Author: Eric Johnson

Mary McGrouchy, Irish-Catholic bore
It’s not nice to pick on the elderly, yet I figure if you write a political column in one of the world’s most important papers, you’re open to criticism. Mary McGrory’s writings occupy space in the Washington Post twice a week, and her biography says, “McGrory earned a national reputation in 1954 for her coverage of the McCarthy hearings for the Washington Star newspaper.” The Star died 21 years ago. Unfortunately, the column lives on like a zombie.
Like a zombie, it’s also searching for some brains. If you’re looking for a generic, liberal, Irish-Catholic viewpoint, you could do no better than McGrory’s opinions. She is as predictable as a Swiss train, displaying no evidence of critical thinking before she spouts whatever the liberal line is today. She will eventually end up like Art Buchwald, who is 137 years old and can barely string 50 words together, his best years having expired several decades ago.
Judging by her most recent column, she’s well on her way. I used to skip her columns for several years, but now I enjoy the grotesque phrases and dubious factoids. Here are some gems, all from the same column:
• Strange electoral metaphors: “Were it not for [Powell], our soldiers might even now be going door to door in downtown Baghdad conducting a lethal canvass.”
• “At its heart is an account of Powell’s victory over the hard-breathing hawks….” When we think of hawks, do we think of them breathing hard?
• “…getting only brief sit-downs at which Condoleezza Rice, the warrior-queen of national security, was in attendance….” I wonder if she ever referred to Janet Reno — responsible for the killing of almost as many Americans as Saddam Hussein — as a “warrior queen.” And didn’t any editors see that calling a black woman a “warrior queen” has racial overtones?
• “Powell might have cited the folly of picking a fight with a radioactive lunatic before we finish the crusade against terrorism….” Saddam Hussein literally gives off radiological emissions? Now that is something we didn’t know.
• “Bill Clinton, whose name is never mentioned without a sneer in the Oval Office….” I’m guessing Ms. McGrory hasn’t been sitting in on many White House meetings these days, so how did she find this out?
George Weigel referred to her in a recent satire as “Mary McGrouchy,” and that’s about right. Although the Post has a reputation for liberalism, and it’s fair to say their perspective is left-of-center, their bias has notably lessened in the last couple of years. Their coverage of the war in Afghanistan was nothing short of superb, and they have spoken out strongly in favor of the war on terror, while dissenting from some of President Bush’s policies. They even endorsed three Republicans for Virginia’s congressional delegation this year. Their opinion page includes the liberals like the frequently interesting William Raspberry and the occasionally interesting Richard Cohen, as well as stellar conservatives such as George Will (who got his national reputation largely from the Post) and Michael Kelly, who for my money is one of the best columnists working today.
I work for Washington’s other newspaper, so I shouldn’t offer the Post any advice, but they’d do well to dump MM in favor of some younger, more coherent liberal. She’s becoming more of an embarrassment every week.

Minding our own business
I was reading about a single male politician whose political enemies have insinuated that he “prefers the company of men,” as Marge says. I’m not going to repeat the man’s name. For discussion’s sake, let’s say he is homosexual, but does not practice it. Who cares? What possible business is that of ours? I do not buy the idea that homosexuality is wholly genetic, but I do believe that some if not most homosexuals do not choose their orientation. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be exclusively attracted to your own sex, and wishing that were not the case. It’s not fair to add to the burdens of those who are struggling.
It seems cruel in the extreme to speculate about people’s sexual appetites, and though I’ve been guilty of that in the past, I’ll keep such thoughts to myself now. If someone is militantly gay, and pushing other people to embrace the dark and dangerous gay lifestyle, that’s one thing — they ought to be answered charitably. But if someone is bearing that cross in private, then we should pray for them and be quietly awed at their courage.

Floating tabernacles
Did you know that the U.S. Department of Defense treats the Eucharist like a military secret? It’s true: if they cannot be secured by a priest-chaplain, consecrated hosts are kept with the sensitive materials in the ship or unit’s safe, along with things like battle plans and cryptographic codes. The safe is usually protected by armed sentries who, under many circumstances, can legally use deadly force to protect its valuable contents. That means when you see a Navy vessel with a Catholic chaplain, you’re watching a huge, floating tabernacle. St. John Chrysostom had a vision during Mass of angels standing guard over the Eucharist; I rather like the idea of an aircraft carrier protecting the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Defense Department doesn’t officially recognize the doctrine of transubstantiation, but it does respect the deepest beliefs of Catholic servicemen and makes proper accommodations. We should realize that collectively, we can have an effect on people even when they don’t share our beliefs. Surely when little pieces of (apparent) bread are treated with such reverence, it makes non-Catholics think about it for a moment.

Man of steel
American Catholic bishops are “not realistic because (they’ve) never seen what is the result of absolute disregard of human rights…They’ve never seen it; they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Who is this guy, and where does he get off talking about the bishops like that? None other than retired Archbishop Philip Hannan of New Orleans, speaking about the bishops’ views on attacking Iraq. The prelate is a former WWII chaplain who has a dim view of totalitarians such as Saddam Hussein.
Lots of people say that the USCCB is liberal, but that misses the mark. The USCCB almost invariably prefers the “nice” option when coming to any decision (with the honorable exception of the U.S. attacking al Qaeda in Afghanistan). So it won’t come out (ha!) and say that homosexuality is sinful when talking about the pastoral care of homosexually-oriented people, and it won’t condemn politicians in the thrall of the culture of death. Heck, it took them 27 years after Roe vs. Wade to make a statement saying that abortion should be the primary consideration for Catholic voters. If they had done that in the 1970s, it could have changed the course of history, and the Democrats might not have become the party of abortion. But that wouldn’t have been “nice.”
May God grant us bishops whose hearts are filled with charity and a holy zeal for justice. May God grant us a legion of Archbishop Hannans.

Shall we not gloat?
Since I left right before the election, I didn’t get a chance to say much about the results. Needless to say, I’m pleased — though anyone who thinks the Democrats will get the message is going to be disappointed. They will not abandon their pro-abortion stand or any other distinctive position; the election of Rep. Pelosi as house minority leader is a harbinger of the left-wing tack they’re going to take. Look, abortion is one of the reasons the Democratic Party exists today — and just because it hurts them nationally and in certain states doesn’t mean they’re going to abandon it or go soft.
Political parties subsist on votes, money, and energy. The hard-line pro-abortion politics of the Democrats brings votes in the northeast and in major cities. It attracts money from upper-middle-class citizens, especially women, and they contribute tons of energy as well. Guns are an analogous issue for the Republicans. Even if gun control is temporarily a popular issue, as it is after a gun-related mass murder, it makes no sense for the Republicans to abandon their strong support for the second amendment. They’d lose the energy of committed activists, as well as people who support gun rights but don’t belong to the NRA or make political contributions. They would jeopardize their ascendance in the Midwest, South, and West. That’s why the Republicans might support a weak gun-control measure like the Brady Bill, so they can appear “moderate” to weakly committed voters, but they wouldn’t support a gun-registration bill or a ban on handguns.
That being said, it would make a lot of sense if the Democrats ran someone who was truly moderate on the Dems’ signature issues. Let’s say the candidate supported a ban on partial-birth abortion and sex-selection abortions, plus he favored parental consent for minors, but was “pro-choice” under other circumstances. He might strongly affirm the second amendment, but say that cheap handguns have no place in our society; he’d favor expanding IRA accounts but would leave Social Security alone; he would favor raising taxes on the “most fortunate Americans” but not “working Americans”; etc.
The candidate I’m describing would stand a strong chance of winning in the general election. A charismatic, truly moderate Democrat would give Republicans a lot of trouble in 2004, but it won’t happen because of the primary process. In order to get the nomination in the first place, a candidate has to convince his own party that he represents them. The people who vote in primaries are the ones who would walk through fire to support their party, and the Democratic faithful are probably going to remain enraged until those primaries happen in 14 months. They can’t believe that they’ve been trounced by the barely articulate boob in the White House, and they’re going to want an old-fashioned tax-and-spend big-government social liberal as their candidate, or the closest thing they can find. They aren’t hungry enough for victory to swallow their principles, as they were for Bill Clinton in 1992 and ’96. Given all that, they have to run a pro-abortion liberal next time around. Count on it.
I read that President Bush said that although Republicans were victorious last week, “This is no time to gloat.” I agree that gloating is low-class and probably sinful, so that means it’s never a good time to gloat. I promise I won’t do it. However, after seeing the humiliation on the faces of Tom Daschle and Terry McAuliffe, I have to ask: if now isn’t a good time to gloat, then what is?