I felt somewhat smirchified by that one. But hey, i like cats more than dogs, too. A trial to my friends and a bafflement to my opponents, that’s my true calling I guess.

On the short list of times when i thought of it at the moment, not on the stairs heading out — Bob Taft, trying to be funny i’m sure, saying to me “you’re such a nice guy, why are you with this group causing so much trouble?” And i grinned back to him “Governor, i’m really not such a nice guy!”

Both confine their contempt to religious conservatives who have blogs, columns and/or high-profile sinecures at right-wing think tanks and say stupid things in connection with them, not the ones out doing actual work in the world. I defy anyone to read The Corner for a week or two and make the case these people are truly interested in the world outside of it.

A few months back, we had a community meeting to discuss college/village (aka town/gown) issues. A speaker offered the concern that as an Arab-Turkish-woman of color bisexual person, it was deeply oppressive to her that the four corners of the main intersection were churches, and she had to pass under their steeples’ collective shadows (no, a phallic comment was not made, but i think we were all waiting for one. too obvious, maybe.)

I observed in response that of the four churches, three affirmed GLBT rights, ordained persons regardless of orientation, and two offered marriage/union ceremonies to all and sundry. She replied that she knew all that, but their presence was still oppressive for all that. Much head nodding ensued.

Yeah. Last New Year’s Eve, literally after dark, work crews moved in and at the cost of over a million dollars removed the three massive granite panels with the name, seal, and date of founding of the local college, replacing them with an identical version in every respect except removing one word from the inscription “A Christian College of Liberal Arts.” One guess what word was absent, and hint — it weren’t “liberal.” The seal is staying, for now, even though it is an open book. Fortunately, the pages of the book in the official design are blank (cue irony machine for bubbles and confetti).

As for Roy — my life is largely lived in three spheres: homelessness assistance (transitional housing), juvenile justice, and Scouting (cue the boo hiss from the left, yeah, yeah). We get our funding cut to Scouting every year as the Big Brothers chapter in our area has had not one but two major molestation cases. I don’t agree entirely with the national Scouting policy, but the main point is that they screen, train, and restrict adult leadership like crazy these days, and reserve the right to be silly and capricious in saying “no,” including not screening only for convictions (which is all background checks and fingerprinting gets you). Many of us are working to get Scouting to a more reasoned, nuanced policy — much like the American Red Cross blood donor policy needs changing, but i still give every 60 days (11 gallons and counting), and don’t “not give” because their policy is stupid.

My point to Roy and any and all is this — in all three areas i work in, religious conservatives, by which i mean people usually waaaay more conservative than me, work their tails off helping people face to face, with little or no direct proselytism going on at all. I live in the aforementioned college town where all my friends and neighbors actually spent time wondering what we should “do” about the fact that four churches (three hugely liberal) sit on our main intersection.

Yes, my town went all eight precincts for Obama last primary day, when the other 150 in the county went for Hillary. Yeah. Anyhow, when Roy says “their otherwise puzzling lack of interest in the world at hand and the people who live in it,” he has NO idea what he’s talking about. None. If only liberals came and got their hands dirty and their hearts broken working with the last and the least out on our potholed and corrupt streets, but they don’t much.

TheoCons i’ve learned to work with because that’s who shows up. And it does rub off a bit. A lesson for liberals, perhaps?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Tom_Boggioni/649173376

Good heavens! “what kind of woman”?

Jay McInerney writes a novel that, according to Wikipedia is “narrated in the first-person from the point of view of Alison Poole, an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old.” - and then lets it be known in interviews that he based the character on his ex-girlfriend (Rielle Hunter)…..and we are to accept this, as fact?

“What kind of man” is Jay McInerney? (one assumes he’s the sort of bastard that believes in keeping score, and evening that score at every opportunity).

I think the key here is that his character is “20 year old” and not a 42 year old….plus the Edwards campaign certainly had access to Google/Wikipedia when they paid this woman more than $100,000 - surely they knew who this person is now - moreso than an imaginative ex-boyfriend from two decades ago.

Anyway - moe - the most recent thing I read that touched on the legal aftermath of the Lincoln assassination was an enthralling (but dark) book called American Brutus by Michael Kauffman, which concludes with an interesting look at the military tribunal that tried, convicted, and condemned to death the four co-conspirators they captured, including Mary Suratt, who ran the boarding house where Booth and his colleagues often met. The footnotes were quite as captivating as the text…one of the US Army generals on the tribunal was Lew Wallace (of Crawfordsville, Indiana!) - the guy who would write Ben Hur - and he spent his time lobbying Judge Holt for appointment to another military tribunal, the one they eventually tried Henry Wirz (the commandant of the hellish Andersonville POW camp). Wallace succeeded in that effort, and ultimately served on that tribunal and condemned Wirz to the gallows, too.

As a slight digression on this discussion of legal matters and due process - there is a WONDERFUL book about Mary Lincoln, by Jean Baker (who is marvelous!), which opened my eyes to the legitimacy of “Women’s Studies”. Amongst many other fascinating things, I learned how it came to be that Mary Lincoln was declared legally insane. In a nutshell (so to speak), Mary returned to her home in Chicago from shopping - it was maybe 11 in the morning - and the sheriff was waiting for her, along with an attorney with a writ, and she was taken downtown. There, an already-empaneled jury - all men - was awaiting her arrival, along with a defense attorney already selected for her by her son Robert - who had of course set the whole thing in motion!

She was tried, and the jury retired, and then returned their finding that she WAS insane, and that she be immediately sent to a sanitarium…..

So that the “due process” that the widow of the martyred President of the United States received; the woman who sat right next to him, holding his hand when a bullet was blasted into his brain….the “due process” including being arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, and hauled away - began before lunch, and was ended before sundown!!

I never, ever let pass casual remarks about how Mary Lincoln was “crazy”