"The Catholic Church killed a 100 million humans during its inquisitions and crusades"
"The ramifications of Bill Donohue and the Catholic League's reckless rhetoric has materialized in the form of death threats to bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. This is what happens when the ultra-right wing is given the megaphone of mainstream media. It is also a complete break down in the responsibility that the media has in vetting those who are given a platform to spread a message."
***
Looks like Lane forgot to recharge his circa 1952 Irony Detector last night. Dude, you write for the Huffington Post. Does Awianna "wett" you for "weckwess whetoric"?
PPS: this is the sanest and most worthwhile Catholic-written post about The Two Edwards Bloggers (who as you may have noticed I haven't been blogging about; I'm not about to criticise two women who are as rude online as I am, and Bill Donohue is such a pain...) in spite of its (groan) C.S. Lewis epigraph.
Blogging is supposed to be rude, anarchic and distinctly "unofficial". Hiring a "campaign blogger" is like hiring a "campaign farter" or setting up a "campaign mosh pit." "Official" bloggers are to real bloggers what the Monkees are to the Beatles, except that's unfair to the Monkees, who actually put out some damn fine recordings. Make that "what Jazzercise is to jazz".
People often ask me how much money I've made blogging or how many jobs it's gotten me. It's more like "how many jobs haven't I lost". Life is about making choices and living with the consequences (if you're a conservative, that is. Liberals believe you should be able to make all the bad choices you want and make other people pay.)
Seven years ago (or, more specifically, after 9/11) I decided to pull out all the stops on this blog. Doing so has gotten me into a modicum of trouble, but the risks have been worth the rewards. But haven't I ruined any slim chance I might have had to become a "mainstream" something or other?
Gee, I hope so!
I rarely disagree with Mark Steyn, but recently he said to Hugh Hewitt that the two Edwards bloggers should have listened to that voice in their heads that surely told them their anti-Catholic comments were crossing the line. He said, very rightly, that anyone with ambitions to "public life" has that warning voice and ignores it at their peril.
But the Edwards bloggers wrote the posts in question on their own blogs, on their own time, not on the official Edwards blog (which, I feel obliged to repeat, is a stupid concept to begin with). And someone serious about blogging, about using this tool with all its extremely valuable crap-disturbing potential, can't afford to listen to "that voice" very often.
I suppose blogging is "public life" of a sort, but its a weird timezone of "public" where the rules are still being hashed out. While we're busy hashing, we can't pause every 5 minutes to tease out the ramifications of each and every post.
God, I'm thrilled that the Two Edwards Bloggers didn't listen to "that voice". They simply reconfirmed the anti-Catholic bigotry of the oh-so-sophisticated Liberal Left, its reliance on empty academic jargon and cliches, its distinct remove from the lives of ordinary people. So two girls published stuff about the Virgin Mary I'd written myself in my rebellious teenaged years. They made themselves look like, well, bratty teenagers instead of thoughtful, educated adults. They hurt themselves AND John Edwards. Yeah, I'm all busted up about that.
No skin off my scapular.
Me, I never claimed to have ambitions to "public life" anymore than P.J. O'Rourke or Florence King does, in the sense s/he actually sits around thinking, "gee, if I write this mean thing, it might make the GOP look bad" -- that's the joke the MSM reporters who've dealt with me can't get: the very idea that the Conservative Party of Canada is secretly sending me "inside information" or getting me to launch a "secret campaign" to defund Status of Women...
Guys, I've written of Justin Trudeau that "there's never an avalanche around when you need one." I've called Arabs "violent retards" repeatedly. I've opined that the Amish have contributed nothing to Western Civilization aside from the occasional pie. (Add your favourite quote here.)
The Conservative Party of Canada would, if they thought of me at all, which they don't, dearly like me to go very far away.
And let's face it: I'm not exactly the Poster Child for Nice-Acting Catholics, either.
Which is one of my definitions of success. This makes me rare among careerist "conservative"/Christian bloggers. And is one of the reasons I'll still be around after they've either found a new hobby or achieved their goal of becoming paid party/Church apparatchiks.
Anyway, read Diogenes instead:
Those Catholics for whom extracting an apology is important can only get one by playing along with the identity politics game, and that means feigning (or exaggerating the centrality of) hurt feelings -- feelings, that's to say, that libs are willing to concede Marcotte and McEwan may have wounded. But to my thinking this ploy is largely disingenuous.