All:
Have just completed reading 3,277 words which took up 17,171 characters
and had an additional 2,976 spaces and learned absolutely nothing of
value except that author has an intense dislike of George Wills and
maybe Pope Francis.
R. E. (Dick) Driscoll, Sr.
On 9/24/2015 9:24 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Taibbi writes: "Much in the way Mormons believe Jesus will ultimately return
to earth and settle in Missouri, conservatives have long accepted that the
pope should be a secret American who believes in free enterprise, cries
during Band of Brothers and would build his home in the United States if he
had it to do all over again."
Pope Francis departs the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C.,
on September 23rd, 2015. (photo: Cliff Owen/Corbis)
Why Do We Care Whose Side the Pope Is On?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
24 September 15
So the pope is here. His arrival has spawned a Drake/Meek Mill-style diss
battle within the pundit class, pitting conservatives bemoaning the pope's
false prophecy against liberals swooning over his platitudinous
anti-capitalism.
It's like the Colts-Jets game from Monday night. I can't decide which side I
want to lose more.
It's been a long time since the left and right in America have had had a
real fight for primacy in the religious space. For almost a generation now
liberals have mostly conceded the very word faith, letting Republicans
smother and monopolize the term like overprotective parents.
Overt religiosity is the norm on the GOP side, with God-stalking nutballs
like Michele Bachmann or Ben Carson perennially front and center. Meanwhile,
the closest thing to a famed religious liberal that America has seen over
the span of many decades was probably Susan Sarandon's nun character in Dead
Man Walking, an anti-capital punishment parable whose religious message
wasn't believable even though it was a true story.
But now the script has flipped. The Republican frontrunner is Donald Trump,
a man who is worse at naming Bible verses than Sarah Palin is at naming
Supreme Court cases. And this week's arrival of the world's most famous
religious leader is being celebrated in the lefty press like the premiere of
Fahrenheit 911.
Pope Francis won over urban liberals through writings like his 184-page
encyclical on climate change, which described the earth as an "immense pile
of filth." Raised in Peronist Argentina, he also talks with varying degrees
of vagueness about the "perverse" inequities of global capitalism,
complaining for instance that a two-point drop in the stock market makes the
news, while nobody notices when a homeless person dies of exposure.
This past weekend's column by George Will perfectly expresses the sense of
abject betrayal conservatives feel at a pope allowing himself to be
appropriated by the global left, when he could be just railing against
abortion and moral relativism like his recent predecessors.
You can always tell how mad George Will is by how much alliteration he uses.
"Pope Francis's Fact-Free Flamboyance" predictably seethes from the start:
"Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony.
With a convert's indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably
fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary. They would
devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak."
The notion that Will is upset with this pope on behalf of the poor is
hilarious, but understandable. Conservatives loved the pre-Francis Catholic
strategy for dealing with the poor. First, you create lots of cheap
third-world factory labor by discouraging contraception. Then you give lip
service to alleviating poverty by pushing a program of strictly voluntary
charitable donations.
That Catholic Church has always been a great ally to the industrialist
aristocrats George Will represents. So it's not surprising he's not feeling
this whole "we need to reform capitalism" thing.
But conservatives feel betrayed on another level. Much in the way Mormons
believe Jesus will ultimately return to earth and settle in Missouri,
conservatives have long accepted that the pope should be a secret American
who believes in free enterprise, cries during Band of Brothers and would
build his home in the United States if he had it to do all over again.
Thus a lot of the criticism from the right this week implies that this pope
is insufficiently worshipful of America and Americans. They think his lack
of reverence for God's chosen symbol of the miracle of capitalist production
traitorous, and moreover they're offended that he doesn't seem to think
Americans are the best and most generous people on earth. Pollution and
greed aside, doesn't this pope know that some of us claim hundreds of
dollars a year in charitable deductions?
"Does this pope understand America?" moaned Brian Kilmeade on Fox and
Friends. "He's talking about the greed of America, but does he understand
what the capital of America has done for charitable causes?"
Will put it best, noting that what the pope fails to recognize about us
Americans is that our greed and selfishness are actually our best qualities.
"He stands against. the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which
people and their desires are not problems but precious resources," Will
wrote. "Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their
nation's premises."
For his offenses, Pope Francis has earned himself a ticket onto the
ever-expanding enemies list of the American political right, joining Black
Lives Matter, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, feminists, Hollywood actors,
college lit professors, Occupy Wall Street, whales, the French, Bill Maher,
Canada, Sesame Street and other such undesirables.
"Pure Marxism," cried Rush Limbaugh about the pope's ideas.
"Hand-selected by the New World Order. The same people who gave us Obama
gave us this pope," cried Michael Savage.
"Part of the globalist plan to destroy the world," chimed in Alex Jones.
But for all of the right's sourpussing, the papal Beatlemania on the other
side has been just as revealing.
The commercial media is of course doing its thing, making the pope's arrival
into the Biggest Live Coverage Event of all time. This whole-week
Popetacular will be like a baby-down-a-well story times a Kursk rescue times
a presidential inauguration. Atheists are advised to keep their TVs off.
Even Donald Trump will be a footnote to reporters while His Holiness is in
the country. (Although, humorously, Trump's biographer Michael D'Antonio
squirmed into the headlines this week by comparing Trump to the pope.
"They're both completely authentic guys," he said.)
But it's the defenses of the pope by left-leaning media that are really
striking. A spate of articles in traditionally liberal newspapers and
websites has appeared, each praising the pope and appropriating him as one
of their own.
Should you, the progressive, embrace the head of one of the most socially
conservative organizations on earth? "Yes. Yes, you should," says Jack
Jenkins at ThinkProgress. "Especially if you want legislative action on
immigration reform, climate change, or income inequality."
Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon took particular issue with George Will's
broadside against Francis, which I get. But beyond that she went after Will
for misrepresenting Catholic values, which may tilt blue-state:
"I find it interesting when conservative guys like Will lose their minds
over the idea of someone with a fair degree of authority on the subject of
Catholicism - like, say, a pope - pointing out the actual stated values of
one of the richest and most powerful religions in the world. Values that
include, uh oh, charity, humility and non-materialism."
Suzy Khimm at the the New Republic pointed out several of the more
transparent attempts to turn Francis into a Democratic-leaning hero. She
cited the liberal-backed American Bridge project, which is releasing a
report that will "reveal how the Republican Party is opposed and actively
working against Pope Francis's priorities on many issues." This comes on the
heels of another report arguing that the Koch Brothers are "on the wrong
side of the Holy Father."
All this stuff is a drag. The American left is always at its most unlikeable
when it's being pious. And that's just the secular,
hey-that-joke-isn't-funny kind of piety. If we have to add actual religious
piety to the equation, we're suddenly taking a lot of the charm out of not
being a Republican. Watching progressives fawn over a pope is depressing and
makes me want to go watch a Cheech and Chong movie.
I was raised Catholic. To me the Church is just a giant evil transnational
corporation operating on a dreary business model, one that nurtures
debilitating guilt feelings in its followers and then offers to make them go
away temporarily in exchange for donations. I realize the Church does some
nice things with the money it raises and that other people have a different
opinion, but this is my experience.
And this pope, for all his good qualities, is to me a modern version of an
old religious scam. In Tsarist Russia you'd have some wizened starets show
up at an aristocrat's estate in rags and preach to the ladies of the house
about the evils of wealth in exchange for wine, pastries and a few nights in
a feather bed.
This version is a pope arriving in America with a gazillion-member entourage
to reassure young professionals in New York how right they are about climate
change and income inequality. He says a lot of very vague things about the
wrongs of society that everyone is sure coincide with their own opinions.
George Will is right when he says Francis speaks "in the intellectual tone
of a fortune cookie," saying things like, "People occasionally forgive, but
nature never does."
Meanwhile Francis chugs along as the head of one of the most socially
regressive organizations on earth, doing nothing to take on the Church's
indefensible stances on things like birth control, gay rights,
discrimination against women, celibacy and countless other issues. He claims
the moral authority to reform global capitalism, but he's somehow not ready
to tell teenagers it's OK to masturbate, which seems bizarre.
People have such impassioned political fights over the pope because everyone
wants the endorsement of the guy closest to God. But what if he's not closer
to God, and is just a guy in a funny hat? Doesn't that make all this fuss
and controversy ridiculous? It seems strange that it's the year 2015, and we
still can't say that out loud.
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Pope Francis departs the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C.,
on September 23rd, 2015. (photo: Cliff Owen/Corbis)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-do-we-care-whose-side-the-pope
-is-on-20150923 -
ixzz3mfaTNbLahttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-do-we-care-whose-
side-the-pope-is-on-20150923 - ixzz3mfaTNbLa
Why Do We Care Whose Side the Pope Is On?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
24 September 15
o the pope is here. His arrival has spawned a Drake/Meek Mill-style diss
battle within the pundit class, pitting conservatives bemoaning the pope's
false prophecy against liberals swooning over his platitudinous
anti-capitalism.
It's like the Colts-Jets game from Monday night. I can't decide which side I
want to lose more.
It's been a long time since the left and right in America have had had a
real fight for primacy in the religious space. For almost a generation now
liberals have mostly conceded the very word faith, letting Republicans
smother and monopolize the term like overprotective parents.
Overt religiosity is the norm on the GOP side, with God-stalking nutballs
like Michele Bachmann or Ben Carson perennially front and center. Meanwhile,
the closest thing to a famed religious liberal that America has seen over
the span of many decades was probably Susan Sarandon's nun character in Dead
Man Walking, an anti-capital punishment parable whose religious message
wasn't believable even though it was a true story.
But now the script has flipped. The Republican frontrunner is Donald Trump,
a man who is worse at naming Bible verses than Sarah Palin is at naming
Supreme Court cases. And this week's arrival of the world's most famous
religious leader is being celebrated in the lefty press like the premiere of
Fahrenheit 911.
Pope Francis won over urban liberals through writings like his 184-page
encyclical on climate change, which described the earth as an "immense pile
of filth." Raised in Peronist Argentina, he also talks with varying degrees
of vagueness about the "perverse" inequities of global capitalism,
complaining for instance that a two-point drop in the stock market makes the
news, while nobody notices when a homeless person dies of exposure.
This past weekend's column by George Will perfectly expresses the sense of
abject betrayal conservatives feel at a pope allowing himself to be
appropriated by the global left, when he could be just railing against
abortion and moral relativism like his recent predecessors.
You can always tell how mad George Will is by how much alliteration he uses.
"Pope Francis's Fact-Free Flamboyance" predictably seethes from the start:
"Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony.
With a convert's indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably
fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary. They would
devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak."
The notion that Will is upset with this pope on behalf of the poor is
hilarious, but understandable. Conservatives loved the pre-Francis Catholic
strategy for dealing with the poor. First, you create lots of cheap
third-world factory labor by discouraging contraception. Then you give lip
service to alleviating poverty by pushing a program of strictly voluntary
charitable donations.
That Catholic Church has always been a great ally to the industrialist
aristocrats George Will represents. So it's not surprising he's not feeling
this whole "we need to reform capitalism" thing.
But conservatives feel betrayed on another level. Much in the way Mormons
believe Jesus will ultimately return to earth and settle in Missouri,
conservatives have long accepted that the pope should be a secret American
who believes in free enterprise, cries during Band of Brothers and would
build his home in the United States if he had it to do all over again.
Thus a lot of the criticism from the right this week implies that this pope
is insufficiently worshipful of America and Americans. They think his lack
of reverence for God's chosen symbol of the miracle of capitalist production
traitorous, and moreover they're offended that he doesn't seem to think
Americans are the best and most generous people on earth. Pollution and
greed aside, doesn't this pope know that some of us claim hundreds of
dollars a year in charitable deductions?
"Does this pope understand America?" moaned Brian Kilmeade on Fox and
Friends. "He's talking about the greed of America, but does he understand
what the capital of America has done for charitable causes?"
Will put it best, noting that what the pope fails to recognize about us
Americans is that our greed and selfishness are actually our best qualities.
"He stands against. the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which
people and their desires are not problems but precious resources," Will
wrote. "Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their
nation's premises."
For his offenses, Pope Francis has earned himself a ticket onto the
ever-expanding enemies list of the American political right, joining Black
Lives Matter, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, feminists, Hollywood actors,
college lit professors, Occupy Wall Street, whales, the French, Bill Maher,
Canada, Sesame Street and other such undesirables.
"Pure Marxism," cried Rush Limbaugh about the pope's ideas.
"Hand-selected by the New World Order. The same people who gave us Obama
gave us this pope," cried Michael Savage.
"Part of the globalist plan to destroy the world," chimed in Alex Jones.
But for all of the right's sourpussing, the papal Beatlemania on the other
side has been just as revealing.
The commercial media is of course doing its thing, making the pope's arrival
into the Biggest Live Coverage Event of all time. This whole-week
Popetacular will be like a baby-down-a-well story times a Kursk rescue times
a presidential inauguration. Atheists are advised to keep their TVs off.
Even Donald Trump will be a footnote to reporters while His Holiness is in
the country. (Although, humorously, Trump's biographer Michael D'Antonio
squirmed into the headlines this week by comparing Trump to the pope.
"They're both completely authentic guys," he said.)
But it's the defenses of the pope by left-leaning media that are really
striking. A spate of articles in traditionally liberal newspapers and
websites has appeared, each praising the pope and appropriating him as one
of their own.
Should you, the progressive, embrace the head of one of the most socially
conservative organizations on earth? "Yes. Yes, you should," says Jack
Jenkins at ThinkProgress. "Especially if you want legislative action on
immigration reform, climate change, or income inequality."
Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon took particular issue with George Will's
broadside against Francis, which I get. But beyond that she went after Will
for misrepresenting Catholic values, which may tilt blue-state:
"I find it interesting when conservative guys like Will lose their minds
over the idea of someone with a fair degree of authority on the subject of
Catholicism - like, say, a pope - pointing out the actual stated values of
one of the richest and most powerful religions in the world. Values that
include, uh oh, charity, humility and non-materialism."
Suzy Khimm at the the New Republic pointed out several of the more
transparent attempts to turn Francis into a Democratic-leaning hero. She
cited the liberal-backed American Bridge project, which is releasing a
report that will "reveal how the Republican Party is opposed and actively
working against Pope Francis's priorities on many issues." This comes on the
heels of another report arguing that the Koch Brothers are "on the wrong
side of the Holy Father."
All this stuff is a drag. The American left is always at its most unlikeable
when it's being pious. And that's just the secular,
hey-that-joke-isn't-funny kind of piety. If we have to add actual religious
piety to the equation, we're suddenly taking a lot of the charm out of not
being a Republican. Watching progressives fawn over a pope is depressing and
makes me want to go watch a Cheech and Chong movie.
I was raised Catholic. To me the Church is just a giant evil transnational
corporation operating on a dreary business model, one that nurtures
debilitating guilt feelings in its followers and then offers to make them go
away temporarily in exchange for donations. I realize the Church does some
nice things with the money it raises and that other people have a different
opinion, but this is my experience.
And this pope, for all his good qualities, is to me a modern version of an
old religious scam. In Tsarist Russia you'd have some wizened starets show
up at an aristocrat's estate in rags and preach to the ladies of the house
about the evils of wealth in exchange for wine, pastries and a few nights in
a feather bed.
This version is a pope arriving in America with a gazillion-member entourage
to reassure young professionals in New York how right they are about climate
change and income inequality. He says a lot of very vague things about the
wrongs of society that everyone is sure coincide with their own opinions.
George Will is right when he says Francis speaks "in the intellectual tone
of a fortune cookie," saying things like, "People occasionally forgive, but
nature never does."
Meanwhile Francis chugs along as the head of one of the most socially
regressive organizations on earth, doing nothing to take on the Church's
indefensible stances on things like birth control, gay rights,
discrimination against women, celibacy and countless other issues. He claims
the moral authority to reform global capitalism, but he's somehow not ready
to tell teenagers it's OK to masturbate, which seems bizarre.
People have such impassioned political fights over the pope because everyone
wants the endorsement of the guy closest to God. But what if he's not closer
to God, and is just a guy in a funny hat? Doesn't that make all this fuss
and controversy ridiculous? It seems strange that it's the year 2015, and we
still can't say that out loud.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
