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Loose Canon Says Goodbye. Forgive Me: I Feel Better Already
Convention holds that commentary on a departing colleague follows the same code as speaking of the dead--say only good.
I can do half of that here.
I have known Charlotte Hays casually for the better part of two decades. She interviewed me for a book, and, when she misplaced her notes, I happily told her my stories a second time. We share some friends. That she co-authored a charming book is unsurprising--I knew her to be a charming person.
Loose Canon--her virtual persona on Beliefnet--was a different person. And unrecognizable to me. LC was as chilly as Charlotte was warm, as charmless as Charlotte was winsome. But that's too polite: LC was devoid of empathy or human feeling. She was an admirer of some of the right's most vile haters. She was no Christian, as I understand the term.
I can't assess her singular version of Catholicism. On other matters, I was equally out in the cold. It was simply impossible to be in a dialogue with her. LC was a Terminator. A chip had been installed, and it overrode everything--inconvenient facts as well as other points of view. It was as if she had made a Faustian bargain. She sold her soul to Ann Coulter and Lucianne Goldberg, and in return, she got--ah, this is what I never found out.
For those who have missed this 18-month-long feud, I need to say something here about what constitutes a "spiritual" concern. For me, the definition is vast--from your relationship with a Higher Power to your relationship with the least of your brothers and sisters. Faith matters. But I'm one of those amateur Buddhists who believes that works matter much, much more.
When LC and I started blogging in 2004, it was clear to me--and, I'd bet, to most of you, and, certainly, to most thinking people who live outside of our borders--that our country was in its greatest spiritual crisis since Vietnam. In an illegal war, we were torturing innocent civilians and lying about it. Billions of dollars were disappearing into private pockets. At home, our government worked energetically for a small, permanent class of the super-rich and against a vast class of people just a few paychecks from ruin. We were losing--or giving up--our rights at a fearsome clip. Especially women and gays.
None of this crazyquilt blend of Middle Ages theology and high-tech criminality was of interest to LC. The Catholic blogger walked hand-in-hand with the wingnut cadre of the Religious Right. If soldiers died...well, they volunteered. Women and children--collateral damage to some conservatives--were not even on her moral map. LC mourned for no one, held Arab lives so cheap as to be worthless, didn't care about corruption as a policy or spiritual issue. It was all very simple for her: She defended the war from the start, and nothing--not one thing--made her waver in the slightest. The Pope was not infallible. Bush was. And it would have taken something truly awful--say, sex with an intern in the Oval Office--to get LC to change her opinion.
The phrase "Good German" comes to mind. People wince when you make the comparison between USA 2006 and Germany in, say, 1934. But consider: If the Patriot Act moved into higher gear and those who opposed the war could be put on trial for "losing" Iraq, I have no doubt that LC would volunteer to testify against me.
For such a writer to be published on Beliefnet--the home of intelligent spirituality on the Web--was dazzling to me. There are many thoughtful conservatives. There are articulate, caring fundamentalists. I'm sure there are writers who are pro-life without wanting a raped teen to carry an unwanted child to term. But on Beliefnet, it was as if some crazy switch had been pulled: I--the Jew-Bu--was the goody-goody Christian in this blogging duo, and LC--the Catholic--was the heartless heathen. Weird.
Eventually, I stopped reading LC. Occasionally, I would violate my promise to myself, and I would sneak a peak at her blog, and there I would find stuff that sent my blood pressure into the red zone. And not just from the opinions. Even more from the sourcing. LC would link to the furthest reaches of wingnuttery for backup, and those "facts" would be beyond bogus. I would turn into a fact-checker and correct her. And--here's the amazing part--LC, a professional journalist, would blow me off. [Don't believe me? Read us both on Plan B, RU-486 and the controversy over the Wal-Mart pharmacists.]
I owe Beliefnet readers an apology: I'm sorry I let LC get under my skin to the point where some of my responses were intemperate. That kind of personal attack will now cease. But there's no need ever to apologize for attacks on the most mendacious, un-American politicians ever to call themselves "Christians"--and on those who know better and yet defend them.
In her last column, LC describes what passed between us as "food fights." Maybe to her. To me, the topics that we needed to consider--the topics I tried to focus the conversation on--were (and are) our national spiritual crisis and our future as a people who like to think of ourselves as "moral." That conversation is the furthest thing from a food fight. For LC to reduce it to that--to think it was that--is to look with contempt on all of us.
I'll miss Charlotte. But not LC.
I can do half of that here.
I have known Charlotte Hays casually for the better part of two decades. She interviewed me for a book, and, when she misplaced her notes, I happily told her my stories a second time. We share some friends. That she co-authored a charming book is unsurprising--I knew her to be a charming person.
Loose Canon--her virtual persona on Beliefnet--was a different person. And unrecognizable to me. LC was as chilly as Charlotte was warm, as charmless as Charlotte was winsome. But that's too polite: LC was devoid of empathy or human feeling. She was an admirer of some of the right's most vile haters. She was no Christian, as I understand the term.
I can't assess her singular version of Catholicism. On other matters, I was equally out in the cold. It was simply impossible to be in a dialogue with her. LC was a Terminator. A chip had been installed, and it overrode everything--inconvenient facts as well as other points of view. It was as if she had made a Faustian bargain. She sold her soul to Ann Coulter and Lucianne Goldberg, and in return, she got--ah, this is what I never found out.
For those who have missed this 18-month-long feud, I need to say something here about what constitutes a "spiritual" concern. For me, the definition is vast--from your relationship with a Higher Power to your relationship with the least of your brothers and sisters. Faith matters. But I'm one of those amateur Buddhists who believes that works matter much, much more.
When LC and I started blogging in 2004, it was clear to me--and, I'd bet, to most of you, and, certainly, to most thinking people who live outside of our borders--that our country was in its greatest spiritual crisis since Vietnam. In an illegal war, we were torturing innocent civilians and lying about it. Billions of dollars were disappearing into private pockets. At home, our government worked energetically for a small, permanent class of the super-rich and against a vast class of people just a few paychecks from ruin. We were losing--or giving up--our rights at a fearsome clip. Especially women and gays.
None of this crazyquilt blend of Middle Ages theology and high-tech criminality was of interest to LC. The Catholic blogger walked hand-in-hand with the wingnut cadre of the Religious Right. If soldiers died...well, they volunteered. Women and children--collateral damage to some conservatives--were not even on her moral map. LC mourned for no one, held Arab lives so cheap as to be worthless, didn't care about corruption as a policy or spiritual issue. It was all very simple for her: She defended the war from the start, and nothing--not one thing--made her waver in the slightest. The Pope was not infallible. Bush was. And it would have taken something truly awful--say, sex with an intern in the Oval Office--to get LC to change her opinion.
The phrase "Good German" comes to mind. People wince when you make the comparison between USA 2006 and Germany in, say, 1934. But consider: If the Patriot Act moved into higher gear and those who opposed the war could be put on trial for "losing" Iraq, I have no doubt that LC would volunteer to testify against me.
For such a writer to be published on Beliefnet--the home of intelligent spirituality on the Web--was dazzling to me. There are many thoughtful conservatives. There are articulate, caring fundamentalists. I'm sure there are writers who are pro-life without wanting a raped teen to carry an unwanted child to term. But on Beliefnet, it was as if some crazy switch had been pulled: I--the Jew-Bu--was the goody-goody Christian in this blogging duo, and LC--the Catholic--was the heartless heathen. Weird.
Eventually, I stopped reading LC. Occasionally, I would violate my promise to myself, and I would sneak a peak at her blog, and there I would find stuff that sent my blood pressure into the red zone. And not just from the opinions. Even more from the sourcing. LC would link to the furthest reaches of wingnuttery for backup, and those "facts" would be beyond bogus. I would turn into a fact-checker and correct her. And--here's the amazing part--LC, a professional journalist, would blow me off. [Don't believe me? Read us both on Plan B, RU-486 and the controversy over the Wal-Mart pharmacists.]
I owe Beliefnet readers an apology: I'm sorry I let LC get under my skin to the point where some of my responses were intemperate. That kind of personal attack will now cease. But there's no need ever to apologize for attacks on the most mendacious, un-American politicians ever to call themselves "Christians"--and on those who know better and yet defend them.
In her last column, LC describes what passed between us as "food fights." Maybe to her. To me, the topics that we needed to consider--the topics I tried to focus the conversation on--were (and are) our national spiritual crisis and our future as a people who like to think of ourselves as "moral." That conversation is the furthest thing from a food fight. For LC to reduce it to that--to think it was that--is to look with contempt on all of us.
I'll miss Charlotte. But not LC.
