The Big P has asked that I stop in to water the plants while he does something or other somewhere over the upcoming weekend. So you can look forward to some more hard-hitting, incisive geopolitical analysis like this. Belmont Club, watch out!
I’ll begin by kicking the liberal media. Courageous choice on a conservative blog, I know, thank you, especially when the medium in question is NPR. Caught their take on the elevation of Benedict XVI in the car this AM. I have a pretty good stereo and I could pick out the grinding of the little gears in their heads as they fought furiously to remain professional and unbiased and not just burst out with a hearty OH COME ON YOU GOD-BOTHERING FASCISTS WHY DON’T YOU AND YOUR NEW OBERSTURMPOPENFUHRER JUST PLASTER UP MY CERVIX WITH BONDO RIGHT NOW AND CONSIGN ALL THE GAYS TO SLAVE LABOR IN YOUR SILLY SUPERSTITION FACTORY! And they did a pretty good job of holding it in. Except.
Neal Conan summed up Joseph Ratzinger as–and this is transcribed from my own spotty memory here–as very well educated, a professor, yet also very conservative.
Yet also. A man of contradictions, this Ratzinger. Smart enough to know better than this. What’s his problem?
But then his correspondent in Rome–whom I believe was Emily Harris–described Ratzinger as very soft spoken, and very mild mannered, but also a stickler for the rules.
But also.
That rankles more, I think–on a level outside of politics. Someone who pays careful attention to the rules presumptively does so because of a sadistic streak–and for that reason a contrast is drawn with his soft-spokenness. This man cares about these God-given rules, and yet surprisingly is not a martinet about it. It is surprising, that is, if you believe that hoary stereotype that bitterness and not love motivates the traditionally religious.
It reminds me a little bit of the John Bolton confirmation hearings going on right now. Of course the man must have a temper, he must be brutal and thuggish, even though eyewitness Thomas Fingar said the “soft-spoken” Bolton merely “stood up” and “put his hands on his hips” when chewing out a subordinate. The left’s script script calls for the conservative nominee to be a martinet and a thug. But in both cases they find themselves struggling through their lines with a badly miscast villain.
These are relatively small (though telling) slips, and the live, ad-libbed exchange seems to have been edited out of the archived versions of the election coverage at NPR’s site. I don’t blame them for cutting it out, since it had no place in a taxpayer-funded broadcast in the first place.