Iraq Situation, the Media, and the "Festival of the Undead Wrong" (with Application to Recent U.S. Catholic Bishops' Meeting)

To call the following a meme among commentators looking at American news and mainstream media in the last three days would be a vast understatement (there are many similar statements I could cite, too):

Jon Stewart: Pope Francis and the GOP--Two Holy Conduits No Longer on Same Page

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Gospel. Good News. Is What. It's All. About. Commentators Continue to Parse Pope Francis's Recent Interview

Gospel. Good news. Is what. It's all. About.

Mainstream Media Reporting on Papal Transition: Neither Fair Nor Balanced

I'm pretty sure I've told this story before here, but it bears repeating, I think: some two decades ago, I "won" a national essay contest for scholars of religion. The "prize": we winning essay writers were flown in to present our essays at the national center for the study of religion and American culture that sponsored the contest.

Frank Cocozzelli on Cardinal Timothy Dolan as "Neocon Cheerleader"

As a complement to what I posted earlier today about the statement of the German Catholic bishops re: the morning-after pill and rape cases, and the abysmal lack of pastoral and credible moral leadership on the past of the U.S. bishops, here's an excerpt from a hard-hitting essay by Frank Cocozzelli on Cardinal Dolan, president of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference, as a "neocon cheerleader":

David Frum's "Conversion": Neocon Morality Tales and History's Judgment

Mark Oppenheimer's fascinating roadmap of the twists and turns neocon Wunderkind David Frum has taken in his talking-head career is well worth the read.  I find it valuable for the following reason (among others): it bluntly says what many similar reviews never say outright, as they survey the careers of other neocon young Turks who have now broken with the crazy show that the GOP has become.

Mark Silk to Ross Douthat: What about the "Nones" and the Growth of Non-Denominational Churches?

At his Spiritual Politics blog, Mark Silk engages Ross Douthat's argument that liberal churches are withering on the vine--and his presumed contention that, by contrast, right-wing churches like his Catholic church under the last two papacies are thriving.  I blogged yesterday about Douthat's latest statement in this vein.

Marrying Well: Stable Families, Economic Success, and Morality Tales

At the Commonweal blog right now, Eric Bugyis offers a valuable discussion of Jason DeParle's recent New York Times article which appears to show a correlation between higher income levels, higher marriage rates, and marital stability.  Research appears to indicate, that is, that couples whose income is higher, whose educational levels are higher, and whose social status is, as a result, also higher than the norm, tend to marry and stay married at higher rates than is the case at the bottom of the economic and educational ladder.  There, in fact, among what used to be called the "working classes," marriage is becoming more infrequent, as couples have children out of wedlock at higher and higher rates.

Paul Krugman on GOP Investment in Ignorance: Whys and Wherefores

Paul Krugman explains (very well) why one major American political party, the Republicans, have "made a hard right turn against education," and are seeking to undermine a longstanding American ideal of seeing education provided for all citizens: it's, quite simply, in the best interests of the GOP to keep people under-educated.  And ignorant.  

Controlling Men: Katha Pollitt and Chauncey DeVaga Comment

At The Nation, Katha Pollitt parses what happened with Sandra Fluke when Rush Limbaugh grabbed hold of her story and distorted it for his own political ends: 

Where Fools Rush In: Commentary on Limbaugh's Faux Pas and Right's Attack on Women's Contraceptive Rights

At Alternet, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone (rightly) note that Rush Limbaugh's recent slimy, misogynistic attack on Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke proves they were correct when they argued in their book Red Families v. Blue Families (2010) that the political and religious right would eventually try to use contraception as a wedge issue "because at a symbolic level it represents the social changes they oppose . . . ."  Contraception--when women use it and expect to have access to it as routine healthcare--is shorthand for: society is going to the dogs; families are falling apart; people are becoming hypersexualized; the work ethic is going down the drain; no one salutes the flag anymore; they've taken God out of the schools; the queers are getting out of hand; children no longer obey; people are killing babies; black people expect handouts; a black socialist-Muslim president is turning America into a dictatorship;

menarelosingcontromenarelosingcontrolwhitemenarelosingcontrol, etc.

Bill Scher Is Thankful Conservatives No Longer Pretending

Here's what Bill Scher is thankful for this Thanksgiving season: 

Give Thanks and Shop Till You Drop: Coleen Rowley on Culture of Spiritual Death Dominating American Life

Post-Thanksgiving Shoppers 2010

While the American right is furious that President Obama didn't mention God in his brief Thanksgiving address, many of us did our patriotic-religious duty à la George W. Bush yesterday and shopped till we dropped.  Or we shopped till we had pepper-sprayed our fellow shoppers into submission as we lunged for video games at Wal-Mart.

David Brooks on Obama's (Unproven) Break with the Center: Continued Special Pleading for the Super-Rich

I'm glad to see David Brooks's overwrought cri du coeur on behalf of rich folks being bullied by big, bad Mr. Obama getting the negative attention it deserves.  Here's Jason Linkins at HuffPo.  And here's Steve Kornacki at Salon.

Lady Thatcher's Friends Object to Meryl Streep's Granny-Gone-Mad Biopic

Oh dear.  Close friends of Lady Thatcher are furious--furious, I tell you!--at Meryl Streep's soon-to-be-released Margaret Thatcher biopic.  It employs a granny-gone-mad theme, they say, which has Lady Thatcher hallucinating and regretting the high price she had to pay to obtain and wield power.  The high price she had to pay to wield power ruthlessly . . . .

David Bromwich on Obama's Pragmatism: Maxims That Ratify the Existing Order--Any Order

I'd like to return briefly this morning to the article by David Bromwich to which I linked yesterday, about how the Obama presidency is a continuation of the Bush one.  I see this morning that Bromwich's statement has made the round of progressive blog sites, and deservedly so: it's a sharp, pointed, necessary statement that I hope someone in the current administration will pay attention to.  Though I very much doubt anyone will, except to scorn Bromwich's critique . . . .

Reflections on Rick Perry's Response Rally: Attack on the Love Ethic and Corporatist Puppet-Masters

I didn't watch Rick Perry's Response rally this weekend.  I took last week as a kind of retreat-discernment week, and as I did so, I deliberately weaned myself of all but the most essential news coverage.  

Jon Stewart on American Conservatives' Claim That They're the Real Victims in the Norway Shootings

Jon Stewart is brilliant re: how American conservatives have made the attempt to dissect the motives of Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik all about them.  And about persecution of Christians.  This segment begins right before the one minute mark.

Andrew Sullivan on Anders Breivik as Living Definition of Christianism

For some inexplicable reason, American conservatives appear unhappy with the suggestion that Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik appeals to Christianist ideological notions in his published statements providing a rationale for his atrocious actions.  Even more astonishing, I find Catholic conservatives now raising Cain on various Catholic blog sites about any association of Breivik with anything Catholic at all, though he himself has indicated that his terrorism envisaged the reimplementation of a kind of cultural Catholic unity in Europe, to preserve the continent from Islam.

Michael Lind and Julie Ingersoll on Triple Fundamentalisms Now Dominating the American Right

As the workday ends (in my part of the world), I don't want to miss the opportunity to make mention of a recent essay of Michael Lind at Salon, whose thesis Julie Ingersoll summarizes today at Religion Dispatches.*  It's about the three fundamentalisms now dominating the thinking of the American right.  Lind notes, as I did when I summarized Ross Douthat's response to marriage equality in New York recently, that American conservatism has long since lost sight of its traditional roots and is now controlled by a set of rigid lock-step ideological positions entirely antithetical to traditional conservatism.  In particular, American conservatism has abandoned its Burkean roots, and is driven by a miscellany of reflex fundamentalist responses to contemporary culture that align biblical fundamentalism with constitutional  and market fundamentalism.