It's Friday ...

HERE is a thoughtful essay on the "slow, sad death" of journalism by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, former policy adviser and speech writer for George W. Bush.

Thanksgiving Day

OVER at UMRBlog recently, there was a discussion about "communion and the fallibility of man." By coincidence, my favorite gay conservative blogger, Andrew Sullivan, has something to say on a topic of somewhat similar nature, "Cafeteria Theocracy In America." A quotation:

... One critical thing Jesus taught was that controlling the world is not just impossible but inherently sinful. Our task as Christians is to control no one but ourselves and to love all. Our main weapon must always be example, not control.

Moreover, Christianists cannot both assert a fundamental right to economic and personal freedom and yet also oppose that freedom when it means that women can choose if and when to have children, when it means that gay couples can choose to form build strong and admirable relationships and have children, when it means that straight couples can buy and use contraception, etc. The Christianists are engaging in cafeteria theocracy here. Which is why their obsession with gays and avoidance of so much else does indeed bespeak a form of prejudice against a group of people they barely know or understand but nonetheless scapegoat for much broader social ills.

From the old photos file:


Son Rob, stage crew assistant carpenter, with Joan Collins, actress, on the road with "Legends" in 2006.

Quoting ...

FROM "Seeing," a novel by the Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, José Saramago:

... as it is always wise to remember, while it is true that man proposes, it is god who disposes, and there have been very few occasions, almost all of them tragic, when both man and god were in agreement and did all the disposing together.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

AH, yes, once again: The wonderous ways of U.S. health care.

Monday, November 23, 2009

ARE you interested in what's happening out in the rest of the world — and can't find out because U.S. media have decided they can't afford foreign news coverage? Try globalpost, a Web site created by a former cable news manager and a former Boston Globe journalist.

I heard an Associated Press honcho on NPR this morning cast doubt, but this site may well be a sign of the future.