Hmm. I was able to get at it. But just in case, I've cut-and-paste it at the end of this post. Formatting may be a bit out of whack, but at least you'll have the text.
George Cobabe wrote: > story no longer available - if you want us to read it you almost need to > copy and paste. > > George > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Marc A. Schindler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "zion-l" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 9:55 PM > Subject: [ZION] Going, Going, Gone > > A rare column by Canada's funniest conservative [tm] which is deadpan > serious and with which I agree (that combination being what's "rare," I > mean), on Henry Kissinger, Cardinal Law, and Trent Lott > http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={F0F3B60D-1024-4F3C-8E75-9F9E > 177632CD} > Thursday » December 19 » 2002 Kissinger, Law, Lott: gone, gone, going Mark Steyn National Post Monday, December 16, 2002 Friday was an odd day in America. It began with an announcement that there would be a late afternoon press conference by Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader under fire for waxing nostalgic about Strom Thurmond's segregationist candidacy in the 1948 Presidential election. Initially, everyone assumed he'd be resigning. But he didn't. Instead, all kinds of other folks did. Henry Kissinger resigned as chairman of the panel looking into "what really happened" on September 11th, and Bernard Cardinal Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston, the Catholic archdiocese most deeply mired in the priestly sex abuse pandemic. Dr. Kissinger's resignation was highly premature, Cardinal Law's extremely belated and the timing of Senator Lott's is still being worked out. Dr. Strangelove's decision to bail has deprived the left of a lot of fun. Even those of us who are partial to the old boy like him precisely because he's sinister, ruthless, a master of realpolitik, etc. These may be fine qualities but not exactly the ones you're looking for on a commission meant to ferret out the truth from murky spooks and lay it before the people. Various lefties denounced Bush's appointment as "deeply cynical," but it seems to me exactly the opposite. Putting Kissinger in charge of the 9/11 truth squad virtually guaranteed no one would believ e a word of what the final report said. Only someone indifferent to cynicism would do that. Unless, of course, Bush knows that what's likely to be uncovered is so damaging the only thing to do is release the information via a channel that guarantees your opponents will dismiss it out of hand as the one scenario that can't possibly be true. If so, it's "deeply cynical" mainly in the sense that it's deeply cynical about public cynicism. And I don't believe Bush is that cynical. More likely, the appointment of Kissinger is confirmation of how Bush is almost endearingly detached from the world of spin, image, perception and their muddy cross-currents. This shouldn't surprise us: Nobody preoccupied with how he'll "look" would have picked Cheney as Veep, Rummy for Defence or John Ashcroft as Attorney-General. Whatever one feels about these appointments, they're not the acts of a President who's the creature of focus groups. In the end, Dr. Kissinger ankled because he didn't want to reveal the "client list" of his international consultancy. It supposedly includes many foreign governments. It would be interesting to know which ones. The good doctor has taken, for example, a more benign view of the House of Saud than many of us have. But he's back in private practice now and it's strictly his business. Cardinal Law, by contrast, clung on month after month, long after it became clear how much his stewardship had damaged the Church. I cannot agree with Hugo Gurdon's conclusion that the Archbishop's "past actions were, surely, due to shortcomings and mistakes rather than to malignancy or indifference to the plight of children." Indeed, I'm staggered Hugo could write such a sentence. The overwhelming weight of evidence is that Law was at the pinnacle of an elaborate racket set up to protect those he knew to be compulsive child rapists. In 1997, the Archbishop went out of the way to give fulsome thanks for the "priestly care and ministry to all" of Paul Shanley, a man Law had been aware for two decades was a serial sodomizer of those in his care and who had given public lectures on the benefits of "man-boy love." It was Law who re-assigned and re-re-assigned and re-re-re-assigned the now defrocked Father Geoghan, in full knowledge of what had happened in the last parish and of what would certainly happen in the next. "Shortcomings" won't cover it, nor will "indifference": In essence, Cardinal Law was a supplier of fresh meat to Geoghan and others. He is a profoundly wicked man who presided over an almost unfathomable swamp of institutional depravity. None of the above means that I'm one of those who think priests labour under the intolerable burden of mandatory celibacy. Despite the best efforts of a highly sexualized culture, plenty of people get along just fine without sex. I wouldn't particularly want to live under a regime of celibacy myself, but if I did and human weakness came a-knocking I'd put on a dark coat, pull my hat down over the brow, go to the cathouse round the back of the bus station a couple of towns away and feel bad about it afterwards. I would not bugger the hell out of six-year old choirboys. Whatever that's about, it's not the burdens of celibacy. The problem, as Hugo Gurdon noted, is that once a bandwagon gets rolling all kinds of people jump on. Few of those kicking the contemptible bishops around have the church's interests at heart. They have feminist agendas, gay agendas, but not often Catholic agendas. But the church has so degraded its own moral authority you can hardly blame opportunists for stepping in to finish the job. Which is where poor pathetic Trent Lott comes in. What the Senator did was appear to endorse retrospectively ole Strom's 1948 Presidential campaign, when he ran as a "Dixiecrat" - that's to say, the flagbearer of southern racist Democrats who'd walked out of the party's convention because they were steamed about a proposed Federal anti-lynching law and various other affronts. Thanks to Lott's stupidity, the prize here for the Dems is the chance to remove the segregationist albatross from their own past and hang it round the Republicans' neck. But, as with Cardinal Law, the difficulty is keeping control of your own scandal. The National Organization for Women is now joining in demands that Lott resign for remarks he made at Strom's party -- not the racist ones, the sexist ones. Bob Dole had apparently offered to introduce Strom to Britney Spears. You may remember Dole starred in a recent Pepsi commercial with Britney, which ends with the former Presidential candidate and his dog watching the scantily-clad chanteuse cavorting on TV. Bob says, "Easy, boy" - the joke resting on the ambiguity of whether the old Viagra pitchman is addressing the pooch or himself. So Trent Lott chipped in a crack about how Bob should replace the mutt with Thurmond and end the commercial by saying, "Down, Strom." There was also a joke about the centenarian sex fiend attending the opening of Hooter's. The National Organization for Women was not amused. "Lott not only insulted millions of African-Americans last week, but he also offended women," said NOW President Kim Gandy. "Lott clearly yearns for a time before women and people of colour crashed the party." If I were one of the aggrieved members of the Congressional Black Caucus I'd resent this attempt to appropriate my scandal. Most Americans are anti-segregation but pro-Britney. For once, the PC bores have a case. It would be silly to let their usual lack of proportion assert itself. Lott, for his part, is refusing to resign as Senate Majority Leader. He's threatened to quit the Senate as a whole, a move which, for various reasons, could precipitate a chain of events that would return control of the chamber to the Democrats. In other words, Strom Thurmond's birthday party would singlehandedly reverse the results of last month's election. Wow. Talk about chaos theory. The one to watch here is the President. As the appointment of Kissinger demonstrated, Bush doesn't care about "perception" if he personally believes in someone. But that's not how he feels about Lott. On Thursday, he said the Senator's remarks were "not in the spirit of America," which, when you think about it, is pretty damning. It is far harsher, let it be said, than anything the Pope has said about his vile, abuse-enabling American bishops. Effective institutions clean house on their own terms, not their opponents'. My bet is that Bush will get his way and Lott will go, soon. Resignation-wise, the Rule of Three will eventually apply: Kissinger, Law, Lott. Gone, gone, going. © Copyright 2002 National Post -- Marc A. Schindler Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada -- Gateway to the Boreal Parkland “Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.” – Lord Chesterfield Note: This communication represents the informal personal views of the author solely; its contents do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer, nor those of any organization with which the author may be associated. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /// ZION LIST CHARTER: Please read it at /// /// http://www.zionsbest.com/charter.html /// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ==^^=============================================================== This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aaP9AU.bWix1n.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^^===============================================================
