April 15, 2005
Terri Schiavo "Necro-Porn"
"Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we've feasted on decomposing bodies for
almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of
Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their
ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top entertainment franchise, the
all-forensics-all-the-time 'CSI.'"
- Associate Editor Frank Rich, April 10.
George W. Bush, "Fortunate Son"?
"Nonetheless, [Bush campaign strategist Mark] McKinnon said that Mr. Bush had
not gone so far as to include on his playlist 'Fortunate Son,' the angry
anti-Vietnam war song about who has to go to war that [John] Fogerty sang when
he was with Creedence Clearwater Revival. ('I ain't no senator's son....Some
folks are born silver spoon in hand.') As the son of a two-term congressman and
a United States Senate candidate, Mr. Bush won a coveted spot with the Texas Air
National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam."
- Elisabeth Bumiller's April 11 "White House Letter" on the songs on Bush's
iPod.
More "Independent Analysts" Who
Agree With Democrats
"Most of all, Democrats and some independent analysts say, the Congressional
intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo has highlighted the extent of
Republican power, the ambition of the party's social conservatives and the
party's willingness to challenge the judiciary."
- From an April 11 story by Robin Toner and Carl Hulse.
"He's a Liberal" = Demonization?
"Arthur J. Finkelstein, a prominent Republican consultant who has directed a
series of hard-edged political campaigns to elect conservatives in the United
States and Israel over the last 25 years, said Friday that he had married his
male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts. Mr. Finkelstein,
59, who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as
liberal, said in a brief interview that he had married his partner of 40 years
to ensure that the couple had the same benefits available to married
heterosexual couples."
- Political reporter Adam Nagourney, April 9.
"Growing Lines at Soup Kitchens"
as GOP Pushes Tax Cuts
"The 1,130 soup kitchen guests, as they're respectfully called, began gathering
outside the church doors an hour early, curling around the corner in a long line
to await a free main meal - their safety-net highlight in another day of being
down and out, part of the working poor, or surviving somewhere in between.The
sight of masses of Americans gratefully chowing down on free food is indeed a
show, an amazingly discreet one that is classified not as outright hunger but as
'food insecurity' by government specialists who are busy measuring the growing
lines at soup kitchens and food pantries across the nation. There were 25.5
million supplicants regularly lining up in 2002; they were joined by 1.1 million
more the next year. And even more arrive as unemployment and other government
programs run out. Much as the diners at Holy Apostles peered ahead to see what
was being dished up at the steam tables, soup kitchen administrators across the
country are currently eying governments' trilevel budget season and wincing at
all the politicians' economizing vows. They know that 'budget tightening'
eventually means longer lines outside their doors."
- Editorial board member and former NYT White House correspondent Francis X.
Clines, April 9.
"Advocates for Women's Health"
vs. "Religious Conservatives"
"Plan B, manufactured by Barr Laboratories, was approved for use by prescription
in June 1999. Consisting of two pills, it is intended to be taken in the 72
hours after unprotected sex, either when regular contraception fails or is
skipped. But advocates for women's health say selling it by prescription hampers
its usefulness, because it is difficult for women to see their doctors quickly
enough to get a prescription. Opponents of the pill, including religious
conservatives, have said it will encourage sexual promiscuity. But in December
2003, two committees of expert advisers to the food and drug agency, meeting
jointly, voted 23 to 4 to recommend over-the-counter sales. The agency typically
follows the advice of its expert advisers, but the decision has been delayed on
several occasions."
- Sheryl Gay Stolberg, April 7.
Welcome "Context" From a Devout
Pope-Hater
"But some programs have ventured to present John Paul II as, first and foremost,
a Catholic, and one, furthermore, with grave reservations about American life.
On Saturday, ABC's perceptive special, 'John Paul II, Legacy of a Pope,'
featured an interview with James Carroll, a writer and onetime Catholic priest.
While Americans have understandably found an anti-Communist ally in the pope
during the cold war, Mr. Carroll suggested, they have sometimes failed to
recognize that opposing totalitarianism does not always mean championing
democracy or a free market. Mr. Carroll said, 'John Paul II has faithfully tried
to preserve this medieval, absolutist notion of pope-centered Catholicism with
everything going out from the Vatican.' This authoritarianism, Mr. Carroll said,
has had dire consequences for Catholics in the United States, where criminal
activity in the priesthood might have been brought to light earlier had the
church not been so determined to close ranks. This rigorous assessment was
striking amid the pomp, the sketchy biographies, and the make-news of other
television coverage. And while Mr. Carroll's arguments need not supersede the
tributes to the pope, they do provide context."
- Times TV critic Virginia Heffernan, April 5.
Reality Check:
Heffernan leaves out that Carroll is a left-wing writer who described the late
pope as a "disaster" who "disgraced the Church" and had become "the chief
subjugator of women."
Byrd = Zeus
"The crowd swooned like schoolgirls catching their first glimpse of the Beatles,
and the senator seemed to relish every minute. But political analysts say
getting the rock-star reception from the MoveOn set could backfire for Mr. Byrd
in West Virginia, where President Bush won last November's election by 13
percentage points. At home, Mr. Byrd is sometimes called 'the prince of pork,'
for the millions of dollars in federal aid he has brought back for public works
projects, many of which bear his name.With his white hair, his polished wooden
cane and hands that shake from what aides say is a benign tremor, Mr. Byrd cuts
a seemingly frail figure in the Capitol, and some wonder if he would be up for a
grueling campaign. His wife of nearly 68 years, Erma, has been ill, and he said
she is very much on his mind. Yet as he sat in his chandeliered Capitol office
last week, his cane resting by his side, Mr. Byrd seemed energized, casting
thunderbolts like Zeus from the mountaintop."
- From Sheryl Gay Stolberg's profile of the ex-Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd,
April 3.
Hitting the Pope's "Highly
Conservative Doctrinal Views"
"There were voices of discord, many of them in America, as critics of the pope's
highly conservative doctrinal views reiterated their displeasure over his
stances on homosexuality, gay marriage, priestly celibacy, artificial
contraception, the role of women in church life and other issues, including what
some characterized as an inadequate response to the priest-pedophile scandals
that engulfed the American church in recent years. But for most Americans, it
was a day to remember, not to criticize."
- Robert McFadden, April 3.
Pope a "Divisive, Polarizing
Figure"
"He was in one sense steadfastly determined to repair rifts and build bridges.
But he was also a divisive, polarizing figure, adamantly wedded to traditional
church teachings and politically conservative positions on many social issues.
He resisted and rejected calls from progressive Catholics for the ordination of
women and for an end to the vow of celibacy for priests. Many of those
progressives cited his refusal to budge as one reason that more and more
Catholics drifted away from church attendance, and as one explanation for the
church's diminished influence in Western Europe and the United States. But what
some Catholics saw as intransigence, others saw as principled, passionate and
eloquent idealism."
- Frank Bruni, April 3.
That "Polarizing" Pope
"In the last few weeks before his death, he deteriorated to the point where he
seemed, as his spokesman once said, to be 'a soul pulling a body' - an example,
his supporters said, of the dignity of old age and the value of suffering. Some
critics said it was a symbol of a papacy in need of rejuvenation.Among liberal
Catholics, he was criticized for his strong opposition to abortion,
homosexuality and contraception, as well as the ordination of women and married
men.But he defied easy definition: For all his conservatism on social and
theological issues, he was decidedly forward looking - too much so even for
some cardinals - on the delicate question of other religions.He was a most
public man: traveling, bear-hugging, chatting and preaching the value of love
with a warmth that belied his often-doctrinaire positions on church issues."
- Ian Fisher, April 3.
The "Ultraconservative" Cardinal"
"At the moment of Pope John Paul II's death on Saturday, the power structure
that governed the Roman Catholic hierarchy for the past 26 years fell away, and
an ultraconservative 78-year-old Spanish cardinal temporarily became the leading
decision maker in Catholicism."
- Elaine Sciolino on Eduardo Martnez Somalo becoming camerlengo, or
chamberlain, of the Vatican, April 4.
