Loose Canon: July 2004

Costco, the Country Club, and Abortion
July 22, 2004 | 4:40 p.m.

Abortion is almost always about selfishness. Sometimes it's terribly hard not to be selfish, but Amy Richards' saga of aborting two of a set of triplets, told in Sunday's New York Times magazine reveals an incredible heartlessness.

If I belonged to NARAL-Pro-Choice America, I'd put Ms. Richards on my With-Friends-Like This... list and hope she didn't write any more stories for national magazines. Surely, even those who have few qualms about abortion must have squirmed when they read this:

"I felt physically fine up to this point, I got on the subway afterward, and all of a sudden, I felt ill. I didn't want to eat anything. What I was going through seemed like a very unnatural experience. On the subway, Peter [her boyfriend and the father of the triplets she was carrying] asked, 'Shouldn't we consider having triplets?' And I had this adverse reaction: 'This is why they say it's the woman's choice, because you think I could just carry triplets. That's easy for you to say, but I'd have to give up my life.' Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn't be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks.

"When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It's not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it."

Having triplets would have been inconvenient in a five story walk-up in New York's East Village. It would also have reduced Richards' income, since she'd be in bed during her peak lecturing time.

"I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: 'Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?' The obstetrician wasn't an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more."

The shot of potassium chloride is injected into the heart of the fetus.

Ms. Richards set her story up in such a way that the reader is supposed to sympathize--she had grown up without a father and in high school she had watched friends who were "helping to rear nieces and nephews, because their siblings, who were not much older, were having babies."

Quite laudably, Richards didn't want to end up pregnant and too young. But then the most telling remark: "I had friends from all over the class spectrum: I saw the nieces and nephews on the one hand and country-club memberships and station wagons on the other."

No, you don't want a financial drain, even flesh and blood, that will keep you from having your country-club dues.

It is interesting that, during the split second she considered what it would be like to have triplets, Richards envisioned a life of "shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise."

National Review's Jennifer Graham comments on the Richards article in "A Tale of Costco as Feminist Hell."

Meanwhile, feminist and New York Times guest columnist Barbara Ehrenreich is similarly hard-nosed:

"You can blame a lot of folks, from media bigwigs to bishops, if we lose our reproductive rights, but it's the women who shrink from acknowledging their own abortions who really irk me."

She should love Ms. Richards. "Despite the troubling picture drawn by Miss Richards's account, she is to be commended for one thing: She does not rely on the favorite pretext of the pro-abortion movement--women's 'health'," writes Shannen Coffin in another critique of Ms. Richards's piece.

Just Wilde About Oscar
July 22, 2004 | 4:40 p.m.

Is the road to heaven sometimes paved with bad intentions?

Writing in the National Catholic Register, Joseph Pearce, author of "The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde," suggests that that's the path that Wilde might have taken:

"If it is true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it is also true that the road to heaven is sometimes paved with bad ones. Our very sins, if we repent, can be our teachers and guides. In recollecting our sins, and in recoiling from their consequences, we can be kept on the narrow path that leads purgatorially upward toward paradise.

"Thus the scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites, imagining themselves on the path to heaven, might be heading for an unpleasant surprise, whereas the publicans and sinners, learning from their mistakes and amending their ways, might reach the Kingdom to which Christ has called them.

"It is, therefore, a paradoxical pleasure to be able to celebrate the Decadent path to Christ taken by Oscar Wilde not as a celebration of decadence per se (heaven forbid!) but as a celebration of the path to Christ that it represents. God is always bringing good out of evil and the Catholic literary revival has reaped a wonderful harvest from the seeds planted in decadence during the 19th century."

More than the 18 ½ Minute Gap?
July 22, 2004 | 4:40 p.m.

Loose Canon is amused that the press obviously doesn't want to cover the story of former Clinton security adviser Sandy Berger's pilfering classified material from the National Archives.

But this is an important story. Whatever Berger took, it may be far more important than the 18 ½ minutes of the tapes erased by Rosemary Woods, Richard Nixon's secretary, during Watergate. As Hugh Hewitt points out in the Weekly Standard:

"Berger's sticky fingers have left a gap in the record of the Clinton administration's response to the growing threat posed by al Qaeda. Unless other files exist with all the same drafts and handwritten notes that Berger destroyed, we will never be able to conclude whether Berger's actions were simply another display of fecklessness and recklessness on an issue of national security, or an attempt to bleach the record of Clinton-era malpractice on matters of terror."

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette opines that Berger is "too experienced to misplace documents."

Feeling Superior
July 22, 2004 | 4:40 p.m.

Few things give members of the supposedly educated strata of society a bigger thrill than attacking the Christian fundamentalists to whom they feel so superior.

As marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher recently wrote:

"I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Is the headline in The New York Times letters section an example of dangerously Orwellian doublespeak or an amusing form of self-parody: 'Religious Intolerance Among Americans'? Beneath the headline, Americans are judging religions they disagree with. For readers of The New York Times, that means Christian fundamentalists."

Gallagher takes on former Clinton Cabinet member Robert Reich, who recently wrote that Christian fundamentalists are a bigger threat to civilization than Islamic terrorists, and notes a statement in which Gallagher says that presidential candidate John Kerry sounds Reichian.

AIDS: Just Say No
July 21, 2004 | 11:45 a.m.

O, Swami, I enjoyed your explication of sexual practices in Africa--and I thought the Kama Sutra was racy! Without getting into the specific issues of lubrication, membranes, etc., I must say that none of it changes my mind that the cheapest--and most humane--way to fight AIDS is to promote fidelity to one's mate.

You seem to deduce that promoting fidelity wouldn't work because of the ingrained practice by which older men "cleanse" themselves by having sex with young virgins. I'd like to quote the subhead from the article you linked to as supporting evidence:

"Child rape: A taboo within the AIDS taboo; More and more girls are being raped by men who believe this will 'cleanse' them of the disease, but people don't want to confront the issue."

Swami, I do want to confront the issue. Whaddaya bet these young girls would prefer it if these infected older men were prevented from having sex with them? You note that the dirty old men believe that the girls' hymens are sealed and that they not only won't contract AIDS but they'll cleanse the men. We should enlighten them--and work for the enactment of laws that put men who have "cleansing" sex with young virgins in the hoosegow. You said that, if I persist in my Just Say No prescription for AIDS, you will call me a racist and unchristian.

You might do that, Swami, but I doubt if these young virgins would call me racist for wanting to protect them from their rapists. They would probably prefer not to be raped, even if it's not very multicultural of LC to frown on such practices.

You also called to my attention a piece in yesterday's New York Times about women in sub-Saharan Lesotho. May I quote again?

"'One woman will go out with four or five men,' said Bolelwa Falten, a 26-year-old former seamstress. 'One will help with the rent. One, maybe, will drive a taxi and take her to and from work. One will help with food. One will help her pay her installments.'"

"Experts refer to such desperate arrangements by the dry term 'transactional sex.' This is one reason, though hardly the only one, that in Lesotho H.I.V. infects one in four men aged 15 to 24--and one in two women.'"

And Swami thinks it would be racist or unchristian to work to change the lot of these women? I think it's racist and unchristian not to try to bring change.

I realize that such change can't be accomplished overnight and that it is important not to judge the poor women who engage in "transactional sex."

It's easy to sit in our comfortable abodes in New York or Washington and take a benign view of the destructive practices of people in Africa or other third world countries. But I think this is racist.

Here's an interesting article on the fidelity vs. condoms controversy: Kerry Marsala asks, "What works 100% of the time to prevent sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS? The science of condoms? Or the ideology [fidelity to one's partner] presented by Ugandan President Yowen Museveni at the AIDS Conference recently held in Bangkok?"

In closing..."Abstaining from sex is oftentimes not a choice," Rep. Barbra Lee said at the Bangkok AIDS conference (the one that got Swami and LC riled up), "and therefore their only hope in preventing HIV infection is the use of condoms."

Let's work hard to make it a choice for more people--especially young women whose deadly initiation to sexual activity is all too often a sick older man. Is this racist and unchristian of me, Swami?

AIDS and The Beautiful People
July 21, 2004 | 11:45 a.m.

Before I move along, I must address one other issue the Swami raised--AIDS and celebrities. I had said that you don't fight AIDS by sending administration representatives to rub shoulders with celebrities at star-studded AIDS conferences (where, despite our exceptional generosity, we are likely to be booed).

Recalling that I am a former gossip columnist--and "not a bad one," thanks for that grace note--Swami wrote:

"It's hard to believe she doesn't understand the dynamics of celebrities and causes. But on the off-chance she was home from school that day, Swami will now educate her--and those of you who like to know how the world works."

Swami, I realize, as you pointed out, that celebrities can raise money and boost visibility. Like John Kerry, I regard them as the "heart and soul" of America--and, of course, I love the Beautiful People because they're beautiful. I sincerely wish more Beautiful People were smart enough to be Republicans. But I stand by my contention that you don't fight AIDS by going to conferences with the Beautiful People.

For an assessment of what the Bush administration is doing to fight AIDS, I turn to Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post's editorial page:

"Inconveniently for those who enjoy stereotypes, the Bush administration is far and away the leader in the global AIDS fight. This year the United States will spend $2.4 billion on the pandemic, nearly twice as much as all other donor governments combined; attacking the Bush team for indifference to AIDS is like attacking it for inadequate defense spending."

The Purloined Classified Documents
July 21, 2004 | 11:45 a.m.

Can you imagine the press's hysterical outcry if a Republican had been caught removing terrorism-related documents from the National Archives? Almost on the eve of testifying before the 9/11 Commission?

Maverick liberal blogger Mickey Kaus of kausfiles notes that the New York Times originally buried the story of Sandy Berger, former Clinton security adviser, doing exactly that, on page A16:

"I guess they wouldn't want to bump that late-breaking piece on untucked shirttails from the front page. ..."

The Washington Times' Tony Blankley suggests that inveterate Washington insider David Gergen's defense of Berger--"it's more innocent that it looks"--was perhaps the wrong tact:

"This doubtlessly heartfelt defensive effort was actually slightly counterproductive. By asserting that it was more innocent than it looked, he let any doubters know that the events looked not innocent, even to friend David Gergen."

Andrew Sullivan points out a discrepancy in the New York Times reporting on l'affaire Berger, and wonders why on earth Berger took the documents, vertently or inadvertently, and muses that "at times like this, I sure am glad we have the blogosphere."

Referring to reports--which Berger has denied--that he stuffed some of the documents in his socks and underwear, Andrew says he can hardly wait for "the fruits of the loom, I mean inquiry."

What Are Soldiers Really Like?
July 21, 2004 | 11:45 a.m.

"I went to war as a believer in the citizen-soldier," writes Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine captain, in an eloquent piece in yesterday's New York Times. "My college study of the classics idealized Greeks who put down their plows for swords, retuning to their fields at the end of the war. As a Marine officer in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, I learned that the victors on today's battlefields are long-term, professional soldiers. Thus the increasing calls for reinstating the draft--and the bills before Congress that would do so--are well intentioned but misguided.

"Imposing a draft on the military I served in would harm it grievously."

Fick also refutes the notion that only poor kids go to the military and that they become cannon fodder:

"There is no cannon-fodder underclass in the military. In fact, front-line combat troops are a near-perfect reflection of American male society.

"Yes, some minority men and women enlist for lack of other options, but they tend to concentrate in support jobs where they can learn marketable skills like driving trucks or fixing jets, not throwing grenades and setting up interlocking fields of machine gun fire. African-Americans, who comprise nearly 13 percent of the general population, are overrepresented in the military at more than 19 percent--but they account for only 10.6 percent of infantry soldiers, the group that suffers most in combat. Hispanics, who make up 13.3 percent of the American population, are underrepresented at only 11 percent of those in uniform."

As somebody who once supported the draft but no longer does, LC suspects that there is a sinister reason behind a lot of the support for reinstating it--if we had the draft, a vocal anti-war movement could be vastly more influential by making soldiers who had no choice about going more determined to avoid service.

More on Kerry and Abortion
July 21, 2004 | 11:45 a.m.

The liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal finds John Kerry's position on abortion troubling: "Defending a Catholic politician's access to the Eucharist is not the same thing as defending his or her support for unrestricted access to abortion. Sad to say, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's position on the legal status of abortion is extreme."

Hyperventilating Rage!
July 20, 2004 | 1:00 p.m.

In a fawning review of "Outfoxed," the anti-Fox flick, A.O. Scott, the New York Times' dependably PC movie reviewer, opines that the movie "will inevitably be discussed in the same breath (or with the same hyperventilating rage) as Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11.'"

A.O., honey, who's hyperventilating? It strikes me that the left these days is so enraged that it looks like it's about to hiss and shrivel up and dissolve into a puddle somewhat like the Bad Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." Except, of course, that it includes the chattering classes, which produce the elite papers and evening "news" shows, and therefore could very well go on to gloire in November.

This election will test whether George W. Bush, or any president so hated by the elite media, can long survive. Fox is so roundly detested because it has succeeded by not buying the rest of the media's prevalent bias. You've probably already heard about the remark by Newsweek's Evan Thomas--the "Inside Washington" panelist most likely to wander off the reservation.

If you missed it, Thomas said: "The media want Kerry to win. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic, and this glow is going to be worth maybe 15 points."

(Thanks to the invaluable Media Research Center for preserving this quote for use throughout the coming months.)

Writing in The Washington Times, Tod Lindberg, editor of Policy Review Magazine, argues with confidence (hope it's not complacency) that "Hating and Waiting Is Not Winning":

First of all, you need to understand that Americans do not hate George W. Bush. You may hate George W. Bush, all your friends may hate George W. Bush, all of your friends may have written books about how fitting it is to hate George W. Bush and received handsome advances from their publishers for them. The bookstore shelves groan under them.

And yes, you are entirely within your rights to hate George W. Bush. No one will take that from you. Yes, Republicans hated Bill Clinton, and many still do. Yes, they also hate Hillary. If, on principle, you want to hate the Republican president just as much as Republicans hated the last Democratic president, no one will stop you. But Americans in general do not hate George W. Bush.

And, by the way, if you're wondering just who those "Two Americas" are, you must read A.O.'s review of "Outfoxed"--the screening was sponsored by Moveon.Org, the anti-Bush group, and took place at a bar called Zebulon, a "modest" place in a "not yet completely chic block" in New York's Brooklyn neighborhood that serves reds and whites and Camembert on toasted slices of a baguette.

"So you might say," A.O. writes, "(or perhaps Fox News might say) that the crowd on Sunday--young, hip, and partisan--represented a bohemian, early-21st-century incarnation of a political archetype that flourished (at least in conservative imaginations) in the 1970's and 80's: the wine and cheese liberal."

Well, that's one America.

The Present Danger
July 20, 2004 | 1:00 p.m.

Bravo for Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman and Republican Senator Jon Kyle for relaunching the Committee on the Present Danger. The old Committee on the Present Danger was formed in 1950 to make people aware of the threat from the former Soviet Union.

As reconstituted by Lieberman and Kyle, the committee will, as the two senators explain in an editorial published in today's Washington Post, focus on "the present danger our generation faces: international terrorism from Islamic extremists and the outlaw states that either harbor or support them."

Citing a BBC/Oxford Research International poll released earlier this month, the senators note that 55 percent of Iraqis today believe their lives are good or very good and 70 percent believe that Iraq needs democracy.

Here's a quote from the senators' editorial:

"The liberation of Iraq has important implications for the region and for the broader war on terrorism. The leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties have so far stood firm in their commitment to finish the job in Iraq and to fight to victory the war on terrorism. But that bipartisan consensus is coming under growing public pressure and could fray in the months ahead. Although the tide is turning in the war on terrorism, a political undertow in this country could wash out our recent gains. We must not let this happen."

The Loose Canon Book Bag
July 20, 2004 | 1:00 p.m.

From time to time, LC hopes to recommend for your reading pleasure books and authors she has enjoyed inordinately--and the summer season is the perfect time to launch such an endeavor.

I thought I'd get the ball rolling with two authors who couldn't be more different from each other, though they both use religious themes and settings--Brian (pronounced Bree-an) Moore, whose novel "Black Robe" is about the Jesuits working among the native tribes of Canada, and Susan Howatch, whose bodice-ripping Church of England novels are entertaining and edifying (though you shouldn't let the last frighten you away--they're sort of what the prim English novelist Barbara Pym, chronicler of vicars and the spinsters who loved them, would have written if she'd been more interested in sex of a less repressed sort ).

Like the Church of England of which she writes, Howatch's body of work falls apart at the end, but the earlier C of E novels are great fun. My very favorite is "Glittering Images," which revolves around life in the English village around the Cathedral Town of Starbridge, based on Salisbury, home to the Turner-painted Cathedral, and known to readers of Trollope as Barchester.

The main character is--natch--a clergyman. He is Charles Ashworth, who won the glittering prizes at Oxford and went on to become a traditional C of E priest. He is sent to investigate the flamboyant Bishop of Starbridge, who opposes the Church's divorce rules, and there meets (as the dust jacket copy puts it) "the cool and beautiful Lyle Christie, Mrs. Jardine's companion." Is the Bishop of Starbridge outspokenly against the Church's strict divorce laws for a personal reason? Naturally, there's a secret in the episcopal palace.

As in many of Howatch's C of E novels, there is a complex spiritual crisis that is resolved through the ministry of a charismatic priest. (Howatch uses the word "glamorous," which will perhaps strike those who think of the clergy only in TV evangelist terms as odd.) Chapters are adorned with quotations from the likes of the mystic Baron von Hugel, but the plots are enlivened by misbehaving clerics.

In addition to "Glittering Images," I'd like to tout "Mystic Paths," in which Nicholas Darrow, a young priest, gets off track with his mystic gifts, inherited from his father, the Rev. Jon Darrow, the protagonist of a previous(and also recommended) book, "Glamorous Powers," who left his monastery--these are High Church books--to marry Nicholas's mother. I also love "Absolute Truths," in which Ashworth, now Bishop of Starbridge and a widow, faces a crisis. Well, stuffy old Loose Canon was shocked when the bip removed his crimson shirt to... but he ultimately ...well, I won't give away the ending.

Though I've compared Howatch's use of Salisbury to Trollope's, and indeed her social canvas resembles his, her work might nevertheless be correctly viewed as Harlequin romances for slightly high-brow readers who don't mind some very interesting spiritual direction thrown into the bargain.

Brian Moore, perhaps my favorite Catholic novelist after Evelyn Waugh and Walker Percy, isn't anywhere near the Harlequin genre. I'd say he's a Serious Novelist, as long as that doesn't imply that he's less enjoyable to read.

Several of Moore's novels have been made into movies, including "Black Robe" and "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne," in which Maggie Smith played Miss Hearne, a man-hungry spinster in Catholic Ireland and alcoholic who moves from cheap boarding house to cheap boarding house:

"Alcoholic, she did not drink to put aside the dangers and disappointments of the moment. She drank to be able to see these trials more philosophically, to examine them more fully, fortified by the stimulant of unreason. Thus, she did not shirk the consideration of the fact that she had sat up all night in a chair, that she might have made a lot of noise, that everyone might know her secret. She was drunk, so she found these possibilities amusing but unlikely."

The loss of faith is a constant theme in Moore's work, and Judith Hearne is the story of a homely, middle-aged woman's ceasing to believe--hardly a glamorous subject, but it's a wise and wonderful and funny book.

"Cold Heaven" is also about faith--a militant atheist named Marie who left and hates the Church is confronted by a vision of the Virgin Mary when she goes to meet her married lover in a motel in Carmel, California. This echoes Carmel, site of an early appearance of Mary in Catholic tradition, and Marie's struggle with the apparition and the course of her affair with one doctor and the seeming death and resurrection of her husband, Alex, form the plot.

Moore's best book is "Black Robe," the story of a Jesuit's harrowing journey among the savage Hurons to reach a mission where he will spend the rest of his life: "He looked up at the sky. Soon, winter snows would cover this vast, empty land. Here, among these Savages, he would spend his life. He poured the water on a sick brow, saying again the words of salvation. And a prayer came to him, a true prayer at last. Spare them. Spare them, O Lord."

I almost put Catholic in quotes when I described Moore as a Catholic writer--in fact, Moore always claimed that he had lost his faith. Unlike most ex-Catholics, however, he has written dazzlingly and without malice about Catholic settings.

At least one critic argued that Moore regained his faith. If so, he was too much of an artist to tell us. He is a lapidary writer, and LC hopes he'll find a place in your book bag for the beach.

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