Good blogger and superb contributor to this and other blogs Bob in PF answered the John Schmidt question right away. I wondered what Schmidt had said in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary. Bob quotes the former associate attorney general, Daley chief-of-staff and Democratic candidate for attorney general in 2002 as saying that Bush has a right to pursue his present course on surveillance basis the Constitution. Schmidt took a swipe at John Dean who called for censure by quoting Ed Levi, former president of the University of Chicago and attorney general under Ford , saying that Levi had to clean up the mess the Nixonian’s (implying Dean) had made. Bob in PF is in support of Dean, for Bush censure and likely impeachment which I don’t buy but his well-researched response in Comments is superb. That’s what I call fast work and creditable, too, Bob listing the source.
Anyhow, it verifies the hunch I had that the reason Schmidt’s views weren’t publicized in the New York Times and Sun-Times is that they were not consistent with the papers’ partisan direction. The fact that Schmidt is a Chicagoan, was Daley’s chief of staff, associate AG, ex-Dem candidate and cites the only Chicagoan to be AG, Levi, cuts no ice with Ms. Sweet because the views don’t conform to current liberal Democratic policies. If we had a Republican paper in town, it would have printed Schmidt. But that’s another story.
And the very impressive Frederich March who has written so well and effectively in Comments, supplies the fact that Cathleen Falsani was reared Catholic but is one no longer, having written with some bitterness about her early experience in Catholicism. She did go to Assumption Church (which I attended years ago before it turned trendy) for ashes on Ash Wednesday—and also mentioned a friend’s observance of Lent by dancing in her living room to U2’s “Yahweh.” Yep, that sounds like Falsani. Helps a lot. Thanks!
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Pandering Washington Republicans
Not only do establishmentarian Washington Republican House careerists make me tired by refusing to hold down spending and acting like liberal Democrats, they are doing something far worse to the body politick by thrusting their dirty, fat thumb on the scale of the right to advocacy. Remember 2002 when the GOP Congress passed the McCain-Feingold (as in “find gold”) bill on so-called campaign finance reform which banned soft money? They hoped Bush would veto it. It was not Bush’s best day when he passed the buck, signing it into law hoping the Court would find it unconstitutional. So the Court didn’t and we’re stuck with a severe limitation of up-front advocacy. So it drove money underground to 527s.
Now certain House Republicans are going one step farther in order to court the liberal media. They want to eliminate 527s. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it’s because some of these groups are activating mechanized phone calls to Republican districts warning about the wasteful spending the Republicans are piling up. The shadow GOP reason is that George Soros, the ultra-left billionaire will be silenced—but GEORGE SOROS SHOULDN’T BE SILENCED! Nor should anyone else except on grounds of indecency or abject racism (and even here, I should not like to see Farrakhan’s paper terminated). Ending 527s will push the money to 501-(c) 4’s where there is even less accountability and contributors need not be named. What ought to happen is that the Republican Congress should take restrictions off limits of money-giving and insist only on full disclosure via the internet and immediately. Agree? Don’t agree? Write in Comments.
Now certain House Republicans are going one step farther in order to court the liberal media. They want to eliminate 527s. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it’s because some of these groups are activating mechanized phone calls to Republican districts warning about the wasteful spending the Republicans are piling up. The shadow GOP reason is that George Soros, the ultra-left billionaire will be silenced—but GEORGE SOROS SHOULDN’T BE SILENCED! Nor should anyone else except on grounds of indecency or abject racism (and even here, I should not like to see Farrakhan’s paper terminated). Ending 527s will push the money to 501-(c) 4’s where there is even less accountability and contributors need not be named. What ought to happen is that the Republican Congress should take restrictions off limits of money-giving and insist only on full disclosure via the internet and immediately. Agree? Don’t agree? Write in Comments.
One Man’s Opinion: The Sun-Times Makes it Official
Congratulations to the Sun-Times for officially becoming the newspaper of record for the Democratic party! Candor will out!
On Monday the newspaper, run by publisher John Cruikshank and editor, John Barron gave a veiled but, at bottom, not-so-subtle warning to State Sen. James Meeks, who is considering a third party candidacy for governor. The paper warned Meeks, who has made overtures to social conservatives, not to end the gains blacks have received by endangering the reelection of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The editorial department—by which I mean Cruikshank and Barron—is taking an active role in defending Democratic preserves…along with Lynn Sweet who has been working like a George Tagge trooper trying to get Democrats reconciled in the 6th district (she calling Christine Cegalis to get her to say she endorses Tammy Duckworth). All of these are in the Tagge tradition.
The heavy-handed editorial order (too arrogant for me at first reading) nevertheless fits journalism giants of yore: Colonel Robert R. McCormick and William Randolph Hearst, both of whom were players in their respective parties (McCormick with the Republicans and Hearst with the Democrats with whom he split over FDR and later dominated Republican affairs). McCormick took a sickly-sweet saccharine Teddy Roosevelt-clone paper and made it a national sensation by fulsomely stressing conservative Republicanism and blasting liberal Democrats throughout the state and nation, explaining his circulation’s spectacular rise and impressive growth in national reputation by saying “it ain’t Little Orphan Annie, it’s the hair on our chest!” He was right and deserves to be proven right again. Like McCormick who had been elected president of the Metropolitan Sanitary District and for a time allowed his friends to float the suggestion he might run for president, Hearst toyed with running for president—only as a Democrat. His father had been a Democratic Senator from California and Hearst himself had run unsuccessfully for that job. But both McCormick and Hearst found satisfaction as Cruikshank and Barron are evidently are, by exerting great influence on the affairs of the Democratic party. Nothing wrong with that by old-time journalistic standards.
Since the two crooks left the Sun-Times (who were rather conservative, middle-of-the-road and faintly Republican-leaning especially on national policies) the paper has played an official cat-and-mouse game with frank partisanship: on one hand moving forcefully to the left, on the other hand seeking to hide behind the old “objective” mantra, disappointing many like me who want to see a return to the days when newspapers were flagrantly party-oriented: which would mean a more honest presentation of the news rather than following the old canard that it was “objective.” Objectivity cannot be maintained in the reporting of public affairs—only with traffic accidents, stock reports and the like. Now that we have a Democratic paper in deed as well as word, we need a Republican paper. One that covers conservative and GOP doings with the verve that Lynn Sweet reserves for Democratic liberals.
Does frank espousal of partisanship by the left mean the right shouldn’t read the paper? Of course not. The New York Times is as left as you can go without being an uptown edition of the Daily Worker and my day is not complete unless I read it thoroughly. Murdock’s Post , a sassy tabloid reminiscent of the Sun-Times is requisite reading as well—along with New York’s new reincarnation of yore, The Sun. To grow in respect, papers have to have strong points of view and reinforce it from news coverage through obituaries. Bland “objectivity” is dishonest because it’s usually stealth journalism.
The trend toward frank partisanship, flipping the kimono of objectivity, has been coming on in the paper for a long time. Do threats—such as the one made by the editorial to Meeks that he could be causing great harm to the African American community by endangering Blago’s reelection—go too far? No but is arrogant in the later style of McCormick and Hearst and displays of arrogance didn’t help them with the general public. Actually, it may unintentionally help Meeks now that I think about it. Even I’m beginning to get interested in him now that the big muckety-muck powers of Democratic journalism are threatening. He must be more dangerous to liberaldom than I thought. While I resent his flagrant in-your-face tactics with respect to church and state, he evidently poses a challenge to the established Democratic order. Maybe I should re-think. Your comments? Specifically, do you believe papers should be candidly partisan, slanted news and editorial warnings to dissenters rather than dishonestly so, burying their biases by writing news with catch words: “ultra-conservative,” “far-right” with no “ultra-liberal” or “far-left?” And also, if the ruling powers of Chicago’s Democratic newspaper are alarmed, does Meeks threaten the Old Order? Let me know what you think.
On Monday the newspaper, run by publisher John Cruikshank and editor, John Barron gave a veiled but, at bottom, not-so-subtle warning to State Sen. James Meeks, who is considering a third party candidacy for governor. The paper warned Meeks, who has made overtures to social conservatives, not to end the gains blacks have received by endangering the reelection of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The editorial department—by which I mean Cruikshank and Barron—is taking an active role in defending Democratic preserves…along with Lynn Sweet who has been working like a George Tagge trooper trying to get Democrats reconciled in the 6th district (she calling Christine Cegalis to get her to say she endorses Tammy Duckworth). All of these are in the Tagge tradition.
The heavy-handed editorial order (too arrogant for me at first reading) nevertheless fits journalism giants of yore: Colonel Robert R. McCormick and William Randolph Hearst, both of whom were players in their respective parties (McCormick with the Republicans and Hearst with the Democrats with whom he split over FDR and later dominated Republican affairs). McCormick took a sickly-sweet saccharine Teddy Roosevelt-clone paper and made it a national sensation by fulsomely stressing conservative Republicanism and blasting liberal Democrats throughout the state and nation, explaining his circulation’s spectacular rise and impressive growth in national reputation by saying “it ain’t Little Orphan Annie, it’s the hair on our chest!” He was right and deserves to be proven right again. Like McCormick who had been elected president of the Metropolitan Sanitary District and for a time allowed his friends to float the suggestion he might run for president, Hearst toyed with running for president—only as a Democrat. His father had been a Democratic Senator from California and Hearst himself had run unsuccessfully for that job. But both McCormick and Hearst found satisfaction as Cruikshank and Barron are evidently are, by exerting great influence on the affairs of the Democratic party. Nothing wrong with that by old-time journalistic standards.
Since the two crooks left the Sun-Times (who were rather conservative, middle-of-the-road and faintly Republican-leaning especially on national policies) the paper has played an official cat-and-mouse game with frank partisanship: on one hand moving forcefully to the left, on the other hand seeking to hide behind the old “objective” mantra, disappointing many like me who want to see a return to the days when newspapers were flagrantly party-oriented: which would mean a more honest presentation of the news rather than following the old canard that it was “objective.” Objectivity cannot be maintained in the reporting of public affairs—only with traffic accidents, stock reports and the like. Now that we have a Democratic paper in deed as well as word, we need a Republican paper. One that covers conservative and GOP doings with the verve that Lynn Sweet reserves for Democratic liberals.
Does frank espousal of partisanship by the left mean the right shouldn’t read the paper? Of course not. The New York Times is as left as you can go without being an uptown edition of the Daily Worker and my day is not complete unless I read it thoroughly. Murdock’s Post , a sassy tabloid reminiscent of the Sun-Times is requisite reading as well—along with New York’s new reincarnation of yore, The Sun. To grow in respect, papers have to have strong points of view and reinforce it from news coverage through obituaries. Bland “objectivity” is dishonest because it’s usually stealth journalism.
The trend toward frank partisanship, flipping the kimono of objectivity, has been coming on in the paper for a long time. Do threats—such as the one made by the editorial to Meeks that he could be causing great harm to the African American community by endangering Blago’s reelection—go too far? No but is arrogant in the later style of McCormick and Hearst and displays of arrogance didn’t help them with the general public. Actually, it may unintentionally help Meeks now that I think about it. Even I’m beginning to get interested in him now that the big muckety-muck powers of Democratic journalism are threatening. He must be more dangerous to liberaldom than I thought. While I resent his flagrant in-your-face tactics with respect to church and state, he evidently poses a challenge to the established Democratic order. Maybe I should re-think. Your comments? Specifically, do you believe papers should be candidly partisan, slanted news and editorial warnings to dissenters rather than dishonestly so, burying their biases by writing news with catch words: “ultra-conservative,” “far-right” with no “ultra-liberal” or “far-left?” And also, if the ruling powers of Chicago’s Democratic newspaper are alarmed, does Meeks threaten the Old Order? Let me know what you think.
Monday, April 3, 2006
John Schmidt
If you know the answer to the following riddle, give the Comments section a holler. You political junkies remember John Schmidt: Daley’s first chief of staff, prominent establishment lawyer, associate attorney general of the U. S. under Clinton, succeeding Webb Hubble, then a Democratic candidate for state attorney general, beaten by Lisa Madigan…now back as blue chip law firm major partner. Not long ago, Schmidt wrote an Op Ed for, I believe, the Wall Street Journal which got major attention because it defended George W. Bush, no less, attesting that he indeed has inherent constitutional power to tap phone lines in behalf of national security. The story took off because of Schmidt’s high service to Bill Clinton.
Nothing further has been heard of Schmidt so far as I know, except that he appeared startlingly the other day sitting next to none other than John Dean at a Senate Judiciary hearing, the aptly-named Feingold seeking to find political gold with the far-left portion of the Democratic base for a presidential run. Dean got huge press saying that Bush could and should be censured or impeached. You remember that. What did Schmidt say? I haven’t found any word of his testimony in the press. Which leads me to suspect that Schmidt kept to his old position that Bush has the constitutional power. Which would be one reason why Schmidt didn’t get any attention in the New York Times beyond his being shown in a photo sitting next to John Dean (along with Bruce Fein, a conservative legal theorist). Now, Lynn Sweet, the Sun-Times’ liberal Democratic secular saint who has the charism of bi-location, enabling her to cover Democrats here and in Washington at the same time, somehow missed mentioning Schmidt’s testimony, unless I’m far wrong. I am sure her failure to report Democrat Schmidt was not due to lack of diligence: she rightly decided Schmidt’s apostasy did not deserve coverage in her pristine Democratic newspaper. Am I right about this? It’s late on Sunday night and I must go to bed so I won’t try to look it up on the web—but I’ll be Schmidt once again offended all liberaldom. If you have run into his remarks, I’d appreciate a note on Comments
Nothing further has been heard of Schmidt so far as I know, except that he appeared startlingly the other day sitting next to none other than John Dean at a Senate Judiciary hearing, the aptly-named Feingold seeking to find political gold with the far-left portion of the Democratic base for a presidential run. Dean got huge press saying that Bush could and should be censured or impeached. You remember that. What did Schmidt say? I haven’t found any word of his testimony in the press. Which leads me to suspect that Schmidt kept to his old position that Bush has the constitutional power. Which would be one reason why Schmidt didn’t get any attention in the New York Times beyond his being shown in a photo sitting next to John Dean (along with Bruce Fein, a conservative legal theorist). Now, Lynn Sweet, the Sun-Times’ liberal Democratic secular saint who has the charism of bi-location, enabling her to cover Democrats here and in Washington at the same time, somehow missed mentioning Schmidt’s testimony, unless I’m far wrong. I am sure her failure to report Democrat Schmidt was not due to lack of diligence: she rightly decided Schmidt’s apostasy did not deserve coverage in her pristine Democratic newspaper. Am I right about this? It’s late on Sunday night and I must go to bed so I won’t try to look it up on the web—but I’ll be Schmidt once again offended all liberaldom. If you have run into his remarks, I’d appreciate a note on Comments
Cathleen Falsani
It’s a great pity that the Sun-Times’ Cathleen Falsani, its religion editor, hasn’t had the benefit of substantive editing at her paper for we all would be a lot better off—readers of the paper and now unwary book consumers. Showing what a good editor could do for Falsani, the Wall Street Journal assigned a top flight editor from the New York Daily News to review of Falsani’s wafer-lite pop book, The God Factor [Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 2006]. Dawn Eden made short work of it. First, the headline over the review carries the day: “A Different Kind of Celebrity Worship.” Well put. Falsani is more than a celebrity worshiper but a celebrity gawker. I would hope a worshiper would be able to give the interviews some tone. It’s obvious reading it (and I did so in a remarkably short time free at Barnes & Noble) that Falsani is balefully ignorant and just plain uninterested in religion but got a hoot out of meeting Dusty Baker, movie-maker David Lynch, professional lefty Studs Terkel et al. Reviewer Eden asks the right question: “Do cultural icons really have something special to teach us about faith—something we couldn’t learn from interviews with people whose names don’t sell books?” If her editor at the Sun-Times had asked the question and kept pounding Falsani to answer with some depth, a lot of trees would be standing today that were decimated into pulp for what is certainly appropriately movie mag-style pulp. If you think it’s vitally interesting to discover what Bono, hoops star Hakeem Olajuwon, Al Sharpton and Bush speech-writer Michael Gerson think about God, go to Barnes & Noble and actually buy the thing. Also I heard her described both ways: is she a former evangelical turned Catholic or former Catholic turned Evangelical? On both questions, I hope you’ll educate me
One Man’s Opinion on
Last Night’s “Political Shootout”
The Terry Barnich-Joe Moore combination on last night’s Political Shootout was fun. I must say I enjoy the lawyerly way Barnich approaches the issues—but by his own admission, Terry isn’t a movement conservative (but as he says, a Republican who wants to win). I always thought one could be both…but anyhow the combination was electric. Joe Moore, the very liberal alderman for the 49th ward is a movement liberal, or as he would prefer, progressive. I came away from the broadcast thinking that it is Judy Baar Topinka’s loss that Barnich won’t direct the campaign until November, but he’s got a business to run. Last night I learned that both sides are uneasy about Sen. James Meeks, believing that he could cost them plenty. Barnich thought that Meeks would probably take more off Blagojevich’s hide than Topinka’s. I agree with that. Your comments? Who would stand to lose more if Meeks gets into the race?...
The Terry Barnich-Joe Moore combination on last night’s Political Shootout was fun. I must say I enjoy the lawyerly way Barnich approaches the issues—but by his own admission, Terry isn’t a movement conservative (but as he says, a Republican who wants to win). I always thought one could be both…but anyhow the combination was electric. Joe Moore, the very liberal alderman for the 49th ward is a movement liberal, or as he would prefer, progressive. I came away from the broadcast thinking that it is Judy Baar Topinka’s loss that Barnich won’t direct the campaign until November, but he’s got a business to run. Last night I learned that both sides are uneasy about Sen. James Meeks, believing that he could cost them plenty. Barnich thought that Meeks would probably take more off Blagojevich’s hide than Topinka’s. I agree with that. Your comments? Who would stand to lose more if Meeks gets into the race?...
The Knights of Columbus Initiation of a Half Century Ago—Oh, What it Seemed to Be: A Drunken Bum, a Bleeding Man, a Slapped Priest, a Drawn Gun, then Gunshots. What Did it All Mean?
i[And about the slight doubt I expressed yesterday: All must be o.k. because here I am back here and it’s Monday].
The minute I walked in the door at the Knights of Columbus headquarters in St. Cloud for the initiation one Fall Sunday in 1954, I knew something was wrong. There was a coolness in the air—much different than when the Knights were trying to convince me to join. I wondered: was it something I wrote in the last day or two? Couldn’t think of anything. Why were they diffident—or was it my imagination? I didn’t think so. Anyhow, I joined my fellow inductees, about fifty in all, many of whom I knew. A deputy sheriff I knew very well; a granite quarry worker, retired and on disability; a drugstore counterman; a whole lot of more prominent citizens I hadn’t met before: businessmen, at least two lawyers; a charming fellow named Gerald Olson, with striking Scandinavian features (blond hair, blue eyes) who said he was very excited about becoming a Knight, pointing out that some Protestants need the harbor of the sacraments. Touching.
The rest I didn’t know but that wasn’t strange because they came from several other towns in central Minnesota—Little Falls (home of Charles Lindbergh), Melrose, Avon, Albany. Of the 50 I probably knew 20 or 25. One Knight brings around a tall, dapper man. “I’d like you to meet, Father,” he said. He was every inch a priest. About age 40 at most, dressed in an impeccably well-fitting suit and gleaming roman collar, unlike the average workaday St. Cloud area priests whose suits were baggy, shoes un-shined. I’d seen future hierarchical comers look like him in Chicago and elsewhere: you could easily predict he’d be a bishop. I thought I had seen his face before. He was from St. Paul, someone said, adding he was a comer. I decided I saw his picture in the archdiocesean weekly. An aide to the Archbishop there. Priests are welcome in the K of C’s and he thought he could add to the number of clerics in St. Paul after he joined. “We can all use the fresh enthusiasm the Knights supply,” he said quietly, with an effortless polish indicating expertise in the pulpit. But even he was disturbed by the coolness of the reception. “What gives?” he asked me with a smile. Then he shrugged, indicating acceptance and said, “oh, well…”
Others we talked to—he and I—seemed to have the same impression I did. After the rush act about joining, we were treated like no big deal. One guy said: “Boy, they couldn’t get me hustled to this initiation soon enough. Now I’m here they say, `what’s your name again?’ What’s that about? Do they have a quota of how many new members they have to get and once you’re on board they lose interest?” Funny, but most of us had the same impression. The priest said, quietly, “that’s the way it is in many lay organizations of the Church—something we’ve got to fix.” He said it with impressive authority.
The whole membership of the Knights were ushered in and took their seats. The Grand Knight introduced the highest ranking Knight in the state, the State Deputy, who was to run the show. The State Deputy was well-known: the prosecuting attorney of Winona county—an orator, top lawyer who had been receiving good press and a likely future candidate for attorney general of the state on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor ticket, James Dailey, a powerfully built man, six-feet-four, a great bear of a man, not unlike a younger version—about age 50 or so—of Tip O’Neill. Towering, glowering and defiantly artistocratic, Dailey was reputed to be the guy to return the Irish to top power in state politics, from the Humphreys, Freemans, Andersons, et al..
Dailey with a magnificent basso profundo voice fit for the courtroom intoned, “Let the initiation begun.” A short, squat functionary then appeared in a off-white robe, hair ruffled with, I thought, wall-eyes that occur to some men when they had too much to drink, started walking toward us. He stumbled slightly on a raised section of the floor as he approached us, causing him to mutter something to himself. He tugged up his gown and jerked a thumb at us, saying “O.k., follow me.” He led us through the chamber into a side room where he said nothing else but cast his eyes about us in a kind of disapproving manner (at least I thought so). He said, “you fellows have to stay in this holding room until they’re ready for you” and left, slamming the door. No place to sit down; we were all standing. A fellow next to me said, “Did you get a whiff of that guy?” I said: no, what do you mean? He said, “apple-jack 90 proof.” The priest demurred, charitably. But the word got around pretty quickly; they had a heavily drinking guy apparently running this thing. The convert—Olson—said, “great” and looked depressed for the first time. Then he brightened and said, “well, nothing can bring me down because I’ve looked forward to this for a long time.”
Now we could hear sounds coming from the main chamber—applause; there was a meeting going on. Most of us looked around, no windows, no chairs and thought: this is a great way to spend a Sunday. Not long after, the door opened and the same guy came in. He was reading off our names. I purposely moved close to him to get a whiff. Yep. Unmistakable. He lined us up and said we were going to be blindfolded. A few others came in and blindfolded us. Then as we stood there in the dark he said we’re going in to the main chamber and get asked catechism questions. Catechism? Nobody told us that was going to happen. I knew my catechism from grade school pretty well but I would have brushed up had I known this. Everybody started grumbling.
He said, “o.k., now shut up. You knew you’d get asked questions when you came in.” One guy said, “the hell I did! Nobody told me! Were any of you guys told?” Chorus of “no’s.” The functionary said, “Anyhow you’re going to be asked so shape up.” We were blindfolded and to keep from falling, we were told to put our hands on the shoulders of the guys ahead of us and marched in, chain-gang fashion, everybody grumbling under his breath. The functionary bellowed out (in a voice I thought was slightly slurred): “Honorable State Deputy and Sir Knights, I present this class for catechetical examination!” There was a weak scattering of applause.
[An inauspicious start but it got worse, far worse, reminding me of my mother’s shrug when initiation came up. “Don’t know about it; don’t want to. Little boys having fun.” She’d revise her statement if she witnessed it. More tomorrow.]
The minute I walked in the door at the Knights of Columbus headquarters in St. Cloud for the initiation one Fall Sunday in 1954, I knew something was wrong. There was a coolness in the air—much different than when the Knights were trying to convince me to join. I wondered: was it something I wrote in the last day or two? Couldn’t think of anything. Why were they diffident—or was it my imagination? I didn’t think so. Anyhow, I joined my fellow inductees, about fifty in all, many of whom I knew. A deputy sheriff I knew very well; a granite quarry worker, retired and on disability; a drugstore counterman; a whole lot of more prominent citizens I hadn’t met before: businessmen, at least two lawyers; a charming fellow named Gerald Olson, with striking Scandinavian features (blond hair, blue eyes) who said he was very excited about becoming a Knight, pointing out that some Protestants need the harbor of the sacraments. Touching.
The rest I didn’t know but that wasn’t strange because they came from several other towns in central Minnesota—Little Falls (home of Charles Lindbergh), Melrose, Avon, Albany. Of the 50 I probably knew 20 or 25. One Knight brings around a tall, dapper man. “I’d like you to meet, Father,” he said. He was every inch a priest. About age 40 at most, dressed in an impeccably well-fitting suit and gleaming roman collar, unlike the average workaday St. Cloud area priests whose suits were baggy, shoes un-shined. I’d seen future hierarchical comers look like him in Chicago and elsewhere: you could easily predict he’d be a bishop. I thought I had seen his face before. He was from St. Paul, someone said, adding he was a comer. I decided I saw his picture in the archdiocesean weekly. An aide to the Archbishop there. Priests are welcome in the K of C’s and he thought he could add to the number of clerics in St. Paul after he joined. “We can all use the fresh enthusiasm the Knights supply,” he said quietly, with an effortless polish indicating expertise in the pulpit. But even he was disturbed by the coolness of the reception. “What gives?” he asked me with a smile. Then he shrugged, indicating acceptance and said, “oh, well…”
Others we talked to—he and I—seemed to have the same impression I did. After the rush act about joining, we were treated like no big deal. One guy said: “Boy, they couldn’t get me hustled to this initiation soon enough. Now I’m here they say, `what’s your name again?’ What’s that about? Do they have a quota of how many new members they have to get and once you’re on board they lose interest?” Funny, but most of us had the same impression. The priest said, quietly, “that’s the way it is in many lay organizations of the Church—something we’ve got to fix.” He said it with impressive authority.
The whole membership of the Knights were ushered in and took their seats. The Grand Knight introduced the highest ranking Knight in the state, the State Deputy, who was to run the show. The State Deputy was well-known: the prosecuting attorney of Winona county—an orator, top lawyer who had been receiving good press and a likely future candidate for attorney general of the state on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor ticket, James Dailey, a powerfully built man, six-feet-four, a great bear of a man, not unlike a younger version—about age 50 or so—of Tip O’Neill. Towering, glowering and defiantly artistocratic, Dailey was reputed to be the guy to return the Irish to top power in state politics, from the Humphreys, Freemans, Andersons, et al..
Dailey with a magnificent basso profundo voice fit for the courtroom intoned, “Let the initiation begun.” A short, squat functionary then appeared in a off-white robe, hair ruffled with, I thought, wall-eyes that occur to some men when they had too much to drink, started walking toward us. He stumbled slightly on a raised section of the floor as he approached us, causing him to mutter something to himself. He tugged up his gown and jerked a thumb at us, saying “O.k., follow me.” He led us through the chamber into a side room where he said nothing else but cast his eyes about us in a kind of disapproving manner (at least I thought so). He said, “you fellows have to stay in this holding room until they’re ready for you” and left, slamming the door. No place to sit down; we were all standing. A fellow next to me said, “Did you get a whiff of that guy?” I said: no, what do you mean? He said, “apple-jack 90 proof.” The priest demurred, charitably. But the word got around pretty quickly; they had a heavily drinking guy apparently running this thing. The convert—Olson—said, “great” and looked depressed for the first time. Then he brightened and said, “well, nothing can bring me down because I’ve looked forward to this for a long time.”
Now we could hear sounds coming from the main chamber—applause; there was a meeting going on. Most of us looked around, no windows, no chairs and thought: this is a great way to spend a Sunday. Not long after, the door opened and the same guy came in. He was reading off our names. I purposely moved close to him to get a whiff. Yep. Unmistakable. He lined us up and said we were going to be blindfolded. A few others came in and blindfolded us. Then as we stood there in the dark he said we’re going in to the main chamber and get asked catechism questions. Catechism? Nobody told us that was going to happen. I knew my catechism from grade school pretty well but I would have brushed up had I known this. Everybody started grumbling.
He said, “o.k., now shut up. You knew you’d get asked questions when you came in.” One guy said, “the hell I did! Nobody told me! Were any of you guys told?” Chorus of “no’s.” The functionary said, “Anyhow you’re going to be asked so shape up.” We were blindfolded and to keep from falling, we were told to put our hands on the shoulders of the guys ahead of us and marched in, chain-gang fashion, everybody grumbling under his breath. The functionary bellowed out (in a voice I thought was slightly slurred): “Honorable State Deputy and Sir Knights, I present this class for catechetical examination!” There was a weak scattering of applause.
[An inauspicious start but it got worse, far worse, reminding me of my mother’s shrug when initiation came up. “Don’t know about it; don’t want to. Little boys having fun.” She’d revise her statement if she witnessed it. More tomorrow.]
Saturday, April 1, 2006
About the Brooks Op Ed, I Called Brownback Friday and...
...the office said it is grateful for David Brooks’ Op Ed I referred to yesterday but did not supply Brooks with the material he used—and I got the distinct feeling from the press secretary that he seemed rather uncomfortable answering questions—although Brownback did vote for the Judiciary Committee version of the immigration bill.
In the meantime, we have a very good commentary on the opposite end of Brooks from here which you should download. I’m still going after the original statistics, however.
In the meantime, we have a very good commentary on the opposite end of Brooks from here which you should download. I’m still going after the original statistics, however.
Barnich vs. Moore on Sunday’s Shootout
Former Topinka campaign manager Terry Barnich will face 49th ward alderman and extreme liberal (member of the Democratic National Committee) Joe Moore on Sunday’s WLS-AM radio show at 8 p.m. All Topinka-ing aside, pragmatist Barnich is one of the smartest operatives in the Republican party (who would call himself a pro-lifer, if running himself) who maneuvered the Topinka ship through some dangerous straits (Oberweis’ and Gidwitz’s blasts and the famous “Pay to Play Polka” commercial). Barnich was a last-minute entry into the 2004 U. S. Senate sweepstakes where he would have been far superior, all agree, to Alan Keyes who must have taken a blood oath to offend everybody and their distant relatives at least ten times in the campaign.
Once Back in St. Cloud, Interested in Other Things I Turn Down a Twin Cities Newspaper Offer
[This is for my kids and grandchildren to save for later when they get time to read, probably after I’m long gone, about grandpa’s “ early, formative years”]
After finally getting a job offer from the St. Paul Pioneer-Press in late 1954 for a not breathtaking figure, I sat down and deduced how I could get by on what they offered: $120 a week. The benefits were obvious: a little more prestige with a chance ultimately to write politics. A medical care program (which as a kid who believed he was immortal, didn’t interest me). But the negatives loomed large: No free haircuts from any incarcerated Indian at the Stearns county jail with an elderly sheriff looking on saying “Just take a little off the top and sides, keem-o-sabe [sp?], don’t scalp `im”; no room rent for $5 a week including linens; no free lunches from local sandwich shop because the owner was a fan; no clout from being misperceived as a shirt-tail relative of the “old Judge”: (John J. Roeser, federal district judge in the `20s) which I cashed in on for some political stories although I wasn’t related (I never did find out what he did that was so endearing). No free-lancing feature stories for a wire service. And there was an intangible something else. Caesar wrote that he would rather be first in a small town than second in Rome. As a political writer who called his own turn on anything I wrote, I was first—i.e. the only one. In St. Paul, I’d be a lowly cub.
Plus no Knights of Columbus initiation trips which paid a little money but which were more fun than almost anything else (more later). So I turned it down thinking maybe something better will come up. After all, I had only been there a year—and, frankly, I was coming around against my better judgment to love St. Cloud. But I knew I was dangerously temporizing by not getting out: maybe this would be the last job offer and I’d be stuck making $67.50 for the rest of my life. But that didn’t bother me much--such was the insouciance of youth. At this time, 1954 going on 1955, I drew a great deal of fun and satisfaction from an acting career—that involved, strangely, the local council of the Knights of Columbus.
The Knights.
Anyone familiar with U.S. history in the early 19th century understands the role secret societies played in our history. De Tocqueville wrote of it; so have all the major historians; I’ve heard Samuel Eliot Morison lecture on it. There was a fascination with them, particularly as a fraternal association which at the outset was strictly patrician. The leading secret society from the time of the nation’s founding was the Masonic Order to which George Washington and his fellow Virginia planters belonged…and he led a string of prominent presidents (not all of them however) who belonged up to Harry S. Truman. Jefferson didn’t belong (his belief in religion was very slight) but Madison and Monroe did. Then they skipped for a few presidents. William Henry Harrison did; John Tyler did. In the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt, Harding, FDR was high ranking. And so on.
The Masons were intended to be a male auxiliary to Protestantism but for many men who valued camaraderie it often became a substitute for Protestant church-going. Then, of course, you know what happened: business deals were cooked through Masonic connections; politics was affirmed that way; even when I was a child, whole companies seemed to embrace them (or maybe that was just Catholic paranoia). Sears was supposed to be a Masonic preserve; if you’re not a Mason, don’t expect to go far. That was the refrain: a good excuse for men who didn’t go far.
In the mid-19th fear of the Masons grew so great among Catholic immigrants and others that a political party was created to counteract them, the Anti-Masonic party, which amalgamated with the Whigs and later the Republican. Abraham Lincoln was not a Mason and his leanings were not religious at the outset, anyhow. But his great and good friend, Thurlow Weed, a Republican strategist, was a leader of the Anti-Masons as was the brightest member of his cabinet, William H. Seward. Anti-Masonic activity was particularly prominent with the newly-arrived immigrants of Catholic heritage, particularly the Irish. Then as the Irish strove to gain acceptance, many of them left their Catholic faith and became Masons. This led one young priest, Father Michael McGivney of Hartford, Connecticut to establish what would be a kind of Catholic version of the Masons in the church basement in 1882.
Because Catholics—particularly the Irish and Italians—were regarded as largely riff-raff and less than 100% pro-American (because, it was thought, their Catholic faith made them pledge allegiance to a foreign potentate, the Pope), they were cut off from many benefits, including some benefit organizations of the time which paid out funds to widows and orphans. McGivney wanted to start a lodge that (a) provided a co-op insurance program for widows and orphans of members who were not supported by any other means, (b) stressed patriotism and Americanism and (c) would serve as a social rallying point for young immigrant men. He picked Christopher Columbus who was both Catholic and Italian (if only Columbus were Irish it would have been more advantageous, he thought, but you couldn’t have everything). He liked the idea of knighthood and called the group the Knights of Columbus. Rapidly it expanded throughout the East and became a rallying point for Catholic men to slam the doors shut and hold mysterious rituals not too different from Amos ‘n Andy’s lodge, the Mystic Knights of the Sea.
In St. Cloud of the mid-1950s, Masonry didn’t count for much but being a Knight of Columbus sure did—and the Protestants saw the same kind of clique-ishness that we did in Chicago. I wanted to get in because all my St. Cloud friends were in and my father in Chicago, an enthusiastic Knight, volunteered to pay my dues. He said it would bring great dividends for an aspiring political reporter as well as help his spiritual life—and he was right (about the political connections, anyhow; it did nothing for my spiritual life except one thing: made me so busy in my off-hours I didn’t get into trouble.)
St. Cloud was a heavily Catholic town; the mayor was a Knight, so was the chief of police and the town’s leading plain-clothes detective, the sandwich shop owner who staked me to free take-outs, Fred J. Hughes, the Republican lawyer who once said he wanted to talk to me about the Republican party but seemingly forgot; the owner of the town’s biggest employer, the granite quarry; the biggest manufacturer, Franklin Transformer; Sheriff McIntee, all his deputies; the leading undertakers (excellent for culling gossip from), the politicians, of course; the leaders of the main street businesses; the adjutant general of the National Guard, the bankers, Frederick Fandel of Fandel’s Department store; the business manager of my newspaper (although the owner was a Mason).
I can see them all now, seated in rows listening to the Grand Knight (the head guy), Dr. Fred Petters, the town osteopath, dressed in regalia. If the roof of the K of C building were to fall in and kill them all, there would be a lot of openings in every profession including the three mortuaries.
But it was the Knights’ initiation ceremony, written by Father McGivney himself (who had died in 1898 at age 38 and ever since has been pushed by the Knights for sainthood, quite a stretch it seems to me) that sparked my interest. Since I was a boy I had come upon male family members whispering about the initiation, talking to themselves sometimes with saucer-eyes of astonishment, then doubling up in laughter. But they couldn’t tell since under the rubric of the Knights was that no one—and that meant no one—could reveal the initiation—even to wives and loved ones. To do so was akin to the most foul mortal sin, seemingly cavalier about betrayal of Christianity itself. Then in the 1940s Chicago Catholic apostate, drunken bum, womanizer, druggie, atheist, degenerate but literary master James T. Farrell, described the procedure in his novel Studs My father had gone to St. Alphonsus grade school with Farrell (who had the nickname Studs) and he said Farrell was known as a despicable type even then. But, he acknowledged, Farrell had captured the essence of Chicago in his novels, that he was sure Farrell died unrepentant with the result that his soul is roasting in torment on a spit in Hell. “Nevertheless,” he said, mysteriously, “in so many things about the times in Chicago, Studs had it right.” But for Farrell’s shocking disclosure of the K of C rites he had only the most vehement disgust.
Notwithstanding Farrell’s literary acumen , when I was a child and it was a best-seller, not only was I forbidden to buy the book or read it in the library but that if someone sought to tell me the ritual, I should withdraw from his presence immediately. Anyhow I would find out soon enough when I became a Knight. But my mother would never find out. She would flounce away and say it was a lot of kid stuff and she didn’t want to know anyhow. Now when I found out, my father said, I was not to tell anyone how the initiation turned out including my mother, although I could share laughs and exclamations in private with other Knights, the implication being that were I to violate that oath, I might very well be struck dead in the telling of it and the family would probably have no recourse but to bury me in unconsecrated ground while my soul would take its place, turning on the same spit with Farrell’s.
Thus it was a great experience to take the initiation but unfortunately it was short-lived. Some years after, the Knights determined that the ceremony was too archaic, out-of-date and would be supplanted by a modern one, as drab as it was officious—and worse, not secret at all. When asked what would happen to the old secret ritual now that it was rendered obsolete, the Supreme Knight, in Hartford, shrugged and said frankly it was no concern to him. So it was a great disappointment, once to get on the inside and find out later that people would become bored with the telling of it. I felt cheated but that’s the way life is sometimes. Thus when I go on with this story, I’ll tell you the details since I not only survived the initiation but was recruited to travel the state at Knights’ expense putting it on.
It’s now time to go to bed, late on Friday night. These words are to be posted Saturday. I’ll resume the telling next Monday morning. All the same, if something happens to me before then—and I die or be struck mute and illiterate—you’ll know there was something to the old injunction after all.
My best advice would be for you to forget the whole thing…but think of me kindly.
After finally getting a job offer from the St. Paul Pioneer-Press in late 1954 for a not breathtaking figure, I sat down and deduced how I could get by on what they offered: $120 a week. The benefits were obvious: a little more prestige with a chance ultimately to write politics. A medical care program (which as a kid who believed he was immortal, didn’t interest me). But the negatives loomed large: No free haircuts from any incarcerated Indian at the Stearns county jail with an elderly sheriff looking on saying “Just take a little off the top and sides, keem-o-sabe [sp?], don’t scalp `im”; no room rent for $5 a week including linens; no free lunches from local sandwich shop because the owner was a fan; no clout from being misperceived as a shirt-tail relative of the “old Judge”: (John J. Roeser, federal district judge in the `20s) which I cashed in on for some political stories although I wasn’t related (I never did find out what he did that was so endearing). No free-lancing feature stories for a wire service. And there was an intangible something else. Caesar wrote that he would rather be first in a small town than second in Rome. As a political writer who called his own turn on anything I wrote, I was first—i.e. the only one. In St. Paul, I’d be a lowly cub.
Plus no Knights of Columbus initiation trips which paid a little money but which were more fun than almost anything else (more later). So I turned it down thinking maybe something better will come up. After all, I had only been there a year—and, frankly, I was coming around against my better judgment to love St. Cloud. But I knew I was dangerously temporizing by not getting out: maybe this would be the last job offer and I’d be stuck making $67.50 for the rest of my life. But that didn’t bother me much--such was the insouciance of youth. At this time, 1954 going on 1955, I drew a great deal of fun and satisfaction from an acting career—that involved, strangely, the local council of the Knights of Columbus.
The Knights.
Anyone familiar with U.S. history in the early 19th century understands the role secret societies played in our history. De Tocqueville wrote of it; so have all the major historians; I’ve heard Samuel Eliot Morison lecture on it. There was a fascination with them, particularly as a fraternal association which at the outset was strictly patrician. The leading secret society from the time of the nation’s founding was the Masonic Order to which George Washington and his fellow Virginia planters belonged…and he led a string of prominent presidents (not all of them however) who belonged up to Harry S. Truman. Jefferson didn’t belong (his belief in religion was very slight) but Madison and Monroe did. Then they skipped for a few presidents. William Henry Harrison did; John Tyler did. In the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt, Harding, FDR was high ranking. And so on.
The Masons were intended to be a male auxiliary to Protestantism but for many men who valued camaraderie it often became a substitute for Protestant church-going. Then, of course, you know what happened: business deals were cooked through Masonic connections; politics was affirmed that way; even when I was a child, whole companies seemed to embrace them (or maybe that was just Catholic paranoia). Sears was supposed to be a Masonic preserve; if you’re not a Mason, don’t expect to go far. That was the refrain: a good excuse for men who didn’t go far.
In the mid-19th fear of the Masons grew so great among Catholic immigrants and others that a political party was created to counteract them, the Anti-Masonic party, which amalgamated with the Whigs and later the Republican. Abraham Lincoln was not a Mason and his leanings were not religious at the outset, anyhow. But his great and good friend, Thurlow Weed, a Republican strategist, was a leader of the Anti-Masons as was the brightest member of his cabinet, William H. Seward. Anti-Masonic activity was particularly prominent with the newly-arrived immigrants of Catholic heritage, particularly the Irish. Then as the Irish strove to gain acceptance, many of them left their Catholic faith and became Masons. This led one young priest, Father Michael McGivney of Hartford, Connecticut to establish what would be a kind of Catholic version of the Masons in the church basement in 1882.
Because Catholics—particularly the Irish and Italians—were regarded as largely riff-raff and less than 100% pro-American (because, it was thought, their Catholic faith made them pledge allegiance to a foreign potentate, the Pope), they were cut off from many benefits, including some benefit organizations of the time which paid out funds to widows and orphans. McGivney wanted to start a lodge that (a) provided a co-op insurance program for widows and orphans of members who were not supported by any other means, (b) stressed patriotism and Americanism and (c) would serve as a social rallying point for young immigrant men. He picked Christopher Columbus who was both Catholic and Italian (if only Columbus were Irish it would have been more advantageous, he thought, but you couldn’t have everything). He liked the idea of knighthood and called the group the Knights of Columbus. Rapidly it expanded throughout the East and became a rallying point for Catholic men to slam the doors shut and hold mysterious rituals not too different from Amos ‘n Andy’s lodge, the Mystic Knights of the Sea.
In St. Cloud of the mid-1950s, Masonry didn’t count for much but being a Knight of Columbus sure did—and the Protestants saw the same kind of clique-ishness that we did in Chicago. I wanted to get in because all my St. Cloud friends were in and my father in Chicago, an enthusiastic Knight, volunteered to pay my dues. He said it would bring great dividends for an aspiring political reporter as well as help his spiritual life—and he was right (about the political connections, anyhow; it did nothing for my spiritual life except one thing: made me so busy in my off-hours I didn’t get into trouble.)
St. Cloud was a heavily Catholic town; the mayor was a Knight, so was the chief of police and the town’s leading plain-clothes detective, the sandwich shop owner who staked me to free take-outs, Fred J. Hughes, the Republican lawyer who once said he wanted to talk to me about the Republican party but seemingly forgot; the owner of the town’s biggest employer, the granite quarry; the biggest manufacturer, Franklin Transformer; Sheriff McIntee, all his deputies; the leading undertakers (excellent for culling gossip from), the politicians, of course; the leaders of the main street businesses; the adjutant general of the National Guard, the bankers, Frederick Fandel of Fandel’s Department store; the business manager of my newspaper (although the owner was a Mason).
I can see them all now, seated in rows listening to the Grand Knight (the head guy), Dr. Fred Petters, the town osteopath, dressed in regalia. If the roof of the K of C building were to fall in and kill them all, there would be a lot of openings in every profession including the three mortuaries.
But it was the Knights’ initiation ceremony, written by Father McGivney himself (who had died in 1898 at age 38 and ever since has been pushed by the Knights for sainthood, quite a stretch it seems to me) that sparked my interest. Since I was a boy I had come upon male family members whispering about the initiation, talking to themselves sometimes with saucer-eyes of astonishment, then doubling up in laughter. But they couldn’t tell since under the rubric of the Knights was that no one—and that meant no one—could reveal the initiation—even to wives and loved ones. To do so was akin to the most foul mortal sin, seemingly cavalier about betrayal of Christianity itself. Then in the 1940s Chicago Catholic apostate, drunken bum, womanizer, druggie, atheist, degenerate but literary master James T. Farrell, described the procedure in his novel Studs My father had gone to St. Alphonsus grade school with Farrell (who had the nickname Studs) and he said Farrell was known as a despicable type even then. But, he acknowledged, Farrell had captured the essence of Chicago in his novels, that he was sure Farrell died unrepentant with the result that his soul is roasting in torment on a spit in Hell. “Nevertheless,” he said, mysteriously, “in so many things about the times in Chicago, Studs had it right.” But for Farrell’s shocking disclosure of the K of C rites he had only the most vehement disgust.
Notwithstanding Farrell’s literary acumen , when I was a child and it was a best-seller, not only was I forbidden to buy the book or read it in the library but that if someone sought to tell me the ritual, I should withdraw from his presence immediately. Anyhow I would find out soon enough when I became a Knight. But my mother would never find out. She would flounce away and say it was a lot of kid stuff and she didn’t want to know anyhow. Now when I found out, my father said, I was not to tell anyone how the initiation turned out including my mother, although I could share laughs and exclamations in private with other Knights, the implication being that were I to violate that oath, I might very well be struck dead in the telling of it and the family would probably have no recourse but to bury me in unconsecrated ground while my soul would take its place, turning on the same spit with Farrell’s.
Thus it was a great experience to take the initiation but unfortunately it was short-lived. Some years after, the Knights determined that the ceremony was too archaic, out-of-date and would be supplanted by a modern one, as drab as it was officious—and worse, not secret at all. When asked what would happen to the old secret ritual now that it was rendered obsolete, the Supreme Knight, in Hartford, shrugged and said frankly it was no concern to him. So it was a great disappointment, once to get on the inside and find out later that people would become bored with the telling of it. I felt cheated but that’s the way life is sometimes. Thus when I go on with this story, I’ll tell you the details since I not only survived the initiation but was recruited to travel the state at Knights’ expense putting it on.
It’s now time to go to bed, late on Friday night. These words are to be posted Saturday. I’ll resume the telling next Monday morning. All the same, if something happens to me before then—and I die or be struck mute and illiterate—you’ll know there was something to the old injunction after all.
My best advice would be for you to forget the whole thing…but think of me kindly.
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