More From That Wacky Church

You've probably heard about the latest display of obtuseness from the Vatican. It seems the man designated as the "preacher of the papal household" remarked that, Passover and Holy Week coming together this year, he had been thinking about the Jews. He then read a letter from an anonymous Jewish friend:

I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.

I'll spare you detailed discussion of the more obvious points, such as the rather salient differences between being a victim of anti-Semitism and being accused of covering up child abuse, and note a few less obvious ones.

• Maybe it's different in Italian, but I have never heard of, and can hardly imagine, a Jew referring to Catholics as "all the faithful." As far as I know, only Catholics refer to Catholics this way, as in Voice of the Faithful, the Catholic lay group started to support victims of, you guessed it, clergy sexual abuse. I haven't heard any attacks against Catholic laymen in this scandal, have you? Attacks by Catholic laymen, yes. (And by the way, what are the less shameful aspects of anti-Semitism?)

• The good father's comments would have been more effective, I think, if he had shown some understanding of the historical ironies of his analogy. For example: "For the last thousand years, the Church has been complicit in the persecution of the Jews. Now we in the Church have begun to see what it is like to be, as a group, unfairly scorned and demonized." I'm still not convinced, but it's better, right? Of course, if top people in the Church were capable of an admission of error like that, they wouldn't be in this mess.

• Some academic could easily spend the rest of his life writing case studies from this scandal for an MBA course on organizations. You can probably think of some (comparing how Toyota and the Church handled threats to their reputations, for example). Here's one for a class on ethics: What do you do when ensuring the survival of the organization starts to conflict with its mission? This is, in all seriousness, a knotty problem when you're the One True Church. There's hardly any moral compromise that doesn't seem justified compared to a risk of badly damaging the organization. But maybe the Holocaust would be a better example.

Mopping Up Health Care

It's hard to blog on public policy right now, as there's a sort of news vacuum caused by the absence of health care (the House passed the slightly revised reconciliation bill a few hours ago). Now the networks are finally explaining what's in the bill, and anyone who watched Diane Sawyer the other night on ABC must be wondering what all the fuss was about-- everything she described sounded so, well, reasonable.

A few final memories: John Boehner saying that although people were angry at the Democrats and felt they weren't being listened to, violence is bad; a youngish protester in front of the Capitol saying that Obama wanted to take his private property, and he was not OK with that (can anyone even tell me what he's referring to?); the spectacle of someone who nearly sank the bill over his opposition to abortion being called a "baby-killer" (oh, sorry, the words "This bill is a..." didn't come through clearly, like the "a" in Neil Armstrong's "One small step for a man...").

Update: Well, it's getting less amusing. Rep. Stupak, the "baby-killer" mentioned above, has become one of the main foci of hatred. What is the world coming to when this guy is a hero? I guess it proves once again that no putatively good deed goes unpunished: If he had not made himself so prominent demanding changes to the abortion language in the House bill, if he had said that the Senate language was good enough for him, as it was for a zillion nuns and Catholic hospitals, people would be paying no more attention to him than to Rep. Himes (who?). Now the crazies feel like jilted lovers. For tape of some the comments made on his voicemail, go here. Interesting to note what is bleepworthy and what isn't at CBS. One of the words that comes out as a long bleep at CBS I heard elsewhere as "mother[bleep]". Also note "ass," in the fully anatomical sense, but "son of a [bleep]."

What is most discouraging about all this is the tepid, blaming-the-victim response of Republicans. I guess the new meta-theme of this blog will be our dysfunctional politics and what can be done about it. More soon. In the meantime, here's an e-mail I sent to Newt Gingrich, which I'm sure will solve the problem:

Dear Mr. Gingrich:
I always thought you had some personal integrity, so I am shocked and disappointed by your recent comments saying the Democrats are partly to blame for the threats and violence against them, and comparing them to remarks against Bush and Cheney. If someone said to you, "I hope you bleed out the ass and die," (as someone did to, of all people, Rep. Stupak), would you say, "Well, I was asking for that"? I don't think you would, nor should you. I think you have betrayed your responsibility as a political leader because you want the votes of the lunatic fringe. It doesn't seem to me hard to say, "We're all Americans, and we need to respect political opinions we disagree with." But evidently it's too hard for you. Shame on you.
  Howard Frant

Fairness to Republicans

It's been hard to find anything to defend about Republicans' role in the health care debate, what with "death panels," "government takeover" of health care, "socialized medicine," and general deceit. I am therefore pleased to be able to explain that the attack on vote-switching Florida Representative Suzanne Kosmas as a "space cadet" is less bizarrely personal than it appears. Her district includes the Kennedy Space Center, and she is a strong backer of manned space flight. Her constituents may even consider the term a compliment, though I doubt the Republicans intended it that way.

On the other hand, what's with The Last True Conservative, David Brooks? Last night on PBS, he was kvetching about the (pardon the expression) aborted Democratic plan to "deem" the Senate bill passed once the House passed a reconciliation bill. I can't for the life of me see any principle this violates; just the opposite. Why should House Democrats have to go on record as voting for a bill (the Senate bill) they don't like and don't intend to take effect, just to get around Republican obstructionism?  But Brooks is at least consistent on obstructionism: he's against attempts to restrict use of the filibuster. He appears to believe, erroneously, that it is either a Constitutional or a traditional part of legislating in the Senate. Not so; despite what you may have heard, the founders did not consider governmental paralysis a good thing.

Strict Construction

I just watched a video clip of Obama's now-famous remarks about the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address. Contrary to the claims of Chief Justice Roberts, I could detect neither "cheering" nor "hollering" in the reaction of Congress. Of course, he was there, but the trauma of this terrifying experience may have led his memory to embroider a bit. No pundit seems to have commented on this. I agree that hollering, along with turning cartwheels and firing guns in the air, are inappropriate for that venue.

What the Green Is Wearing

Proving that South Carolina is not the only source of unreconstructed silliness, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina has proposed taking Grant off the $50 bill and putting Reagan on. This idea has provoked a certain amount of hilarity, with suggestions including putting Reagan on a credit card. My own suggestion is to symbolize budget deficits by putting him on money with a hole in it. This might not be practical for bills, but the Chinese used to do it with coins, right?

To say the least, one can find more worthy candidates. James Madison, not only a dead president but America's greatest theorist of democracy, hasn't been on currency since we stopped making the $5,000 bill. Does anyone really want to argue that Reagan is greater than Madison? (McHenry finesses this problem by arguing that every generation needs its own heroes, meaning, I think, that he doesn't have any idea who those other guys were.) Or what about Republican maverick Theodore Roosevelt? Too controversial among Republicans; Tea Partiers view the presidency of TR, not FDR, as the beginning of the end of American liberty.

Some of the people on U.S. currency were not presidents at all, of course, notably Hamilton and Franklin. One could argue that Grant is there not as a president but as the other man who saved the Union. This is apparently still not a greatly honored achievement in North Carolina, though no one has yet suggested dumping Lincoln.

For that matter, why only politicians? Before the euro, the French franc had pictures of Saint-Exupery, Matisse, Eiffel and the Curies. Belgium had Magritte-- how cool is that? What's wrong with the idea of U.S. currency with pictures of Edison, Einstein, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Scott Joplin, Martha Graham?

This would have, I think, a small but useful effect on the American psyche, conveying the idea that the greatness of a nation is embodied not just in its statecraft but in its science, technology, and art. On the other hand, I'd be happy if people just knew a little about Hamilton and Madison. Not to mention Washington and Lincoln, those twin fathers of the February sale.

Q: How Do I Avoid Natural Disasters?

A: Don't be poor. Don't even live in a poor country.

The earthquake in Chile was a magnitude 8.8, as opposed to the 7.0 quake in Haiti. This means it was 500 times bigger. (The calculation, for those curious, is 10 to the (8.8 - 7.0) x 3/2 power, or 10 to the 2.7 power). But the death toll appears be 500 to 1000 times smaller. Something similar happens consistently in earthquakes, hurricanes, and other "natural" disasters-- the event is natural, the disaster is not.

Envying Canada

It's unseemly for an American to envy Canada. True, they have universal health care and a functioning national legislature, but someday we will too. And crime in our major cities is way, way down. Nothing against Neil Young or Alex Trebek, but, you know, it's Canada.

Yesterday, however, when Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir were getting their gold medals, and the loudspeakers were playing "O Canada," the camera showed the winners, and they were singing along. Not only that, but when the camera moved to their families, they were singing along too! Brian Williams reported that out on the streets of Vancouver, crowds spontaneously began singing the national anthem.

I was envious. How many Americans did you see at the Olympics singing along to "The Star Spangled Banner"? How about at a ball game? How about spontaneously?

We're just as patriotic as Canadians, and three times as jingoistic. The reason we don't sing along is because we can't. It's a really hard song to sing. In the United States, the accepted custom is to listen while a professional vocalist sings the national anthem. The melody was written for the Anacreontic Society, a club of amateur musicians. A good show-off piece.

The difficulties of changing the national anthem to something more singable are many. First, there are the people who will accuse you of being unpatriotic. Can you imagine a bill to change the national anthem making it through Congress? Then, there turn out to be problems with all the alternatives: hard to sing (America the Beautiful), melody already in use by someone else (America), pedestrian (God Bless America), no connection to America in the lyrics (Battle Hymn of the Republic).

The only workable option I can see is to keep the song and make marginal changes to the melody. For example, starting at "And the rockets' red glare" the tune can be shifted down nine half-steps, I think it is (really not my department), and sound very much the same. Still not easy, but a lot more achievable. And who ever said that patriotism was easy?

I just haven't figured out what would be required to make this happen. Who controls the organists at ballparks?

By the way, if you're thinking of making a melodrama with a heroine named Tessa Virtue, it would be hard to find a better name for the villain than Massimo Scali.

One more comment on the Olympics: The Russians (including Putin) get the gold medal in childishness and petulance. Believing you should win the gold because you did a quadruple toe loop and the other guy didn't reminds me, unfairly, of their old belief that the way to win the Cold War is by building a bigger H-bomb than anyone else. You're still not strong on finesse, druzja.

The Only Interesting Thing About Tiger Woods's Private Life

As always, the only interesting thing about Tiger Woods's private life is the reaction to it of the media and the public. It appears that Tiger did not meet the current standard for public apology, which requires crying as a mark of sincerity. Thus the criticism of him for being "affectless" and "robotic." He was also criticized because his speech was "scripted," which apparently means he didn't have it memorized and kept looking at the paper. (He's a golfer, for crying out loud.)

Maybe I'm biased in Tiger's favor because he said "between Elin and me" and not "between Elin and I." (Hooray for scripting.) But all this clucking about whether he was really sincere or not is just dumb. If someone gets in front of TV cameras and says, "I am a loathsome worm" (I'm paraphrasing), it seems beside the point to argue about whether he really, really means it or not.

The larger issue here is people's unshakable belief that they can judge other people's character by watching them on TV. I recall someone saying to me quite seriously that Gary Hart was not honest because he didn't look you in the eye, and people had trouble doing that when they were lying. It didn't occur to her that (a) what this really meant was that he didn't look directly at the TV camera, and it's hard to say what that signifies, (b) the better liars have no trouble at all looking you in the eye. (This is a somewhat touchy issue for me, because I have always had trouble looking people in the eye-- it feels aggressive to me-- and I consider myself more honest than average.) Conversely, someone I know watched the candidates debate and came away convinced of John Edwards's integrity and honesty, which turned out to be a less than accurate judgment.

Get over it, people. Actions speak louder, or at least truer, than a good drama coach. In fact, words speak louder than a good drama coach. If you're not careful, you'll end up with an actor as President.

(Oh, and two btws: Why did the Fox News clip on the Internet cut out Tiger's reference to Buddhism, after Fox broadcast Brit Hume's slighting reference? And what's with pronouncing "Elin" with a long E? That's so unScandinavian.)

Hypocrisy Watch Update

If J.D. Hayworth, "the consistent conservative," is successful in his primary challenge to John McCain, then (if nothing else changes) it will leave the Senate with six combat veterans, all of whom are Democrats. Two senators were fortunate enough to get into the National Guard during Vietnam and so saw no combat. Guess which party they belong to.

Hey! Watch it!

It's happened again; the New York Times columnists are stealing ideas from my postings. This time it's Paul Krugman. (I did like the line about going straight for the capillaries, though.)