Personal Asides: Thoughts While Shaving….and the BBC Comes to Town.

Thoughts While Shaving.

Every day that I drive down the Kennedy expressway toward the Loop I have looked forward to full-scale paintings on two sides of a building…I’m sorry, I can’t say exactly where the building is, but you know what I mean—murals that used to be eye-catchingly clever when sponsored by Men’s Wearhouse, one of which featured Dennis Rodman at his career height with the Bulls that it almost literally stopped traffic…then, even more captivating when the murals were done by LaSalle Bank. Now with LaSalle taken over by Bank of America the first effort was superb—showing tutoring of inner city kids…but the latest is depressingly awful: cartoons done so amateurishly that they debase the public taste, of the forthcoming run sponsored by B of A. The fact that workmen are stationed on derricks having to paint this dreadful stuff…makes fools of them for laboring on such mush and artistically is an abomination.

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While I’m at it, the very expensive Wrigley gum sign on the Kennedy flashes the company’s chewing wares but some deviate has written supposedly smart sayings under them…as in describing refreshing it says chewing the gum is like sliding down a toboggan slide in winter naked. The copywriter should be fired. But then I might reconsider. I was a hapless ad copywriter for an agency, Simmons & Simmons, from 1951-52. My then client was a company called “Perk Dog Food” and the founder loved a slogan he invented himself and which I had to write around: “Dogs Drool for Perk” with a color drawing of a big slurpy hound with its tongue panting and spewing oozy saliva. Happily the company went out of business and I went on to other businesses including journalism.

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One of the most jobs I ever had was each summer during undergrad college when I was a messenger for the old Chicago & Northwestern railroad (circa 1946). It was good because I didn’t have to think and could spend vast hours reading as I rode around the city on those fantastic old red streetcars. Later they “promoted” me to billing clerk which meant that I had to grind out bills of lading in the Chicago avenue freight house. Of course the place wasn’t air conditioned and the bells of the nearby Catholic church rang all day long which enabled me to take stock of the time. I never thought I would visit the neighborhood again—but, happily, I do each Sunday morning when I go to Mass at that church, Saint John Cantius, the mother church of Latin Mass and, more importantly, authenticist Catholic liturgy and theology. The old Chicago avenue freight house…wooden and stuffy in summer…is now, ironically, the headquarters of an air conditioning company.

The BBC Comes to Town.

Not long ago my phone rang at home and I was connected to a woman’s voice from London. She told me that BBC…the most radically left institution on the continent…was coming to Chicago to do a radio documentary on the Chicago convention of 1968. It so happened she had been referred to me by my friend Karl Maurer and that she then read my reminiscences of Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy in the archives of this website. She was intrigued that I am also a Republican, something that is definitely a “rara avis” to the Brits.

So she signed me up gratis for a 3-hour panel discussion at WBEZ Navy Pier with others who remember those days. Given the BBC’s leftwing proclivities I knew exactly what I would be confronted with. Four elderly ex-hippie radicals including an organizer of SDS which by BBC standards makes it a balanced program. Well, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

The senior moderator, a knighted personage, was not born, of course, when 1968 happened. I was then 40. These are some of the thoughts I tried to convey. None of us will know if they were edited out of the final tape or not since the program will be broadcast only in the UK.

1. Contrary to the theme stressed by the elegantly-spoken moderator, 1968 did not show a sickening weakness of the political system in the US. There were two major assassinations…of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy…which rocked the system and produced a tumult that congregated before the International Ampitheatre and in Grant Park. They did their level damndest to destroy all semblance of order but they failed.



2. And contrary to the consciousness of others including the moderator, I reminded them that fighting for peace and against war has a distinguished heritage on the conservative side. My first interest in politics came in 1940 when Wendell L. Willkie condemned our movement to war—and later when Robert A. Taft assailed the illegal pretext of the Korean War which was never brought up for a vote…by declaration but also by resolution…in the Congress. But the point I made was that once we were engaged in war, Taft and others wanted to win it. Not only did they not interfere or criticize the war effort, they supported the strategy embodied by Douglas MacArthur to win it which was rejected by Harry Truman.



3. What made the radicals of 1968 different from the other peace advocates was that the Taftites were loyal in defense of our troops but the `68 radicals were not. In fact they were not patriots. The first break from patriotism came not from Abbey Hoffman or Tom Hayden but from Gene McCarthy who said that it might not be such a bad idea if the U.S. lost the Vietnam War. That was the first time in all U.S. history where a supposedly responsible leader in the two-party system advocated what was almost treason.



4. Gene McCarthy’s near treasonous statement in 1967 was picked up and used by the radicals in the park…and somehow McCarthy is remembered today as a kind of mystic, a deep-thinking secular saint. I can tell you having known the man for 30 years he was not. He was not motivated by opposition to the war at all…but by vengeance for not having been picked for vice president by LBJ—and he was determined to pay LBJ back in spades. When LBJ interrogated the two finalists in 1964--Hubert and Gene—he asked them if they would pledge to support the Vietnam war to the bitter end which he said would be victory. Both of them, eager for the nomination, pledged to do so. When McCarthy was not picked, he turned against his president with a ferocity that characterized his entire career.



He after all was the one who would not accept the congratulatory handshake of the woman he defeated for the senatorial endorsement by the DFL in 1958. He was the one who stayed sulking in his room when Hubert was placed in nomination for the vice presidency in 1964. He was the one who came down to a cocktail party in the hotel in Atlantic City after the convention and made a roaring ass of himself by assailing Hubert…the world’s worst bad loser. He was the one who not only turned against his party but caused its defeat in 1968 by holding off an endorsement of Humphrey until hours before general election. He was the one who sought to defeat Jimmy Carter by importuning me and other Republicans to get some PAC money together to fund some commercials for him as an independent candidate in key states (his own chance for election nonexistent) to elect Gerald Ford against the nominee of his own party in 1976. He was the one who solicited the aide of Mike Deaver in 1980, cut a deal with Deaver for a job, and then endorsed Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter.

He was the one who later turned against Reagan when the job he thought he was promised wasn’t speedily forthcoming (it was ambassador to the UN).

He was the one of whom his estranged wife Abigail said that Gene has always had trouble being loyal to anyone—including her.

Neither Hubert Humphrey nor Gene McCarthy were what I call genuinely great men. But Humphrey achieved lasting reform by having the guts to stand up in the middle of a segregationist party convention…in which southerners were key…and by one speech triggered a walkout which made his party the party of civil rights. That was true courage. McCarthy never had any of that.

Finally, the reason 1968 did not prove the political system of the United States was in trouble was that radicals did not win in the parks…Humphrey—a decent man—was nominated by legitimate political processes…and Richard Nixon was elected because the public was confident…rightly so…that the country would not be controlled by radicals under his administration. The fact that it yielded to burglars not radicals with Watergate was still a net plus for the country when you look at it long-range. The burglars went to jail, Nixon was forced to resign and the country went on.

I don’t think much of that will survive the tapes that will be aired via BBC in England this fall, do you?

OBAMA—ENIGMA WRAPPED IN A RIDDLE, ENVELOPED IN A MYSTERY.

Last week’s column in The Wanderer, the nation’s oldest national Catholic weekly.

By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—Continuing to follow the latest Electoral College state-by-state polling which is the only survey that counts…last week, Karl Rove’s map for Fox News showed Barack Obama with two more votes than needed to elect--leading John McCain 272 to 183 with 83 electoral votes in the toss-up category. The Rove prediction came before a Quinnipac poll that showed Obama could lose every toss-up state—Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada—and still win the election. Good as this seems for Obama at this stage, Chicago’s David Axelrod, the prime strategist, has some serious worries, leading off with this one:

No Significant Bump in Ratings.

Just about everyone agrees that Obama’s trip to the Middle East (not Europe) was almost flawlessly executed with some huge public relations points gained—notably the stunning endorsement of his timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq by Premier Nuri Kamal al-Maliki which seemed to contradict McCain and President Bush and seemingly placed Obama in the statesman category. Yet, there was no significant media “bump” or hike in his ratings over McCain. Axelrod had guessed privately that the bump would be between 15 and 20 points with gradual lessening as the campaign proceeds.

Not so. Probably not so because of Europe where the candidate gave a filmy, stagy performance at Victory Column in Berlin that undermined his mid East gains. While most national polls show Obama with a single-digit lead among registered voters, a new survey out late last week (USA Today/Gallup) showed, incredibly, McCain ahead by four points among likely voters (49 to 45), after picking up 10 points the past month. Since everyone, me included, sees McCain’s campaign being one of the worst-managed GOP efforts since Gerald Ford’s abysmal one in 1976 the question is: why?

The answer comes in two parts. Part I is exactly what I forecast a few weeks ago. The election focus is almost exclusively on Obama (McCain has been a known commodity to people for 20 years). What is there, then, about Obama that causes his numbers to stay mired? New York Times political writer Adam Nagourney, a liberal correspondent for what is probably the nation’s most liberal national newspaper, asked the question last week. To find the answer he quoted one pollster (Bill McInturff, a Republican) as saying, “People say in focus groups, `Who the heck is Barack Obama? Had you heard of him before six months ago?’ Others: `He’s 46 years old. He’s somebody nobody knows about.’”

Peter Hart, the most influential Democratic pollster told Nagourney: “Here’s a 46-year-old African-American with a narrative that is very unusual and that few Americans can relate to. Add to the fact that he has had four years in the U.S. Senate and very little international experience. That’s a large leap for the American public to make.” Nagourney concludes: “Even Obama’s advisers say they are uneasy at his difficulty at breaking the 50% barrier, a reminder, in poll after poll, that there are a lot of Americans who are not ready to cast their lot with him and may never be.”

Yet, Obama is not the first presidential candidate to come upon the scene largely unknown. John F. Kennedy in 1960 was 43 and, unlikely as it seems now since he has become an international icon, was far from a household word that year, having been a relatively obscure 3-term House member from Massachusetts and a backbench senator in a largely undistinguished second-term. Why is Obama lagging when he is the putative Democratic nominee, the Democratic party far more popular than the Republican, the public clearly turned off on George W. Bush, believing the Iraq war was a mistake, the economy in the doldrums and people griping for having to shell out $4 a gallon for gas—all blamable by polls to the party in power?

The answer is clear—There is widespread public uncertainty about the man himself. His genealogy may explain why.

Obama’s Chaotic Identity.

Part II: Slowly but surely, the American public may well be coming to understand Barack Obama’s chaotic Third World family background, mostly, ironically, through his highly literary, almost poetic, two autobiographies, particularly in the poignant Dreams from My Father (the wistful yearning of Obama for his lost father who left the family). The national media have bent over backwards not to emphasize his genealogical history—but slowly the cognizance of the electorate is gaining the perception of a genealogy at great variance with what Americans are used to in presidents.

U.S. presidents have come heretofore in three broad ethnic categories. The overwhelming number of them have been Anglo-Saxon, the second number Scots-Irish and the smallest number Dutch (the Roosevelts) or German (Eisenhower). This is at great variance with the chaotic…there’s no other way to describe it…immediate background of Barack Obama.

He has eight half-siblings—seven of them living—by four different marriages or relationships of his parents. His father, Barack Obama, Sr. had four children by a woman he married in Kenya before his 1960 marriage to Obama’s mother in Hawaii. Two of those children—son Aborigo (Roy) and Auma (daughter)—were born before Barack Obama, Jr.

After Obama, Sr. divorced Obama’s mother in 1963 he married another American woman whom he had brought to Kenya and with whom he had two more sons, Mark and David. That marriage also ended in divorce and Obama, Sr. resumed his relationship with his first wife. Obama, Sr. and she had two more sons, Abo and Bernard, although Barack, Jr. wrote in his autobiography that there is some question as to whether another man actually fathered Bernard. Then Obama, Sr. had another son, Geroge by a woman he was involved with but didn’t marry. Following which, Obama’s mother, the former Stanley Ann Dunham (yes, Stanley. She was named Stanley because her father wanted a boy) had a daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng from a second marriage to a man named Lolo Soetoro.

Got all that? Since he has become prominent, unsurprisingly, half-brothers and half-sisters have kept popping up in the news all the time. One just surfaced in China last week. Obviously this adds to the feeling by many Americans that they don’t know who this guy is. As a matter of fact, as his own two autobiographies show, at times he hasn’t known who he is. Then there is the very poignant fact that psychological studies have shown the confusion and instability that comes when a child is abandoned by a father. But Barack Obama was abandoned by two…not one…fathers including his mother’s No. 2, Lolo Soetoro who took over the duties of fatherhood when Obama was six.

Obama says in his autobiography that Lolo Soetoro was a dark-skinned Indonesian student with whom his white mother Stanley Ann Dunham Obama moved to Jakarta. She was shocked as a feminist/atheist 60s radical to discover Soetoro was a male chauvinist so she divorced him…and sent 10-year-old Barack, Jr. to live with her parents in Honolulu while she and Barack, Jr.’s half-sister continued to live in Indonesia. All the while Obama’s polygamous natural father took up again with his first wife, dumps her, then marries another white American woman and adds a mistress, eventually fathering eight kids by four women.

Is this Barack Obama Jr.’s fault? Of course not! Should it be held against him when he had utterly nothing to do with these occurrences? Again, of course not! But it explains the gradual waryness of the voting public that this Third World multi-racial spider web of half-brothers, half-sisters, mistresses and a so-called brother who may have been sired by a man not his mother’s husband, is impossibly complex to identify with a potential president, the most complex of which were Ronald Reagan having been divorced, Gerald Ford having married a divorcee, Warren Harding having married a divorcee and had some affairs (although assuredly no illegitimate children since his physician determined he was sterile) and George Washington marrying the widow Martha Custis. The only case of presidential ancestry remotely close to Obama’s is Bill Clinton’s. His mother Virginia Kelley married and lost three husbands. His natural father William Jefferson Blythe 3rd was a traveling salesman with a secret life of previous marriages and children, was killed. He was adopted by his stepfather, Roger Clinton and took his surname at age 16. Roger Clinton, an alcoholic, took to beating his wife, once spent a night in jail for firing a gun near her and desisted only when Bill Clinton, at age 14, interceded and warned him never to abuse his mother again.

But even by the Bill Clinton standard, Barack Obama’s history is novel.

Most if not all of these things about his ancestry come from Obama’s own voluminous writings about his family in two published autobiographies (a record for one still in his 40s) which earned vast profits but which David Axelrod has grown to profoundly regret…even hate. In Dreams from My Father, he gives a vivid glimpse of his mother, the late Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro Obama. She talked incessantly to him about her favorite movie, the 1959 art-house classic “Black Orpheus” a Brazil reincarnation of the old Greek mythology of Orpheus and Eurydice. Years later while working on Wall Street, Obama went to an art theatre to see it. The film, which won an Oscar, opens with images of white Greek statues that explode to reveal black men dancing the samba to drums in a Brazil favela or shanty town.

After seeing the film, Obama realized that his very fair-skinned mother (he describes her as “white as milk”) was sexually drawn to black men. He writes elliptically, “The emotions between the races could never be pure….tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. We sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that—menacing, alien and apart.” Rather ominous for the future of U.S. race relations in a man very close to become our 44th president.

Probably the most revelatory review of Obama’s vivid writings was written last year in Rolling Stone, the magazine devoted to rock music, politics and popular culture, targeted to young readers, which offers much sex-oriented content, owned by a major contributor and fund-raiser for Obama, Jann Wenner (who put Obama on its cover twice). Writer Ben Wallace-Wells wrote:

“There is an amazingly candid moment in Obama’s autobiography when he writes of his childhood discomfort at the way his mother would sexualize African-American men. `More than once,’ he recalls, `my mother would point out “Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.” What the focus groups his advisers conducted revealed was that Obama’s political career now depends, in some measure, on a tamer version of this same feeling, on the complicated dynamics of how white women respond to a charismatic black man.”

David Axelrod gnaws his knuckles and passionately wishes this review had not been written. Also a New York Times Op Ed by Roger Cohen earlier this year:

“So there I was, a couple of weeks back, sitting under as mango tree in western Kenya when Sen. Barack Obama’s half-sister Auna says to me, `My daughter’s father is British. My mom’s brother is married to a Russian. I have a brother in China engaged to a Chinese woman.’” Cohen adds that he understands this half brother living in China is Mark, the son of Obama’s father and says, happily, all this is good news if Obama becomes president. “If elected, Obama would be the first genuinely 21st century leader. The China-Indonesia-Kenya-Britain-Hawaii web mirrors a world in flux. In Kenya, his uncle Sayid, a Muslim, told me `My Islam is a hybrid, a mix of elements including my Christian schooling and even some African ways. Many values have dissolved in me.’”

In Uncle Sayid’s famous nephew as well? Thrilling for Uncle Sayid. Not necessarily so, it appears, for the U.S. electorate.

Then, Cohen goes on to quote Auma about Barack, Jr.’s second trip to Kenya: “He was trying to figure out who he was. [italics mine]. He needed to be whole to be able to do what he’s doing now. He went about it in the right way. A big chunk of his life was missing. It’s very healthy that he now knows he has these roots here.”

Finally, the potential 44th president of the U.S. himself wrote this in Dreams from My Father about his first trip to Kenya two decades ago. He reports that he met a woman named Ruth in Nairobi, whom he described as “a white woman with a long jaw and graying hair.” Who was she?

She was a woman who had married and divorced Obama’s natural father, who had since remarried and had given the family name of her second husband to her two sons by Obama, Sr. Then she says bluntly to young Obama:

“But your mother remarried. I wonder why she had you keep your name?”

In the book Obama has no answer to this question. Nor do we. But it illustrates why increasingly many people say they don’t know who Obama is. The question is: Does he? This jumble, this crazy-quilt pattern of births, divorces, illegitimate births, mistresses and abandonment by two fathers, one natural one adoptive, in a row may lead even more voters to be doubtful when the full story comes out (it hasn’t dawned on most Americans yet). But it explains at least partially why in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll voters by a margin of 55% to 35% feel Obama would be the riskier choice for voters to make.

One additional point to be made: More than any other presidential campaign in my memory (going back to 1940), the Obama for president people have ruled off…with the complicity of the mainstream media…questions that could be asked of candidate Obama—while at the same time the media considers themselves famous from grilling other presidential candidates including John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giulinai et al. These questions regarded by the Obama people as “out of line” include whether or not he was a practicing Muslim as a child when both his natural father and adoptive one were…details about his mother and natural father not earlier revealed in his two autobiographies…details and interviews verboten of his grandmother, Stanley Ann Dunham’s mother (who was a very successful bank executive in Honolulu), his grandfather, his many half-brothers and half-sisters…his wife (he has said criticism of her is “out of bounds”)…his statement that “we’re no longer a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation and a nation of non- believers”…his endorsement for president by Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan…

Continuing: the secret side of David Axelrod who has become a multi-millionaire by discreetly plotting advertising campaigns for corporate clients including ComEd, Comcast and AT&T to tilt public opinion their way—all the while Obama rails against lobbyists who work for “special interests” …that and the size of his ears (Obama particularly resenting questions about his physiognomy.)

Small wonder the electorate is starting to believe Barack Hussein Obama is, as Winston Churchill described the USSR, “an enigma wrapped in a riddle and enveloped in a mystery.”

Flashback: Deadly Toilet-Seat Social Disease Hits Saint John’s, Almost Killing One of Fright.

[Memoirs from 60 plus years of living for my kids and grandchildren].

This could only have happened in the relatively innocent school year of 1947-48 at Saint John’s, an all-men’s university appended to its more important feature—the Benedictine monastery.

One of the great psychological rewards that came from dining with the ex-ex-GIs at Saint John’s…which was awarded me because I staged an unsuccessful jail break from strict monastic enclosure mid-week to rendezvous with a nurse from Saint Cloud hospital…was, at my tender age of 19, to benefit from the ultra-sophisticated humor of men who were 28-29-30, home from Iwo Jima, beneficiaries of the GI bill and who had had no desire to go to college heretofore except that the federal government allowed them to. Some became Benedictine monks, most got married, some dropped out because they grew dissatisfied with learning—especially four straight years of Thomistic philosophy and theology as mandated by the Benedictine abbot to purify us from the secular world..

We sat 10 at a table in the monastery student refectory and waiters came rushing out of the kitchen with hot steaming food on tin trays. One of our number at our table of 10 was a common scold. He tsked-tsked us when we swore, observed that we must be charitable to our neighbors, would bring the book “Theology and Sanity” by Frank Sheed and occasionally read to us which bored us greatly. He never went to the service because he had been a priesthood student at many seminaries—with the Jesuits where he left because they were too worldly, the Franciscans but they were insufficiently non-materialistic. The Trappists? They were a powerhouse of work rather than as he wished them to be, a powerhouse of prayer.

So he came to us as a lay student, starting as a freshman at age of 22.. He somehow had been assigned to the table because he had come late in the school year. I was totally ashamed of him because he was a pious prig, afflicted with solemnity to the death. He was quick with little admonitions. I found on my plate one night before dinner was served this note: “Please try not to swear as much as you do. It is very disturbing to me—Roger.”

Each day we mentally counted off the remaining days of the semester until we could get one of our choosing for his seat and by common vote drop him off the pier. As I was condemned to sit next to him, he began to affect my appetite and then my morale. When we complained about the rigor of our schedules he asked us to think of Jesus and how He never complained. When one of us exclaimed the physical beauty of a girl we had observed in Saint Cloud on the weekend earlier, he leaned forward and admonished us to think of the Virgin Mary. We all thought very highly of the Virgin Mary but we did not particularly need to be instructed by this pompous prig.

We were, all of us, downcast one day when an ex-GI chemistry major Tony Bizot (pronounced “bee-zoe”)—about 32--came charging to his seat at the table with a maddening grin. Roger the Prig was late arriving and so he had just enough time to fill us in with machine-gun rapidity. Even as he explained it to us, Roger came sauntering into the refectory a few minutes late after meditating in the chapel.

“Now listen before he gets here,” said Bizot quickly. “I have a friend who works at the abbey infirmary”—the place where sick monks were treated and, on occasion, students who came down with influenza. A physician from Saint Cloud would visit each week to take a look at the patients. One such patient…an old monk, 87 years old, was diagnosed with obstruction of the bladder and was undergoing x-rays to see where the obstruction was. Before the x-ray was taken, the monk was given a pill which dyed his urine so that the camera could record its passage to the point where it was stopped up.

“Here’s the pill,” said Tony Bizot holding aloft a small white capsule. “It dyes the urine a brilliant blue. Actually a vivid royal blue so it can be seen on the x-ray.” That’s all he said since Roger was perceived as on the way to our table. Bizot broke the pill and scattered it atop a platter of mashed potatoes. We did not touch the mashed that dinnertime.

Roger joined us and ladled his plate heaping with vegetables, topped by a generous mountain of white mashed potatoes.

“I see you’re not eating the mashed,” he said brightly. “Oh well, all the more for me.”

As he wolfed down the food with potatoes, he asked brightly: “What’s new?”

We all looked at ourselves dumbly and said “very little.”

“Well no, not really,” said Tony Bizot. He turned to his roommate, a prematurely graying Jack Canard, veteran of the South Pacific, and said:

“Terrible isn’t it?”

Yes, said Canard. Terrible. Ghastly.

“That it can take the life of a young man…” and Bizot snapped his fingers dramatically…”just like that!”

In the prime of life, said Canard.

“What are you talking about?” inquired Roger.

Oh, said Canard, nothing.



“No,” said Roger defiantly. “What is it? Some awful dirty joke you people are sharing? You know that is the sign of immaturity and really a lack of decorum, far from the wishes of Saint Benedict in his Rule who said that conversation must be about elevated things. Life he said is so short our conversation must be devoted to useful things. Holy things.”

“Well if you must know,” said Tony Bizot, “it is about the shortness of life that we were discussing. It seems that Saint Cloud has been afflicted with a severe and fatal sexual social disease which you can get…not by immoral sexual contact…but from a toilet seat. It started at the Fox Hotel there which is the place where traveling salesmen stay.”

The one thing about it, said Canard, is that it is fatal. Instant death and in agony.

“Really?” said Roger. He disliked conversation about sexual things but his curiosity was piqued. “REALLY! How dreadful!”

Yes, really dreadful.

“One can pick it up from a toilet seat, you say?”

Exactly. As a matter of fact very few who die of it have done so through venereal sexual contact but by simply resting one’s buttocks on a public toilet seat. The genitalia make some contact on the bowl, you see. The infection seeps into the organs from there.

All of us understood the play by now and we sensibly acted reserved. One of us even tried to change the subject.

What does today’s reading from the Benedictine Rule deal with?

Bizot said, “What The Abbot Ought to Be.”

We all nodded. Interesting.

“No,” said Roger, ”I’m interested. Does it come from toilet seats that are not sanitized?”

Well, yes, said Canard. But what toilet seats ARE? Like for instance here at Saint John’s. We have a common lavatory on our floor; there are common lavatories on all floors at Benet Hall. The janitor comes in once a week and scrubs the floors and all that but all during the week the seats are utilized…especially in the morning before classes…everybody using them.

“I suppose that’s true,” said Roger. “I never thought that a social disease can be contracted that way.”

Yes, said Canard, who was pre-Med. Cultural decadence.

“I suppose that’s true,” said Roger. “I never thought that a social disease can be contracted that way.”

Yes, said Canard, drawing himself up as the expert who was pre-Med.

“I suppose that’s true,” said Roger. “I never thought that a social disease can be contracted that way.”

Yes, it can, said Canard.

Yes, said Canard authoritatively. Yes-yes-yes. That is coming to be the most frequent way. We have been studying it in my classes.

I asked a question, the answer to which I knew full well.

“What is the symptom of the disease do you suppose? I mean what are the trademarks?”

Roger said, “yes—what?”

Canard said, I hate to be indelicate here because you don’t care for that kind of talk, Roger but I feel I must—in the interest of health education, of course.

Roger said, “yes—what are the symptoms?”

Whereupon Tony Bizot said: “Don’t go any farther if you please because it will spoil my appetite. You see, I heard Canard tell me this before and I warn you it will be greatly upsetting.”

We all agreed we should go no further. All except Roger.

“No,” he said, “the conversation has gone this far. It can be instructive. What is the main symptom?”

The main symptom, said Canard, and the 100% indication that it is to be fatal, is that it turns one’s urine blue. Bright blue. When the urine turns blue, one only has a few hours—sometimes minutes—to live. It is a severe variant of gonorrhea and is highly contagious. It’s technical name is Neisseria gonorrhoeae which describes it fully—Neisseria is Latin for toilet seat. Gonhorrhoeae is, well gonorrhoeae.

“Toilet seat gonorrhea,” mused Roger.

Yes. But it goes by a scatological name.

“Please,” said Tony Bizot. “Enough.”

“What is the scatological name?” pressed Roger.

Blue balls. So named because shortly after the infestation of bright blue urination one’s testicles turn blue, fall off…drops off or actually--.

“Not DROPS OFF!” said Tony Bizot. “Not DROPS OFF but withered becomes atrophied.”

Well, growled Canard, so what? Same difference. Withered, atrophied.

We finished dinner.

“Doesn’t anyone want these mashed potatoes?” gushed Roger. “Nobody’s touched them. If you’re not going to eat them, I will. With gravy mashed is terrific. Pass the gravy, please.”

At benediction or grace after meals, we all stood while the Dean intoned the prayer, each man not looking at the other but feigning solemnity.

“Well, it’s studying late for me!” said Roger. “Really, night time is the best time for studying when the mind is susceptible to new thoughts.”

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It was lights out at 11 p.m. which is when the Prefect pulled the switch and the electricity ended. I lay awake for some time, then fell asleep only to be awakened at about 2 a.m. like a bolt of the blue by shouting. Resonant echoes from the lavatory.

“HYA HYA! I GOT IT! I GOT IT!”

The Prefect leapt out of his bed in his room across the hall from me and raced down the corridor to the lavatory.

None of us left our beds but listened. The words were audible not just to our entire floor but all the floors and classmen and prefects stormed up to our 2nd floor lavatory.

“Roger! What has happened?” screamed the Prefect.

HYA! HYA! I GOT IT! I’M GOING TO DIE!

A confluence of Benedictine priests, Prefects all, gathered in the lavatory.

“What do you have, Roger?”

“TOO LATE! HYA! HYA!”

The Dean of Men said sternly, “Roger. ROGER! Calm down! WHAT DO YOU HAVE?”

“BLUE BALLS! I HAVE BLUE BALLS! LOOK! LOOK AT THE URINAL!”

The shouting continued.

“I’ll be damned,” said one priest who rarely used the word gosh. “Look at that! As blue as Skrip ink!”

“TOO LATE! I GOT BLUE BALLS FROM THE TOILET SEAT! I NEED THE LAST RITES! OH GOD OF MERCY WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME!”

The screaming finally stopped to be replaced by a murmur of priests’ voices. Then muffled laughter.

Gradually I eased into slumber.

Roger was not at Mass the next morning. Nor at breakfast.

By lunch it was reported that he had transferred to the monastic seminary where he would once more make an effort to become a priest.

“I want to say,” said Fr. Martin Schirber, OSB, the Dean who stopped by our table, “that Roger has determined to join the Order.”

Then he frowned. .

“What have you given the Benedictines?”

We all answered in modified way: HI YA! I GOT IT! THE BLUE BALLS!.

He didn’t wish us to see him laugh so he went to his table to begin prayers.

So we chose a successor at our table—a grizzled ex-pilot who had flown the Burma hump.

A year later Roger left the Benedictines too. Seems like the story got around even in the cloister.

When I heard about him next at an alumni meeting twenty years later it was said of him that he had left the Church to become a libertine through the `50s and `60s where he lived in the University of Minnesota sector of Dinky Town and frequented coffee houses, discoursing about Nietzsche.

Personal Aside: Back to the `60s with Barack Obama.

This article was written for The Chicago Daily Observer.

In the 1960s many Americans, me included, were powerfully influenced by a book, “Crisis in Black and White” by Lawrence Silberman. With the nation in ferment over civil rights, Silberman happened to hit the jackpot with a book that stirred liberal impulses, including mine. By 1966, 42 years ago, I was the officer at The Quaker Oats Company charged with rectifying imbalance in minority hiring and opportunities. The original view was that if equal opportunity legislation were to be passed, blacks and other minorities would swiftly take advantage of their new freedom and rise to the top.

That was the reigning liberal consensus until Silberman’s book came out. Silberman laid out a radical thesis. He said that even if all the shackles of discrimination that held minorities back for decades were to be removed, the result would be rather like a runner freed from manacles on his feet: he couldn’t be expected to plunge headlong into the run without significant help. Essentially Silberman was saying that blacks, particularly, were inferior and had to be helped through concerted corporate action which actively discriminated FOR them as they had been discriminated AGAINST in years passed.

His book made a powerful impression on me. Like many, I had chafed at the inequities in treatment that I noticed on a trip to Washington, D. C. in 1951 where “colored only” restrooms still existed in some of the suburban Virginia restaurants, where major hotels still retained the right to keep blacks from registering and where assuredly even in the nation’s capital a condition of separate but unequal in housing, restaurant service, taxi service and theatre attendance was predominant. The city’s biggest legitimate theatre, The National, allowed blacks only to sit in balconies to view performances. A string of motels outside the city were held apart from whites—for black habitation only. The major hotels in town…the Statler Hilton, the Mayflower, the Sheraton Park…were reserved for whites only. There were only a very few exceptions. Ralph Bunche, an official of the United Nations and former NAACP official, was allowed to stay at the Statler Hilton. Congressman Adam, Clayton Powell was a resident at the Shoreham apartments. William Dawson, the Chicago congressman also chairman of House Government Operations, was allowed to dine at the Mayflower.

All these things infuriated me. When in 1958 I took my first job in Washington working for a senior congressman on foreign affairs, the condition had improved slightly. But assuredly when Silberman’s book appeared and I was involved in running a tutorial remedial reading program at the Ickes housing project on the South Side…and a free nutrition education program on the West Side…as well as an early minority enterprise program on the West Side…it made powerful sense to me. Now I realize that essentially I was sold on the concept that blacks were unequal to the challenge and that whitey would have to move over and surrender some of his liberties to them.

In 1969 when I became an assistant commerce secretary I at last had the power to rectify the imbalance, I thought. I wanted to do it for two reasons: first to enable minorities to attain a measure of social justice and secondly for a very real partisan reason. As a Republican I felt my party had missed th boat on civil rights and I wanted desperately to do what I could to win support from minorities so as to build a broader, more integrative party.

Once sworn in, I resolved to do it by convincing the Nixon administration to embrace affirmative action. The administration was already doing some of this with employment thanks to the work of a good friend of mine, Arthur Fletcher, assistant secretary of labor who devised the concept beyond equal opportunity in hiring but forceful quotas for what was then known as the “hard core” unemployed.

As for me, I looked at the existing statutes passed by the Congress. One was the Small Business Act of 1953. The Small Business Administration was created to push actively for inclusion of small business…then overwhelmingly white…to get federal contracts. What I did as the top officer in minority enterprise was to take the SBA act and have it amended in its section 8-A so as to mandate…force…the government to patronize minority—principally black—businesses. I did this with the help of Sen. Jacob Javits (R-NY), Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL) and a host of Democrats including my then good friend…not so much a good friend now…Sen. Walter F. Mondale (D-MN). I worked at the time with Jackie Robinson, then an executive with Chock-full-0-Nuts coffee, Whitney Young of the Urban League, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Roy Innis of CORE.

The enlarged 8-A section produced hundreds of billions of dollars of contracts for minorities, principally blacks. Something told me in the back of my mind that this was the height of unfairness…that I was actively discriminating against white Americans…so I wrote into the measure that the activity should last only 10 years. Hah! Not only is it still going but a feature was added to bring the benefits of active governmental discrimination to women as well. This I firmly opposed and testified against it after I returned to Quaker—but the genie was out of the bottle. A genie I had freed.

What has this to do with Barack Obama? Significantly the entire concept of affirmative action has started to fall into disrepute. But it is amazing to me that this young man…just having turned 47…who was only eight years old when I launched this revolution…still is focused on 1960s guilt-ridden programs that have not worked. He has called for even more affirmative action. He demands “reparations” for slavery.

I have seen affirmative action in hiring to be one of the worst things that ever happened to minorities…principally black Americans. When I returned to my corporation, I sensed the anger and hostility from those who resented what I had done and who turned their hostility against blacks who moved to the front of the line. Many of these people were able but no matter—all were tarred with the brush of government-sponsored discrimination and their effectiveness was marred.

With minority business, government contracts began to reward inept management. Politicians took over on the local level—such as the Daley machine under two mayors, cutting deals with politically manipulative blacks, setting black tokens into “president and CEO” positions while whites pulled the levers of power. As result, national faith and trust in the ability of minorities to rise in the system was destroyed and the legacy today is that when you see a top black manager in a post you have the faint suspicion…sometimes validated…that he or she wouldn’t be in that post without state-sponsored corporate discrimination.

I cannot undo the past. In justification it could be said that I meant well. But ever since I have become wary of white guilt-ridden liberals because that is what I was. And I see many white, guilt-ridden liberals supporting Barack Obama for the wrong reasons. Not because his ideas are vital: they are a retread of the `60s of which I am familiar. But these younger white, guilt-ridden liberals have not yet learned what I learned to my discomfort.

Therefore I was heartened when John McCain who had dabbled as a supporter of affirmative action has now courageously turned the corner and opposes an issue that will appear on the Arizona ballot. When I first interviewed Barack Obama a decade ago on the radio I had a faint glimmer that with his youth he saw the terrible damage affirmative action could cause. I even tried to get it out of my head that as the first black president of the “Harvard Law Review”—and I know Harvard having been a Kennedy Fellow there—he was a product of affirmative action. I frankly don’t know if that was the case with Obama—but I haven’t seen the breadth of fresh insights that one would have a right to expect from someone with those credentials, someone who was an adjunct professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. I still can’t get it out of my head that perhaps he so enjoyed affirmative action in his career that he wants to extend the beneficent state-run discriminatory pattern unduly in the future.

For that reason, I am doing all I can to convince Americans to shuck affirmative action, to repeal the 8-A that I helped create, so that the time will come…during my lifetime, hopefully…when a black American will be able to serve as president without having been the beneficiary of discrimination in reverse or use of the race card that Obama played when he touted how different he is in skin pigmentation from other American presidents—hoping just one last time to capitalize on that white guilt that animated me so many years ago.

A Special Note to Readers: The Article Still Stands.

The Office of Legal Services, Archdiocese of Chicago sent me a letter dated July 30 that just now came to hand…since the letter was addressed to an old office I had which I closed more than a year ago. It is from one John C. O’Malley who says I “personally published defamatory statements” on July 29, 2008 saying that the Rockford diocese “has decided it is finished with Mundelein.” A memorandum from the director of communication of the Rockford diocese to the director of communications for the archdiocese of Chicago deny this as does the bishop of Rockford. “Given that you personally published these defamatory statements,” writes O’Malley, “I am compelled to bring their falsity to your attention.” He expects that I will

1. “Remove the defamatory statements from your blog entry.”

2. Print a retraction of the false statements contained therein”

3. “Refrain from making any further untrue statement regarding the relationship between St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein and the diocese of Rockford.” And--

4. “I must demand that you distribute your reaction to” websites which republished them.

As the language brims with provocative legal terminology, I have responded swiftly by retaining competent legal counsel. My favorite colonial hero to whom I repair at times like this is William Prescott of Pepperell, Middlesex county, Massachusetts, a colonel in the Revolutionary War who commanded Americans at Bunker Hill. And his words are an axiom, at once conciliatory yet forthright:

“Men, don’t fire unless fired upon. If they mean to have war, let it begin here.”

In checking with responsible authorities I am confident that the situation which I reported was accurate at publication. Since authorities in Rockford and Chicago deny this existed, fair enough—their denial is summarized on this website and reproduced in full on the Catholic Citizens website.

Essentially here is their contention. A letter from Rockford Bishop Thomas Doran says that Rockford has not pulled out of Mundelein, saying “I want to assure the archdiocese that the author of this blog does not speak on behalf of any truth or any official source from the diocese of Rockford and if we are contacted about this online falsehood by any reliable media source, we will not shirk our responsibility to set the record straight.”

Fair enough. Whether the statement tells it all or whether a scurrying was made so as to hastily accommodate Chicago’s public relations needs is not known.

But such scurrying is not unknown in Chicago at least. The tragic case of children violated by the notorious pedophile Dan McCormack comes to mind when it is recalled that vital records from his seminary days were missing…containing the views of his superiors which might explain why he was not sent way… and thus those responsible for overseeing his conduct…and for the subsequent exploitation of innocent children… were spared blame.

The letter from O’Malley concludes with these words: “if the statement regarding seminarians propositioning any individual is true, it is a matter of grave concern for the Archdiocese. Therefore, if you have any additional information regarding this allegation—including the names of any individuals involved—I ask that you please share the information with me so that the allegation can be fully investigated.”

Rest assured, sir not only the archdiocese will be notified but more importantly those empowered to take swifter action than the archdiocese has exerted previously.

Meantime, I would remind attorney O’Malley who is concerned about being told of instances of homosexuality at Mundelein that the rector who ordained McCormack told the “Chicago Sun-Times” that if he had to do it over again, he still would have ordained this man who violated children….the rector being promoted to auxiliary bishop of Chicago, then named bishop of Tucson, Arizona, then elected vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and now approaches the time when he will ascend to the presidency of the USCCB without objection or dissent. I am not aware that there has been any mention whatsoever in the Chicago archdiocese about the former rector’s statement made subsequent to his rapid promotions. Nor has his lack of contrition been an impediment to his startlingly fast rise in ecclesiastical circles.

Enough. Full texts of all statements are available on the Catholic Citizens of Illinois website…catholiccitizens.org

And the article still stands.

Personal Aside: Catholic Bishops Prepare to Finesse Election Issue of Abortion as McCarrick Plays His Hand.

In the view of a noted authenticist expert on Catholic bishops I talked with in confidence yesterday, the outline of the U. S. Catholic bishops proposed document “Forming Consciences of Faithful Citizenship” bears “the imprint of the finely manicured and perfumed hand of one who has long been regarded as the most prominent liberal of the U.S. episcopate. ”

When he said that to me, I knew right away who he meant.

He was speaking of one who is not even an active archbishop but is retired—Theodore Cardinal McCarrick the former archbishop of Washington, D. C.

Liberal Democrat McCarrick continues to be dominant in political affairs in a church where faithful congregants are center-right but who by force of his personality has given the USCCB (the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) a distinctively left-wing cast. Powerful as he is, he is not an officer of the USCCB (the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), is one of a number with similar interests although his ecclesial prominence is recognized.

At a point where the USCCB is as rudderless as it has been for many years…and with the certainty that the next president-to-be was a distinct failure at Mundelein seminary after which he was promoted and who has said if he had to do it over again he’d still ordain Dan McCormack the convicted pervert…liberal Democrat McCarrick has been overwhelming in his influence as the hierarchy’s major proponent of neutering the importance of a single-issue in recommended voting instructions. Consequently, he has been warmly received and lionized by leading Democratic pro-abort Catholics and liberal Catholics in the media for his cooperation in sparing them embarrassment and possible retribution by Catholic voters at the polls. He is particularly the recipient of hearty support from the Kennedy family and is ever-present where liberal Catholic media types gather to discuss theological issues, pleasing them by salving their views with absolution from the Left. Small wonder he offered the funeral Mass for Tim Russert who got Dan Moynihan and Mario Cuomo to be pro-aborts.

Wednesday the outline was unveiled by an underling, the Rev. Ronald J. Cioffi in a relatively obscure diocese, Trenton, N. J. The proposed outline was unfurled was drafted with major input from McCarrick as a kind of initial test case to feel out the position of the hierarchy in the presidential election year.

According to the “Times of Trenton” pro-abortion and pro-gay rights which are no-nos and earlier occupied in some drafts more significant standing than other issues, are enveloped in a laundry-list of church moral issues which voters should consider. This validates the position McCarrick has always held which protects pro-abortion lawmakers and governors. The issue of whether or not a pro-abort Catholic politician who crusades for abortion receiving Communion is thus negated…something he has always advocated.

The document pays lip service to abortion as “an intrinsic evil” equal to racism but would have the bishops say a Catholic may vote for an abortion rights supporter such as Barack Obama who from his Illinois legislature days is the only Democratic U.S. senator on record as opposing any methods to use nutrition or medical care to save the life of a baby born live from a botched abortion. As such it is a great coup for Obama and the Democratic party including the top-heavy Democratic party of Cook county where all Catholic office-holders have capitulated to becoming abortion supporters.

“There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave issues,” the document states in language that sounds like it was written expressly by McCarrick. For the 800,000 Catholics in the Trenton diocese and answer is they should weigh their consciences while the bishops take the Pontius Pilate approach and wash their hands of responsibility. “It is hard to find a candidate who supports all the church’s teaching,” said wimpy Trenton Bishop John M. Smith…a McCarrick man… to his staff. “It’s a difficult time to decide how we’re voting, especially this year.” It reflects the McCarrick view entirely.

Said Rayanne Bennett, chief communications officer for the Trenton diocese to the “Times of Trenton”: “For those who want to be told what tpo do—this document does not tell them. The reason this is important is no candidate this year and few candidates historically have perfectly lined up with Catholic social teaching.” Thus why sweat it?

“We’re not interested in creating the United Catholic States of America,” said Cioffi, echoing words which have been used in different places and at different times by McCarrick. A single issue like abortion or war should not be the sole reason to vote for or against a candidate, he said, adding, “As Catholics, we are not single-issue voters.” No mention was made of the fact that without social issues such as abortion and homosexuality being considered, Catholics have been heavily Democratic.

Assuredly the document inveighs against abortion in boilerplate but exceeds even the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin’s “seamless garment” which tied three issues together—nuclear freeze, anti-death penalty and abortion—to give liberal office holders a “pro-life” rating of 2 out of 3. This document far exceeds the Bernardin one by for all practical purposes allowing everyone to decide for themselves. That way, given the natural proclivity of Catholics to vote Democratic, it is an odds-on benefit for the Democratic party and Barack Obama, known to be highly favored by McCarrick who has met with Obama although the president of the USCCB—the cardinal-archbishop of Chicago from Illinois like Obama—has until recently pointedly declined to meet with Sen. John McCain so as not to “show favoritism” to the Republican.



Why did the draft on how Catholics should regard voting their consciences get unveiled in…of all places…Trenton, New Jersey? The present Cardinal –archbishop of Washington, Donald Wuerl, a McCarrick man who lip-synchs the boss has influence there. But principally the reason was McCarrick himself was once archbishop of Newark. Although in retirement, having had his resignation accepted by Benedict XVI on May 16, 2006 when McCarrick turned 75, McCarrick told the media on the day Wuerl was made archbishop that he—McCarrick—intended to be around a long time. He signified that he will continue to remain active in public policy issues and serves as chairman of a task force examining the Church’s relationship with Catholic politicians whose voting records conflict with Church doctrine.

In this connection he has never sanctioned any U.S. Catholic politician for any reason. His nadir came when he disseminated a letter from Josef Cardinal Ratzinger prior to his becoming Benedict XVI to the bishops which McCarrick represented as discouraging any attempt to deny Communion to a pro-abort Catholic politician. Later it was discovered the letter McCarrick distributed was an altered and inaccurate representation of Ratzinger’s views which were just the opposite. It was a bare-faced fraud that would have got him in dutch if it had been pulled in a congressional hearing; as duplicitous an act as was ever carried out in the old days when in Europe cardinals were political honchos. It was an enormous service to the Democratic party in the U.S. But nothing happened from Rome or elsewhere to punish that act of intentional duplicity which mis-led his fellow bishops. McCarrick fits the part of the old-line English and French political cardinals beautifully. But anyhow, like him or not, he has guts. Next to him almost everyone…with some notable exceptions… in the senior episcopate is wimpy…saying one thing to an audience and contradicting it when talking to another gathering.

While the senior episcopate is invested in portrait-posing and are surrounded by press assistants…invested in ceremonials and semantics and interminable parsing-parsing-parsing…McCarrick delivers the political goods for the Democratic party. Last year it was announced that McCarrick will become a counselor at the Center for the Study of Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown where he continues his interest in public policies vis-à-vis the Church.



Again: McCarrick at least stands for something. How did it happen that so many nebbishes, half-men and bland, un-forceful—yes parsing-- nonentities have been named bishops who seek only one thing—what they prattle as “unity” i.e. placating everybody, instead of demonstrating the power of conviction? One former high Vatican aide, a priest, gave me one hint. At bishop appointment time, John Paul II would be served with a stack of papers in alphabetical order bearing the names and credentials of prospective bishops. Sometimes the stack would be as thick as a telephone directory.

Rather than peruse the stack, he would lift the top paper from the stack delicately so as not to disturb the others and give it to an aide with his okay and turned to other things. To many other things to occupy him—almost endless international trips, his strategy of dealing with the imminent fall of the Iron Curtain attention and his own failing health. George Weigel’s laudatory biography…a beautifully written but let’s face it an officially approved boilerplate job…never mentions any failing but is entirely adulatory—and never why JPII named so many mediocre men…Bernard Law comes to mind who had to be spirited out of the country by Rome when things got hot because of his near-criminal mishandling of clerical sex abuse to kids…Law transferring known perverts to parishes where their records were not known—writing laudatory letters of recommendation for them.. got through the net.

Weigel never touched that subject. He’s like that: highly educated, a gifted theologian but in his book acted as an authorized p. r. man or press secretary than critical biographer. And a Company Man addressing audiences concerned with bishops’ failings by denying the failings in the first place. Keeping whatever failings he discovered to himself.

If John Paul’s picking the first sheet off the stack of bishopric recommendations is true…and looking at many of the bishops who got through the net it could well be (after all, Bernardin’s name began with a “B” doesn’t it and may well have been the first paper in the stack)…it doesn’t change his papal stature in history but maybe in the future he should be called Good Pope John Paul …rather than as some starry-eyed biographers would have it… John Paul II the Great.

Personal Aside: Ted Stevens’ Indictment Welcome Enema for the Body Politic.

Sorry to be graphic but the indictment of Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens by a federal grand jury is a necessary tubular insertion to provide a much needed enema to the infected body politic. Let them now turn the spigot and proceed with the full flushing. The purification will recompense partly for far more than the making of alleged false statements to conceal gifts and home renovations.

Such physic would blast out the moral debris accumulated long ago, by his arrogant defense of the status quo when the late Henry J. Hyde brought charges of Bill Clinton impeachment to the Senate. Meeting with hollow man Republican “leader” Trent Lott and others, Stevens told Hyde and House Judiciary chief counsel David Schippers:

“I don’t care if you prove that [Clinton] raped a woman and then stood up and shot her dead—you are not going to get sixty-seven votes.”

The meaning was clear to Schippers and Hyde. It was not just a note-counting assessment. It signified that Stevens would artfully do all he could to save Clinton. To cover his tracks, Stevens voted against the charge of perjury (when Clinton’s lying under oath was apparent) but voted to convict on the far lesser charge…obstruction of justice…so as to justify himself on a talking point while working behind the scenes in his serpentine way to save the obviously guilty president. In doing so he cooperated in the charade of some key Senate members never bothering to examine the evidence because they simply didn’t want to know, resulting in culpable cooperation with others to balock criminal offenses. In doing so, Stevens played a decisive role as a senior Republican senator in purveying the snarl of sophistry and manipulation of public opinion, soiling his honor, the Senate’s reputation and public trust in the presidency.

While the charges against Stevens have nothing to do with his underhanded manipulations to frustrate justified conviction of Clinton, they constitute root retributive justice for Stevens…who has been getting away with boodle and graft for many years—coalescing with those who loot the treasury with baseless spending including the federally funded “Bridge to Nowwhere” in Alaska.

Federal authorities raided Stevens’ home in the resort town of Girdwood, 40 miles south of Anchorage, last summer. From May, 1999 to August, 2007 say prosecutors, Stevens hid “his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation” VECO, a major Alaska oil services company from his Senate disclosure form-- including home improvements to his vacation home in Alaska, including a new first floor, garage, wraparound deck, plumbing, electrical wiring, car exchanges, a gas grill, furniture and tools. He received huge discounts on cars by swapping cheaper models for more expensive autos—receiving a brand new Land Rover for his son worth $44,000 in exchange for a 1964 Mustang worth under $20,000.

Stevens’ good friend in the Senate is Maine Republican Susan Collins, a bland figurehead liberal of no particular depth who has returned the favor. He gave her $10,000 in 2002 and another $10,000 in this election cycle. In return she contributed $5,000 to him in this election cycle where he will run for reelection, with a primary this August.

Any hope that his Republican Senate seat can be salvaged could only come if the 84-year-old, 40-year Senate backscratcher and snout-snuffler at the public trough could be convinced to resign so that the Republican governor could appoint a replacement to stand for reelection. There’s no chance because this gargoyle will remain poisoning the Senate until his ultimate conviction.

The Senate’s lachrymose Republican song-writer and lyricist Orrin Hatch a victim of Stockholm syndrome toward aged pols moaned that it is highly unfair for the Justice Department to bring these charges just before the primary, given that the DOJ had been investigating the old fraud for many years. Given that Hatch was once chairman of judiciary, he should know how long preparation of a case like this must take: but anyone who weeps uncontrollably over Ted Kennedy’s “great contribution” to the Senate would be immune from such speculation.

Perhaps Hatch’s next song can rhapsodize the “lynching of Ted Stevens.”

Personal Aside: To E. A., Sorry You Were Erased Inadvertently. Now as to Lincoln’s “Uncertain” Parentage and McCain’s Blow Torch Temper

My Apologies, E. A.

E. A. a frequent commentator to this website had her comment about McCain erased. I’m sorry about that—it was inadvertently scrubbed when we removed a wholly scatological comment. But the comment was not all that stunning. Now that I had reported on Obama’s chaotic parentage, E. A. inquired about Abraham Lincoln’s rise from backwoods poverty—a truly salutary experience…but also mentioned Lincoln’s “uncertain parentage.” The only ones who allege an “uncertain parentage,” E. A., tend to be rightwing conspiratorialists who abjure the Great Emancipator’s dislocation of certain constitutional guarantees in order to save the Union. They generally are associated with an outfit called the League of the South which still insist the Railsplitter had no right to free the slaves. Some of them allege that Lincoln was illegitimate of which there is no proof whatever. Should I associate you with them, E. A. ?

Lincoln’s genealogy starts with his great-great grandfather, Samuel, who emigrated from Norfolk, England, arriving at Hingham, Massachusetts about 1637. Subsequent generations migrated to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. His paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham Lincoln, served as a captain of the Virginia militia during the American Revolution. Hearing his friend, Daniel Boone, talk of cheap land in Kentucky, he moved in 1782 to Jefferson county, east of Louisville. Four years later while working his fields he was killed by an Indian.

His son, Thomas Lincoln (1778-1851), farmer and carpenter, was born in Rockingham county, Virginia and was reared there as well as in Kentucky. He served in the Kentucky militia, settled first in Hardin (now Larue) county, Kentucky, later in Spencer county, Indiana and Coles county, Illinois. He was illiterate, could not read or write but could sign his own name. A year after the death of his wife, Nancy Hanks (the president’s mother) he married a widow with three children, Sarah Bush Johnston. There was an estrangement of some sort with his son Abraham. When Abraham was a lawyer in Springfield, he did not attend his own father’s funeral. There is really no comparison between Lincoln’s rather unremarkable genealogical background and Barack’s chaotic one.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln (1784-1818) was apparently of illegitimate birth. She married Thomas Lincoln in 1806. she was illiterate, reportedly pious and close to her children. “All that I am or hope to be,” wrote Lincoln, “I owe to my angel mother.” She died at 34 of “milk sickness” in Spencer county when Abe was nine. Lincoln had one older sister to live to maturity—Mrs. Sarah Grigsby who died in childbirth at age 21.

About John McCain’s famous blow-torch temper, E. A., I have written about it many times including the famous scene where he assailed Texas Senator John Cornyn on the floor with a shouted obscenity. I have also speculated on rumors of his emotional instability. I have quoted in fact an Illinois retired general who was incarcerated in the Hanoi Hilton with McCain who told me “all of us have a tendency to be somewhat nuts” because of the long confinement. I don’t think I have pulled any punches in that regard and still regard his tendency to go overboard emotionally as a disadvantage. Hence you didn’t tell us anything new in your comment which…I am sorry to say…was inadvertently erased along with an obscenity from someone else.

BIG QUESTION: HOW WILL OLDER WHITE DEMOCRATS REACT TO A YOUNG LIBERAL BLACK PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE?

Last week’s Wanderer article (updated since publication).

By Thomas F. Roeser

Electoral Vote Countdown.

CHICAGO—A Robert Novak analysis of a projected Electoral College tally (this before his brain tumor announcement) —markedly different from realclearpoliics.com I ran last week gives much more optimism to the McCain forces—shows with 270 votes needed to elect, Barack Obama has 273 and John McCain 265, three more than Obama needs to win. McCain has a base of 18 states with 142 electoral votes but this is melting like a snow-cone in July. Obama’s base is 14 states with 187 electoral votes and is rock solid. Big question: the x factor—or how will older white Democrats respond to a liberal, young black candidate?

Several caveats:

Five states can decide whether Obama will add to the John Kerry total of 2004 and Al Gore sum of 2000, thereby giving the Democrat the needed 270 electoral votes: Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada and Michigan.

Although state-by-state polls show a big Obama tilt, savvy pollsters know from experience that voters tend to overstate a black candidate’s ratings and understate white. This is known as the “Bradley Effect,” named after the black, 5-term mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley [1917-1998], referring to the tendency of white voters to tell interviewers and exit-pollsters they favor a black candidate but who actually vote for the white opponent.

Democrat Bradley was called a shoo-in in 1982 running for governor of California. Supposedly an ideal candidate: successful mayor, moderate conservative and ex-cop, in a Democratic year. Bradley led in all polls going into election day, was proclaimed by news organizations on election night the sure winner. But he lost by 100,000 votes (1.2% of 7.5 million votes cast) to Republican George Deukmejian. Since that time whether winner or loser, black candidates running in statewide or national elections, have fared better in the polls than with the actual tallies on election day, the result of lingering reluctance by white voters to acknowledge they will vote against a black candidate. Obama has to worry about any state where he’s running significantly under 50%, no matter how low McCain is.

To be sure, voters’ views of black candidates have changed since 1982 but it’s still an ever-present problem for Obama. Meanwhile, the problem for McCain is how close Obama is to him in traditionally red (or Republican) states like Virginia, North Dakota—even Montana where big-spender Republican congresses haven’t done the GOP any favors. Key state: Colorado (9) where Obama is ahead but not close to 50% but if the Dems’ national convention there produces a rock-star effect for him, it’s gone. Even Georgia (15) is problematic for McCain since Libertarian candidate Bob Barr is running high there but even so, the Bradley effect looks like it may pull the peach state out for McCain.

Louisiana (9) looks safe for McCain but strangely Nevada (5), a neighbor to McCain’s Arizona is barely tilting McCain. And New Mexico (5) is moving to Obama almost hitting the desirable 50%, the Hispanic vote being key here. North Carolina (15) still leaning McCain but Obama won the state big-time with a huge black turnout in its primary which may be duplicated; also McCain doesn’t resonate with conservatives there. Surprisingly, North Dakota (3) can’t be generally conferred to McCain but the polls are knife-edge close. Yet the good news for McCain in Ohio (20) is that disgruntled Hillary supporters and gun-owners alienated by Obama’s near confiscatory views are shoring up the state. And so it goes, the tallies seemingly swinging to and fro every week. Just a personal note: Bob Novak is a friend, but his count seems far too exuberantly pro-McCain to me.

Ask Not if Media Are Biased for Obama.

Trust me, no unelected presidential candidate in U.S. history—including World War II hero and 5-star general of the army Dwight Eisenhower— ever received more favorable media coverage in his campaign than Barack Obama. Superbowl-style coverage of his trip overseas is a case in point. His trip which began last week was equal to a papal overseas pilgrimage, stunning when you recall that the pontiff is a (a) head-of-state, (b) representing a church with 986 million congregants comprising half the world’s Christians and a full one-sixth of the population of the world. All major TV anchors are aboard the press plane including 500 other journalists (excluding The New Yorker magazine which though heavily pro-Obama earned the enmity of the campaign’s David Axelrod for its satirical cover and was summarily dis-invited).

“Mainstream media” make the following ten explanations for the eerily symbolic near-papal style visit to which cynics like me add the comments “yeah, right!”. First, , “the coverage is not because Obama will be the first black nominee of a major party for president. But because the likelihood of change will be generational, not racial” (yeah, right!). Second, “it is not because Obama happens to be the more liberal candidate because if Hillary Clinton had won, a trip could be composed of the same numbers” (yeah, right!). Third, “it is really because Obama is an untested politician and people deserve to know if he will fall on his face in this endeavor or succeed” (yeah, right!). Fourth, “you see if this were Ronald Reagan making his first presidential run we’d be doing the same thing” (yeah, right!).

Fifth, “McCain and the GOP are to blame for all this because he blasted Obama for only going once to Iraq and never going to Afghanistan so it’s the case of chickens coming home to roost” (yeah, right!). Sixth, “sure, the Tyndall Report [a news coverage monitoring service] shows broadcast media with 20 million viewers spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June and 48 minutes covering McCain, but the reason is Obama’s charisma not liberal bias. Obama is young and exciting, McCain is old and crotchety so we’re justified in going with the charisma. After all, JFK had it, Nixon didn’t. If Republicans had a candidate with charisma we’d be flying with him too!” (yeah, right!).

Seventh, “all the times McCain went to Iraq he had no TV anchors and very sparse media along because he was saying the same old things which is why we didn’t cover him as extensively” (yeah, right!). Eighth as Chuck Todd the political director of NBC News has said, “this is the way all new guys are treated, whether it’s Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. There’s always a candidate who gets more ‘new guy’ treatment” (yeah, right!).

Eighth, “it was entirely appropriate for Obama to request permission of German authorities to speak at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin because, after all, JFK and Ronald Reagan did [approval denied at Brandenburg, granted at the Victory Column in downtown Berlin, circa 1873, topped by a golden statue of winged Victory commemorating Prussia’s defeat the previous decade of France, Austria and Denmark] and the fact that Kennedy and Reagan had earned this right by being elected president is immaterial” (yeah, right!). Ninth, the fact that The New York Times printed Obama’s Op Ed on Iraq but refused McCain’s stems from the editorial board’s wish to have the two pieces mirror themselves as a set piece tailored around Obama’s deadline is only editorial style and does not reflect bias (yeah, right!). Tenth, “the fact that Obama’s face appeared on two covers of Rolling Stone and McCain none, and that Obama was on the cover of U.S. Weekly twice and McCain’s hasn’t is due to editorial timing and has nothing to do with the fact that the publications are owned by Obama fund-raiser Jann Wenner; it’s only a coincidence” (yeah, right!).

Obama Media Buy Strives for “Blowout.”



I’ve known David Axelrod, 53, the Chicago media mogul who’s in charge of Obama’s ads and p.r. strategy since he was a Tribune reporter in 1982. He has spoken in my university courses and has been on my ABC radio show.



The place to catch him is at Manny’s, the superb Jewish deli and sandwich shop on the near West Side, at lunchtime every Saturday where he consumes corned beef and cold potato salad. Humor him by bowing low and saying, “hail, 0 swami!” and you’re invited to sit down and watch him munch. The other day we talked about his ad buy—stupendously ambitious since the Obama campaign is flush with cash. Of the 18 states where Axelrod has decided to air Obama’s first TV ads , 14 are states Bush carried in 2004, supposedly solid GOP states such as North Dakota, Alaska, Montana and Indiana. This means that Axelrod is striving for a big blowout endemic in his view that if Obama goes in by a huge majority and with a substantially strengthened Democratic congress, he can carry his program with the same effect that LBJ did after the 1964 landslide over Barry Goldwater. It could also mean Axelrod is trying to fake the McCain campaign, making them think “if Dave’s plunking down big bucks in these red states, what does he know that we don’t?” To this, Axelrod rolls his eyes and says “who I do that?”

With nonchalance born of near-certainty of victory, Axelrod has ignored on this first go-round six states Bill Clinton won in 1996 which Axelrod considers likely for Obama and not in need of reinforcement right now—Kentucky, Louisiana (I question his accuracy there), Tennessee, West Virginia and Arkansas (I question it again here).

When I disputed this with him, particularly Louisiana and West Virginia, he replied: In 2004 Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Kentucky (+4%), Louisiana (+2%), West Virginia (+18%) and Arkansas (+10%). What this means isn’t that Axelrod is necessarily right but that he is a plunger, a gambler. The cautious player would spend early dough on some sure-win Clinton-Gore-Kerry states, nailing them down and branching out from there. Not so if you’re Axelrod. He starts out with Indiana, Alaska, Montana and Georgia for TV ads. The name of the game for him—and Obama-- is audacity. Axelrod wasn’t at Manny’s last week, however. He was with his candidate in the Middle East and supervising his upcoming TV extravaganza at Berlin’s Victory Column.



Iraqi PM Woos Obama.

Meanwhile a superb gift was handed to Obama by none other than Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who last week said he backed a proposal by Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months. The statement, made to the German magazine Der Spiegel, delivered a body blow to both Bush and McCain. Shortly after the article appeared, an Iraqi spokesman tried to clarify things saying the possibility of troop withdrawal is based on continuance of security improvements, echoing what the White House said after a conference on closed-circuit TV between Maliki and Bush. But the “clarification” doesn’t wash.

The original statement seems to qualify as a Harold Macmillan-style “events, my dear boy,” that could by itself pivot an election to Obama. And this could be one of the glimpses a Sleepy Eye of the electorate can make to decide the young whippersnapper (Obama) is indeed qualified for the presidency since Maliki is content to humiliate McCain on his own turf, supposed foreign-defense policy expertise.

Why did Maliki do it? First, he thinks Obama will be the next president and he’d better start winning some plaudits with him now. Second, Maliki is an Iraqi nationalist. He feels the war has been won and he wants to be un-interfered with in running his own country. McCain views Iraq as a bastion for us to maintain stability over the entire Middle East; Obama doesn’t see things that way and wants the U.S. to get out of Iraq ASAP. Obama’s view more adequately suits Maliki’s timetable than McCain’s. As for gratitude, no international power-broker can afford to limit himself to that sentimental view and Maliki, believing victory is at hand, wants to get on with his governance unimpeded by a U.S. presence.

Latest Vice News.



A false rumor surfaced that John McCain was to pick his veep last week but no soap. But whenever he does the choosing, if it is not Mitt Romney, it is probably a mistake. As of now, Romney appears to be in the lead. McCain-Romney is a choice fit because of Romney’s economic expertise, his strong Michigan base (state of his birth and where his father served as governor) and to dissuade suspicions of conservatives that maverick McCain who in the past (not now) has favored big government, keeping taxes on upper incomes high, regulating energy in behalf of climate change and tolerant immigration stems from ignorance of, and disdain for, businessmen. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is an exotic but not natural fit and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty could possibly (but not likely) carry Minnesota. Rob Portman an ex-congressman has the mark of Cane on him—a Bush administration official. A new entry this week is Sen. John Thune (S. D. ) who defeated Tom Daschle in 2004—but Thune is strong for earmarks a McCain no-no. Ex-Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge is a NARAL Catholic who would cause McCain greater trouble with social conservatives than he has faced up to now.

On the Democratic side, a natural could be Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia who is unknown but if you factor in the essential need to carry that state, it could be made eminently possible if he’s on the ticket. Then there’s Sen. Joe Biden (Del.) a pro-abort Catholic, chairman of Senate Foreign Relations and who is regarded by many as a jerque (fancy way of saying “jerk”) because he can’t keep his mouth shut, once effusively describing Obama this way: “ I mean you have the first African-American who is articulate, bright and clean”…this is supposed to be a compliment to all blacks, right? …and “a nice-looking guy!” Obama chafed at the report. “Clean, meaning I take frequent showers, right?” he is reputed to have commented.



The big front-runner last week was Sen. Evan Bayh (Indiana), a former governor, good-looking, bland and as unmemorable as vanilla but who might have a chance to bringing Indiana into play for Obama.

Lingering Questions About Obama.

It’s de rigueur for TV standup comics to kid all presidential candidates. But not Obama. Why not? Two reasons: (1) comics don’t want to come across as red-necks, mocking a black and (2) young, emotional studio audiences are very immature about teasing Obama and boo when it happens. Which disturbs the New York Times’ ultra-irreverent columnist Maureen Dowd, who likes to assail every presidential candidate. She was grousing about this last week to two friends, ultra-liberals Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, brilliant satirists of TV’s “Comedy Central” cablecast. Stewart and Colbert have no scruples about making fun of anyone, even a blind beggar playing an accordion for donations.

Obama has no faults? “Are you kidding me?” Stewart said. He and Colbert starting riffing about the suave presidential candidate’s familiarity with drug slang, as taken from his two autobiographies. They cited a phrase in The Audacity of Hope that Obama confessed he had done some pot, some booze and…in his own words…”maybe a little blow.” That’s street talk—Chicago street talk—for cocaine.

Colbert: “Wow, that’s a very street way of putting it--`a little blow.’” Stewart chimed in snidely, “yeah, a little bit of the white rabbit!” That’s street talk for heroin.

Let that get visibility and the electorate’s Sleepy Eye will pop wide open and forget all about Maliki. Already a brilliant mocker of Obama’s failings is Pulitzer prize-winning syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer who has been both physician and psychiatrist. Last week in a scathing commentary he wrote, “Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated notions of himself…[He] is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted `present’ nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself…After all, in the words of his own slogan, `we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,’ which translating the royal `we’ means I am the one we’ve been waiting for.’ Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his podium until general ridicule…induced him to take it down.”

Yes, there are Obama-isms to hoot at and chortle over if you’re politically incorrect. Such as his admonition to Americans to “teach your child to speak Spanish”—a language he himself does not speak. And chastising ignorant Americans who go to Europe knowing no French, managing to emit only merci beaucoup. Obama speaks no French.

Krauthammer has a few more. “For the first few months of the campaign the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?”

His answer: “Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when ‘our planet began to heal.’”

Even his stylistic model, John F. Kennedy had to endure people laughing at him—particularly the Germans when he went to the Brandenburg Gate and pronounced the words written for him by Ted Sorensen on a slip of paper-- ‘ich bin ein Berliner!”

The way Kennedy mispronounced it in terrible German, he had just announced “I am a jelly doughnut!”

Personal Aside: Rockford Diocese Drops Mundelein for Seminarians—Guess Why?...Meanwhile Kicanas, Permissive ex-Rector of Mundelein Will Be the Next Head of the USCCB…Chicago “Weak in Review” a Vanilla Offering of the Land of Nod…Gay Benefactor...

Rockford.

The Rockford, Illinois diocese will not send seminarians to St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein for training. Two upperclassmen propositioned a Rockford youth for homosexual favors. So much for the change that has been promised in archdiocesan public relations pronouncements.

Thus the Rockford diocese has decided it is finished with Mundelein. Thus you have the archdiocese of Chicago where layman Chancellor Jimmy Lago (believe it or not that’s his baptismal name, not to be confused with his brother Timmy, his baptismal name as well)…Jimmy the best precinct captain onetime Democratic Cook county chairman now under indictment Ed Vrdolyak ever had… has been put in charge of combating sexual abuse and the same-old, same-old is happening. Of course the supine Chicago “religious” press is asleep at the switch. The “Tribune’s” religion correspondent, one Manya Brachear, was sold a bill of goods by Lago who convinced her to write he is the guardian-at-the-gate implying the Cardinal archbishop is lax. She writes a blog which calls herself the “Seeker.” She is so naively liberal she swallowed the bait, hook and all, which Jimmy dangled before her.

Furthermore, don’t expect the remainder of the Chicago media to inquire. And if it does and goes to the top office in the archdiocese, it will get the regular parsing that goes with every question born of the view that with two doctorates all distinctions can be blurred with requisite sophistry. An authenticist bishop in another diocese told me that the parser should be teaching in a university where administrative expertise is not required. As far as controlling events in this archdiocese, the bishop said, “the parser can’t run a two-car funeral.”

Kicanas.

The man who ran St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein when it was a hot-house of homosexual excess…and who was quoted in the “Sun-Times” as saying he does not regret ordaining Fr. Dan McCormack, who is now serving time for child abuse…is second in command of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is Gerald Kicanas, now bishop of Tucson, having been promoted from Mundelein (as were all others who ran the dissolute institution) to auxiliary bishop of Chicago and then to Tucson. In Tucson, Kicanas led Tucson through the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization to the point where he ponied up $22 million in settlement for victims of priest child abuse.

Last month Kicanas received an award name for…who else?.. the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin whose departure from this world was serenaded by the Gay Men’s Chorus at Mass…for “efforts in handling the sexual abuse both locally and nationally.” The Common Ground initiative formed by Bernardin which selects recipients for the honor described Kicanas as “a champion of dialogue on contentious issues.” Kicanas received the award at Catholic University in Washington, D. C. where Tim Russert, moderator of “Meet the Press” was supposed to be the keynote speaker at the event. Russert was unavoidably detained by death which prompted a national wailing and a funeral Mass celebrated by- (who else?) Theodore Cardinal McCarrick (ret.). Russert in his earlier incarnation as Democratic strategist convinced both Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator from New York and Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, to support pro-abortion initiatives. Because he couldn’t attend the Kicanas tribute, Russert was lionized in death by the group.

Kicanas is slated to become the next president of the U. S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. If there is any justice at all, his automatic election should be greeted with grassroots opposition…not that it will make any difference with an organization that meets in a marble palace and has a huge roundtable with every bishop fortified with microphone based on the UN Security Council. The archbishop of Chicago is president of the USCCB who was elected on the same ticket as the former Mundelein rector Kicanas.

Chicago Weak in Review.

Chicago “Weak in Review” run by Joel Weisman at WTTW is running out of gas. It was originally conceived as a feisty review of city news by the reporters who cover it but for years the fatigued Joel Weisman has forbidden dissent on the show and presides over a panel from the Land of Nod. The reporters are all pro-Daley and do not enunciate any divergent opinions. The payoff last week came when even Weisman, the establishmentarian, tried to evoke some discussion as to whether the Barack Obama tour of the Middle East and Europe was excessive.

Naw, nobody felt that way. Weisman worked but everybody sat there transfixed. Then when the issue came up about Senate President Emil Jones who has refused to call his body into session to grant relief for the poor who are in substance abuse treatment, the Land of Nod moved smoothly. No one had anything critical to say of Jones—least of all the grimacing Weisman who makes a hollow pretense of being objective. When Todd Stroger’s tenure came up everybody nodded and thought he is doing a good job—this despite the fact that he has become a celebrated city, almost national, scandal.

That is the way liberal politics have corrupted so-called panel shows under the malleable Dan Schmidt as vacuous as a door-to-door salesman, who has no core beliefs except to solicit money to keep his station running and pay his exorbitant salary. No conservative is ever invited to appear in any media panel. Conservative positions and views don’t exist in WTTWland. And feminist liberal Carol Marin wouldn’t know a conservative position if she bumped into one, so inured is she in lefty formulations. She is a pathetic one-person monopolist of lefty slanted news: political editor of the “Sun-Times”…political editor of NBC-TV Chicago…and an interviewer at WTTW…paid by two private enterprises and a third partly with federal cash. Doesn’t bother this “ethics” maven.

WTTW’s highly trumpeted pro-gay rights documentary…introduced by Phil Ponce, a hollow man unburdened by belief in anything who has a number of look-alike sons scattered in high media roles throughout the city…turned out to be gay rights advocacy was paid for by a wealthy donor who has been involved in gay rights causes. This paid infomercial comes close to a scandal at WTTW where a group of wealthy liberal donors call the shots on what the station presents. It doesn’t both Schmidt who is a loose rudder twisting to and fro and who has a public relations man’s knack of parsing—but it should prompt some interest in paid-for-advocacy if there was such a thing as an aggressive news media in Chicago…which there isn’t.