Thoughts While Shaving…Sarah Palin Shouldn’t Run but Not For the Usual Reasons…Thanks a Bunch, Jim Ryan! The Turmoil at Tommy More…

                                       Feast of Blessed Charles the Good.*

    

                                              Sarah Palin. 

             I think Sarah Palin shouldn’t run for president in 2012…but not for the reasons others have cited…such as Phyllis Schlafly who said she “isn’t ready” although her husband Todd is “cute.” The usual rap against her running is that she’s too light.  I never thought that.  Yet, I’ve come to the conclusion that she shouldn’t run --but for a different reason.

            Actually 3 of them.  

            Three times thus far in her career where family should take precedence, Palin has failed.  Failure No. 1: When Bristol became pregnant, Sarah should have used this to avoid running.  Being a mother of a troubled teen-ager who may well have run into trouble because her mother was too involved in governance and politics, should have made it clear to Palin that family is far more important than running for vice president.  Subsequent events have shown her choice of politics at this time of familial chaos was ill-considered—and precedential. It obviously comes first.  

       Failure No. 2 occurred when she failed to monitor Bristol’s moving into mass-media as a celebrity during the campaign…especially allowing Bristol’s unsupervised interview with Fox’s Greta Van Sustern where the teen-aged mother said that abstinence doesn’t work…in contradistinction to her mother’s stand—a disastrous formulation for youth and acceptance of our hedonistic, pagan culture (and which she appears to have walked back).   

             Failure No. 3 is the misbegotten decision to have Bristol go into acting and appear on a TV series.  Bristol has gone Hollywood, has deviated from serious attention to her role as mother. Thus the matter can only become worse. A social conservative whose credo is family values cannot allow concern for her daughter and grandchild to be trumped by vacuous fame. Electing Palin could really start the tread mill running that would lead to a soon-to-become Lindsay Lohan type. Bristol’s  future is filled with foreboding as she goes Hollywood—and Mommy isn’t stopping it.    

        Allowing her daughter to do this shows that Sarah Palin’s first agenda is her own political life. She can continue to make a ton of money on speaking fees and book-writing but she ought to be written off as a serious presidential candidate—not because she is intellectually light but because she has been neglecting the major responsibility in her life: being a mother. Grassroots conservatives, Tea Party-ers and whatever should cease and desist from revving her up to run.

          That’s what I think anyhow: you betcha!  

                                             Stubbed Toes.  

         In their initial forays both Bill Brady and Jason Plummer stubbed their toes—Brady for being vague and cliché-ridden and Plummer for drawing a blank and sitting speechless at the anchor’s desk at WTTW’s Chicago Tonight while Phil Ponce valiantly tried to help him out—help him by suggesting anything…just hoping to hell he’d talk.    The Plummer episode is not fatal but it’s essential that he gets a staff that can prepare him for TV appearances and supply him with research.  He’s smart enough but like everyone else…especially at age 27…he needs backup. 

            The furor from the secular media that Brady was heartless in authoring a bill that consigned homeless, stray pups and cats to extinction is very revelatory.  No one is concerned about unlimited abortion rights which take the lives of human babies to which Bill Brady by his strong actions is 100% opposed.  .  But cats and dogs?  That one really gets Sneed whose lachrymose column not stating the human angle weeps tears for puppies and kitties.  

                                          Thanks a Bunch, Jim Ryan.  

           I have no idea that this ticket is going to work. I know that the Democrats were deeply worried about running against Kirk Dillard who knew all the details of the state budget and governor’s role.  I know that many felt Quinn  or Hynes couldn’t beat Dillard. Nobody’s talking but it’s my hunch they figured out a way.

         Enter Jim Ryan. The aging warrior of DuPage county, smitten with ill health and family tragedies for which no one can express anything but support for his courage…he is the last man who should have thought about running for governor again at age 63…who after a stint as states attorney acknowledged he had prosecuted two innocent men…lost earlier for governor against Blago …was the best buddy of Stu Levine, the corrupt fixer now doing time in prison…was and will probably be once more a board member of Ralph Martire’s liberal Center for Tax and Budget Accountability which has as its central purpose advocacy not just for an income tax increase but a “progressive” [sic] income tax…who in his latter days as a public official veered left… had renounced an earlier pro-gun stand to become a gun-controller… and amended a perfect social conservative record to embrace gay rights. 

           By dint of name recognition and nothing else, Ryan decided, it is said, on a return to power because in early polls…before the campaign started…he was running ahead of other Republican candidates for the nomination.  It was held aloft to him as a teaser: You can win, Jim!  The election, scheduled for Feb. 2 in the dead of winter (a throwback to Boss Madigan’s eagerness to help Obama pick up delegates in 2008) , didn’t allow much time for debate on the negatives. 

               If the Democrats hired a foil to screw up the Republican lineup, they couldn’t have possibly done better.  Andy McKenna’s big pockets didn’t do it—Ryan’s entry did. Thanks so much, Jim.  What a sweetheart. It shows what an uncontrolled ego can do fortified by a name ID poll “interpreted” as a summons to election to split the DuPage vote that was Dillard’s mainstay… by at least one Iago.  Now we’ll most likely get Pat Quinn for a whole four years. By then you’ll probably toy with running for governor again at age 67.  

              Call me conspiratorial but one can’t spend decades around Illinois politics without qualifying.  And I for one don’t think the Ryan entry was uncontrived. Not for a second.  

               Pastor Switch Coming at Tommy More…but Not at Sabina.

             At St. Thomas More parish on the south side you have a pastor devoted to authentic Catholicism…Latin Mass and all the rest. But Rev. Charles Fanelli is due to be switched now that his term is up. Still, at St. Sabina’s on the south side you have a fiery pastor who has turned his church into a rallying ground for the political Left…with highly publicized visits from Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton and every Left winger coming down the pike.  Guess what?

        Rev. Michael Pfleger who has been there for more than 20 years is still a fixture—and will be there until he dies or is carried out.  Of course what you get from the official archdiocese is parse-parse-parse and evasion. At a public meeting the other night there was no reason for Rev. Charles Fanelli’s transfer except that his request to stay has been denied. Oh.  

              More and more the Archdiocese acts like the Daley administration…which isn’t unusual given that there are so many close ties between the two entities. Where’s the explanation from Big Sis? Isn’t she paid to handle the press?  

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    *: Blessed Charles the Good, Martyr [AD 1127]. He was the son of King Canute of Denmark slain in assassination in 1086.  Four-year-old Charles was taken by his mother to the court of her father, Robert, Count of Flanders where he was knighted with his father’s sword.  Charles became Count and Flanders and Amiens.  He became a loving and much beloved ruler. Daily at Bruges and at each of his castles, Charles fed hundreds of the poor. For a time he was rebuked by the populace for devoting too much time and resources to the poor. But that ended and Charles became truly popular because of his sanctity.  

         Discovering that some of his nobles had bought up grain and were hoarding it so they could profit from exorbitant profits, Charles forced them to sell it at once and at reasonable charges. This aroused their fury.  The chief of the profiteers, one Lambert, his brother Bertulf, the dean of St. Donatian’s at Bruges, plotted to murder Charles. They were joined in the conspiracy by Erembald, magistrate of Bruges.  Charles who used to walk barefoot in voluntary penance  to the church of St. Donatian was warned that violence would happen. “We are always in the midst of danger,” he said. “But we belong to God. If it be His will, can one die in a better cause than for peace and justice?”   As he was kneeling before the altar of Our Lady in the church, while saying the psalm Miserere he was seized by the conspirators.

           His arm was severed in one stroke of a sword by one of them. Then he was swiftly decapitated by Bertulf’s nephew, Borchard.  Before the day had ended news of his murder which happened on a Wednesday reached London by Friday at the first hour—“and yet,” writes a contemporary, “no one could have crossed the sea at that time.”