September 24, 2005
Hillary's well-played hand
A well-played hand must be noted.
Hillary Clinton has been working hard to win over the NYC First Responders ever since the Cops and Firefighters of 9/11 booed her at Madison Square Garden. Say what you will about her, she is patient, and she will do what it takes - over time - to achieve her goals.
With this pronouncement, she has made a significant and lasting inroad with them.
The only politician who can say he is now chummier with the First Responders, not just in NYC, but in the nation, is Rudy Giuliani.
Very smart move. Coming right on the heels of her meeting with Mother Sheehan and declaring no on John Roberts, to appease the whackadoo base, she comes back and goes "centrist" where it can't hurt her (the whackadoos don't much care about the IFC), and scoops up the Responders on the way.
I will never vote for her myself. Not ever. I voted for a Clinton once and that will be the first and last time. But...that was well-played.
Posted by Thecla at 12:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 10, 2005
The Virtuous Nation: Clinton's Best Legacy?
Ah, I know that's going to make a few toupees spin on some heads. Is Thecla actually suggesting that the national trend toward the virtuous, extolled here by David Brooks, is due to the presidency of Bill Clinton?
Well...yeah. Okay...yes and no. But...yeah.
I come to this conclusion by noting that the trends toward virtue that Brooks outlines in his piece all begin in the late 1980's or early 1990's. Teen pregnancies down, abortions down, family violence down, violence in general down.
Bill Clinton might have vetoed the GOP written welfare reform several times before finally, in an election year - signing the legislation. But he signed it. Amid all of the predictions of gloom and doom, the certainty of the left that the world would end should welfare-as-we-then-knew-it be updated and reformed, Clinton signed.
The world did not end. What ended was the seeming-entrenchment of a whole group of people, of all ethnic backgrounds, into a hopeless dependence upon the government which led nowhere, gave no promise, encouraged no future, thwarted dreams and individual potential, and perpetuated the whole idea of dependence, of inability, of needing a caretaker.
I think when folks were liberated from the shackles of socially-engineered government dependence, when they were able to move away from the racist neighborhood of "poor you, you can't manage your life, let us do it for you," into the relatively more progressive town of "there is help to get you there but you can do it" they grew in self-respect, self-confidence and - most importantly - in hope. The message of "you can, if you try" was a louder, clearer and more spiritually sustaining message than "you can't, so give up"
What President Bush has called "the soft racism of low-expectations" was pushed back, and the effect is not surprising. When folks - any folks, of any background -are using their own gifts and ingenuity to make their way, they have reason to hold up their heads, to defer failure and pursue their dreams and goals.
When folks feel good about what they are doing, when they feel like they have some control over the direction their lives take - they have hope. And hope is not simply a feeling. Hope says, "awake, O Sleeper, arise from death!" Hope is the builder of bridges, the tamer of winds, the harnesser of ideas and possibilities. A poor man with hope is immeasurably richer than a wealthy man without it, because he carries within him the spark that can alight a thousand tomorrows.
By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging,
A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife;
Bending over, he carefully holds it to the stone—by foot and knee,
With measur’d tread, he turns rapidly—As he presses with light but firm hand,
Forth issue, then, in copious golden jets,
Sparkles from the wheel.
- Walt Whitman "Sparkles from the Wheel"
Hope sparkles from the wheel, and all possibility is contained therein. And the man who can sharpen his own knife, and teach his children that craft, will never be helpless or hungry or cast aside. He will, therefore, be at peace, and so will his house.
Clinton signed welfare reform into law. And it has been a good thing, a better thing - perhaps - than many of us even realize. I don't know how loudly he will want to crow this particular legacy, however. After all, it only proves - once again - that socialism is the robber of human spirit, that socialism does not work.
Crossposted at www.theclamauro.com
Posted by Thecla at 03:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 26, 2005
Jon Stewart and Rick Santorum
Ann Althouse puts up some thoughts on last night's interview between Jon Stewart and Rick Santorum.
New Republic seems upset that Stewart did not batter Santorum, but Althouse says she thought the interview was pretty good.
Stewart made his points subtly, in the middle of the mushy niceness. Santorum kept talking about the "ideal" of the man-and-woman-with-children family, and Stewart accepted that ideal but asked why not include other people in that positive model even if it's a step away from ideal. He noted when Santorum equated heterosexuality with virtue and got Santorum to back away from that equation a tad.
I concur. I am also remembering Stewart's appearance on Crossfire, when he discussed how harmful the constant sniping from both sides is to public discourse. Stewart could have simply been an attack dog last night, but instead he proved his point, that people with almost nothing in common can still engage in civil conversation. It is, frankly, something the nation needs to come to understand. So I say good for Stewart!
Yes, I know The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is on Comedy Central, but that doesn't mean people don't actually get their news from the show. College students, especially, sometimes do, which is why you see politicos and authors make the trek to NY to sit with Stewart, who is a pretty smart fellow. Cute, too.
Crossposted at http://www.theclamauro.blogspot.com
Posted by Thecla at 03:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Politicians & the Press: They Deserve Each Other
Yesterday, many bloggers were talking about Jonathan Turley's LA Times piece examining the faith of SCOTUS nominee John Roberts. Leaving aside that no nominee to the Supreme Court in my memory has had to endure such scrutiny of his or her faith, and that this fixation on Roberts' Catholicism is beginning to remind me of the know-nothings, what interested most was this:
According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral.
...Renowned for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself.
Now, the NY Times, in what appears to be an effort to "simplify" (or, more likely, "confuse") the matter have reduced Turley's information to this:
Professor Turley cited unnamed sources saying that Judge Roberts had told Mr. Durbin he would recuse himself from cases involving abortion, the death penalty or other subjects where Catholic teaching and civil law can clash.
Not quite the same, is it? But that might not matter, at all, because aside from the Times' artless simplification, there are questions as to whether this exchange between Sen. Durbin (that paragon of restraint) and Roberts ever took place!
Betsy Newmark has a nice recap:
A spokesman for Mr. Durbin and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who spoke to Judge Roberts on Monday about the meeting, said Professor Turley's account of a recusal statement was inaccurate.
But in an interview last night, Professor Turley said Mr. Durbin himself had described the conversation to him on Sunday morning, including the statement about recusal.
Betsy writes: So whom are we to believe: Dick Durbin or Dick Durbin?
But wait! There is more! Jonathan Turley has now "outted" those two "anonymous sources" he had quoted in the original piece, and in this Washington Times piece he sounds pretty angry. From that story:
"Jonathan Turley's column is not accurate," Durbin press secretary Joe Shoemaker said, adding that his boss never asked that question and Judge Roberts never said he would recuse himself in such a case.
"Judge Roberts said repeatedly that he would follow the rule of law," Mr. Shoemaker said.
Disagreement also came on who leaked the exchange.
"I don't know who was his source," Mr. Shoemaker said. "Whoever the source was either got it wrong or Jonathan Turley got it wrong."
Mr. Turley, contacted by The Washington Times yesterday, said his sources were Mr. Durbin and Mr. Shoemaker.
According to Mr. Turley, he met Mr. Durbin in NBC's makeup room Sunday between the senator's appearance on "Meet the Press" and Mr. Turley's appearance on another program. According to the professor, Mr. Durbin told him the story while Mr. Turley took notes, adding that he called Mr. Shoemaker and read back his account of the meeting "word for word."
"I specifically confirmed Senator Durbin's account with his press secretary," Mr. Turley said. .
Turley, hot for a scoop that could prove hurtful to a Bush nominee and willing to use an anonymous source, seems to have gotten burned.
Meanwhile, is this sad, or what? A U.S. Senator and a member of the press each calling the other a liar concerning a story which would not even be have been written, had the issue concerned someone they liked.
The state of our press and politicians. Deplorable in every way.
Crossposted at http://www.theclamauro.blogspot.com
Posted by Thecla at 02:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 20, 2005
"In your face ordinations" and how to report them
Amy Welborn, providing tons of links, sounds like she is fed up to the gills on how the press is reporting on these rogue "female ordinations" which are cropping up (and the fad seems to be to do it during a day cruise - see Curt Jester's satire on it) all over the place. As Amy points out - beyond the rebellion, there are the usual Catholic bishops doing a less-than-bang-up job in getting out information. She writes:
Anyway, the issue is: how should reporters be naming and claiming this business? The KRT solution of putting ordained in scare quotes doesn't work because they are, indeed, being ordained. It's not a Catholic ordination, but neither is it when someone is ordained a Presbyterian minister. That's okay.
No, the issue is the identification of all of this and subsequent actions as "Catholic." No, they are not going to be Catholic priests after this. Sorry. And you don't even have to get very complicated about it. I can't sit here and have the members of my family vote and proclaim me as the Democratic nominee for president. Institutions don't work that way. There are, to put it simplistically, chains of command and identity which are broken here, not just because of the femaleness of the ordinands, but because of the fact that the original women (including the "bishops" who will be doing this batch) have been excommunicated. Duh.
There are actually several break-off denominations of the Catholic Church, but they all have modifiers. American Catholic Church, and so on. When they ordain, they are ordaining priests or whatever of the American Catholic Church, and they are "American Catholic" priests.
The gist of these stories is that these women will be "Catholic" (which everyone understands as a shorthand for Roman Catholic HQ in Rome, even if that's imprecise) priests and the only glitch is that they are not "recognized" as such by "the Vatican." But such is not the case, is it?
Amy is quite correct. She is, in clarifying this issue, doing what the bishops should be doing.
As a Catholic woman who has looked long and hard at the issue of women priests, I cannot, at this time, support the idea. Until women can approach the issue of Ordination without this mindset of entitlement and ego, I fear they will not be as fully productive and pastoral as they might be - and the priesthood is nothing if not a deeply pastoral calling.
It doesn’t matter how many degrees one has, or how badly one desires to ’serve full-time in ministry’. An apostolic ordination is more than mere ‘ministry’. Heavens! Anyone can serve in full-time ministry if they really want to - without ever being ordained. I’m thinking of some of the great women of our so-called ’sexist’ church who managed, without ordination, to minister autonomously and so effectively that they renewed the face of the church. Catherine of Siena counseled not only the lay men and women around her but the pope as well - while writing extraordinary treatises. Theresa of Avila managed to reform an order, to build scores of monasteries for both men and women, without waiting around for someone to tell her she could, and without insisting that her own terms be met before she could give her all. It was the same with Hildegard of Bingen, who only wrote music, plays, books on medicine and so much more, in an era where women – at least secular women - didn’t aspire to such things because the secular world was not open to it, as the church was.
And dare I point out - though none of these women spoke from a pulpit, their words still echo and reverberate - their voices were never silent. While it’s easy to label the church ’sexist’ I am not entirely certain she has earned the name. Since the dawn of Christianity, within the church, women were educating themselves and others, writing books, imagining and then building schools, hospitals, policies and procedures. These were women of unqualified brilliance who understood that their calling - all of our callings - began with ONE calling, the most fundamental: to love, and to - out of love - do that which we can do, humbly and with gratitude.
Before any such movement may be undertaken, those women looking for ordination might consider that Jesus tended to use the most humble of materials to perform his most effective work. Think mud and spittle. Think Bernadette Soubirous (who would have been the first to describe herself as ignorant) or Sister Lucia of Fatima, who never got a degree in anything, much less in theology. Full of ego and hubris, they might have made noise, demanded ordination themselves for having been such very privileged and graced visionaries.
Instead, their egos diminished - they asked nothing earthly for themselves but to “to dwell in the house of the Lord, all my days…”
True service to the Lord begins not with a “give me” but with a “please take.” Ordination cannot be at the service of anger or spite. It must contain a willingness not to scream but to dialogue, not to lecture but to counsel, and it must have a passing acquaintance with, and respect for, the notion of obedience or else it is simply - only - going on about oneself, one’s own desires.
We, all of us, must first respond to the call to love, and serve it with a willing heart and a sublimation of one’s own ego. “Not my will, but yours be done, O Lord.” Everything else comes from that.
I know that’s not a popular sentiment these days. But it was the very prayer Christ himself prayed. Shall we demand more than he?
UPDATE: Michael Liccione at Pontifications has some thoughts on another rogue Catholic woman!
Crossposted at www.theclamauro.blogspot.com
Posted by Thecla at 07:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 11, 2005
Thank you for the invite!
Just wanted to shout out a big hello to all the members of SCO and their readers, and thank Rick and Mark for extending the invitation and then helping me manage to actually get something posted! I've long been a SCO fan, and to be part of the crew is especially exciting! Thanks for the welcome, folks! :-)
Posted by Thecla at 04:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Now, Just What Is It We So Dislike?
The last Democrat in my family of traditional blue-collar, union-dues-paying family asked me recently just what it was I so disliked about Hillary Clinton.
I told her I would answer her question when she could make me a sensible answer as to why she detests (not "dislikes" but utterly and purely "detests") George W. Bush.
Her answers were not surprising. Bush was "a moron," and "a Jesus-freak," and a "nazi," and a "gay-hater," and a "swaggering cowboy," and a "liar."
"These are not reasons, these are pretexts. Beyond the caricatures you've embraced," I stopped her, "what is it you hate, really, and why?"
She refused to try again. It was, she insisted, my turn to explain my implacable distrust of Hillary Clinton.
"Well," I began, "I think my reasons may be built upon something a little more solid than name-calling and partisanship."
"You dislike her because she is a strong, powerful woman, and you're not, " came the accusation.
"Ummm, no," I answered. "Firstly, I am not convinced she is a strong woman – she seems very propped up by an adoring press from where I sit. But I am myself a strong woman, why would I dislike that attribute in another?"
It's not the "strong woman" issue. It's not the She-Shoulda-Left-Him-for-Cheating Issue. It's not the Ice Queen Issue, the Sexism Issue or even the 60's Radical Issue (although that remains very troubling.)
It's the condescension, stupid.
It's the "you people are so stupid, you voted for that moron Bush," sniff.
It is difficult to respect someone who seems to completely disrespect you, and Hillary tends to show nothing but disdain for the suburban woman she so badly needs to have on her side.
It's not just the little-woman-Tammy-Wynette-baking-cookies remarks (remarks which, in retrospect seem to have said more about her own horrified self-awareness than anything else) that has turned me – and so many like me – off. We suburban woman have become accustomed to being looked down upon by deluded white men who think they can do without us, so those same shots coming from a deluded white woman were yawn-inducing. Same disregard, different gender.
We didn't mind Hillary so much when she wore the headband over the dirty hair, although we are happy to see her lately cleaned up and looking fabulous. We didn't mind when she took on the Health Care issue; it seemed like a prime job for a policy wonk, until her secretive tactics and final proposal scared the hell out of us. We didn't even mind that she was disinterested in the traditional hostessing duties of a First Lady. Many of us would be loathe to engage in small talk and dinner parties endlessly, endlessly.
The fact is Hillary's inability to dazzle middle class women has nothing to do with any of that, regardless of how some might happily promote the idea.
Hillary Clinton lost us, seriously lost us, when she started acting like one of us, or more correctly, when she started thinking she could make us believe that she was one of us. In truth, before she ever made us roll our eyes at her empty new "centrist" rhetoric, she lost us with those pink suits.
Not that we don't like pink, mind you. We mind that she thinks we can't see past pink.
The first brazenly pastel episode we paid attention to was the Hillary-As-Princess-Diana-Talking-Cattle-Futures stunt. Wearing a bright pink suit with black piping, Hillary hosted a cozy sort of news "meeting" (it couldn't be called a press conference since everyone, including Hillary, was seated and smiling) wherein she addressed questions about her successful foray into trading cattle futures. We listened and watched as Hillary morphed. She went from being a "brilliant" woman with a "steel trap" memory and a "hands-on" manner to being an almost bubble-headed, pinkly-smiling little woman who had nothing at all to do with the transaction that bore her name. She could remember nothing, really. "You know, I don't know anything about this stuff…the nice man took my check and the next week he brought me back another check, and that's all there was to it…I am just a simple woman, please help me," was – essentially – her answer.
All any of us could think was, "sister…if I'd made $100,000 in cattle futures in a week, I'd sure as hell know how it came about. If I'd made only $10,000, I would remember every detail."
We have never been able to forgive Hillary for that coy bit of disingenuous blather. Or for the pastels. We find it grating that she wear black in Manhattan, but pastels in the suburbs, as though we hicks cannot appreciate the sophistication of basic black, or worse, that we're so intellectually deficient that we don't realize what she is trying to do, how she is attempting to soften her image. She thinks we're so stupid that a pink suit (or a sweater thrown over the shoulders of her suit…wha????) will blind us to all of her reality.
Women outside of the coastal enclaves are media-savvy. We know when we're being played to and we find it insulting to be treated like superficial twits who can be won over by a soft-color palette and a few "aw, shucks," nasal twangs.
We're smart enough to know that Hillary is a lion, that she has always been a lion. So when she puts on the lambikin soft colors and throws the sweater over the shoulders… of her suit…it offends our sense of who Hillary is, and who she thinks we are. She seemingly doesn't realize that because we know she is a lion, her silly, soft-lit photos clatter with noisy metallic bangs of condescension. And that visual racket overpowers anything she has to say verbally.
She cannot make us believe she is one of us, because she has never been one of us. Hillary has never been a woman who worked her way through college by waiting tables or ringing up sales. She has never had to mediate between two or more squabbling children as she's driven on the Long Island Expressway hoping the sound she hears beneath her is not her muffler, falling off. She has never had to put her children with virtual strangers and hope for the best as she went off to clean an (anti-Bush, pro-Hillary) house in the Hamptons, in order to earn enough money for pre-school tuition. She has never planted her own garden with a child "helping," or stood at the fence trading ripe tomatoes with a zucchini-growing elderly neighbor. She has never rushed home from work of a Wednesday evening to start cooking a Thanksgiving dinner for 17 family members, with or without help.
And that's actually fine. Hillary doesn't necessarily have to be one of us. But if she's never had the least sort of inclination to live a middle-class suburban life, in all of its mundane moments and small glories, then she really must stop telling us how we should choose to live it. Most particularly, she should stop telling us that it takes a village to raise a child. Most of us feel quite competent to do that by our own lights, and as educated women we believe our lights are at least as good as hers.
For Hillary to win our respect - if at this point such a thing is possible – she is going to have to stop pastel-pandering to us, because we frankly cannot tolerate the presumption of naivete' that such pandering betrays. Then, she is going to have to talk to us, not at us, and she's going to have to come up with something more substantial than vague feel-goodisms about supposed "common ground" on life-and-death issues, which may (or may not) exist and which mean nothing to us if her words are not followed up with action.
She's going to have to say something true to us…because so far she simply hasn't. She has said almost nothing we want to hear.
And what do we want to hear? We want to hear that there is room in Hillary's world for women who do not wish to climb corporate ladders, who find their deepest fulfillment not in boardrooms but in the garden with the kids and the ladybugs and the loving partner. We want to hear that our sons and daughters who have volunteered to serve under President Bush in a time of war are not simpletons who have been led astray but patriots who defend a nation against an enemy her own husband couldn't be bothered to engage.
We want to hear that those of us who cannot afford to send our children to private school, as she could, can have a real option to do so if we are unhappy with our local schools. We want to hear an acknowledgement that we contribute to the economy with our cottage industries and our entrepreneurial energies, and that we contribute to our communities with our civic work, our volunteer hours and our carpools.
We want to know that when the world breaks, as it broke last week in London, she has a the capacity to do something more than merely make political hay of the issue, using the deaths and injuries of innocents to promote herself and – once again criticize the only American President who has tried to do something constructive in the face of Islamofascism. We want to see something like statesmanship over partisanship. So far, again, she hasn't shown it.
As loving mothers and compassionate people, we want to hear that "reproductive freedoms" have humane boundaries, that they don't have to include a descent into the absolute savagery that is "partial-birth abortion."
Hillary seems not to realize that this is a big issue for us, that suburban moms are not comfortable with late-term abortions. She needs to surprise us and move from talking about some pretend "common ground" to actually walking on at least that portion of the road with us. It would help us believe that she has the ability to move beyond rhetoric, which we have never seen her do. It would also give suburban women their props, recognizing that our values and concerns bear consideration and promotion, that our views are both relevant and well thought-out.
It comes down to respect. Hillary does not have to be like us. In fact, she could not be like us if she tried; she is the wrong sort of animal. She is a lion and we are Mama Grizzlies. If she is as smart as the press vaunts, she will respect us. We middle class suburban women have our own good instincts. We know when we're being dissed and we know when we're being "handled," and honey…we don't like it.
Of course, even if Hillary Clinton could do all these things, we suburban women might still be inclined to distrust her…if only because the press trusts her so unquestioningly, so devotedly, so terrifyingly. While we watch the press train their cameras on President Bush only with the greatest reluctance, and all-negativity, and we don't like it, we also understand that a press which is unable to find a flaw in a potential president is a press willing to participate in a move to tyranny.
For that reason alone my suburban sisters and I may never be able to trust this woman, not for a moment.
And my Democrat sister will never understand. Because she does not wish to
Posted by Thecla at 04:22 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack