was obviously in tears and didn’t say much but she told me that he had told her about it then and they had decided to move on.”
        More.  Edwards’ previous denials to the press, Schieffer covered this way:
      “[When asked why he lied over and over] [h]e said he just couldn’t live with the constant pounding from the tabloids [sic]. ‘It wasn’t going to stop; I was being dragged and dragged for the sake of my family I just had to end it for the sake of my family.’  So he decided to confirm it and go on, he said, for the sake of his family [sic].  He said repeatedly that he took full responsibility for this [sic].  He told me he was certain the child was not his, that the affair was over so long ago. When I asked him how Elizabeth was doing, he said she is just amazing like she always is.”
     More.
      “When I asked him why he had denied the story over and over he said because so many of the stories had so much false information. He said `what I should have done is confirm the part that was true and then live with it.’”
       A so-called journalist who has that much gullibility is a menace.