Musing's musings

Sweating the small stuff

Sometimes you have to. In my job, I spend a lot of time sweating the small stuff--because it's what I get paid to do, and because if I don't, it will be harder for the people I work with to get their research funded.

As always, however, the trick is to know when and how much--and as I look around at what's been going on around the country and the world, far too many people have been sweating far too much small stuff, and all at the wrong time. Consider the hoo-ha over President Obama's bow last week to the emperor of Japan. OMG, the president of the United States demonstrated manners and common courtesy in public in a diplomatic situation? What's the world coming to?

This week, the wingnuts are clutching their pearls and groping for their fainting couches at the prospect that people we've detained as terrorists might actually be tried and, if convicted, imprisoned on American soil. Leaving aside the inconvenient fact that eight years is probably not what the Framers had in mind when they enshrined the right to a "speedy and public trial" in the Sixth Amendment, I should think the fact that as of June 2008 we had locked up some 2.3 million people would constitute sufficient evidence that we've gotten pretty good at doing so. I see no particular reason to feel alarmed at the possibility that people from Guantanamo Bay might be brought to the continental U.S. and put on trial for what we are claiming they did. Nor do I feel any heightened anxiety at the possibility that the federal government is considering buying an under-used maximum security state prison not all that far away from where I live and using it to house those very criminals, should they be convicted. The mouth-breathers are all wetting their pants, but that seems to be their raison d'être; myself, I just don't enjoy the practice much.

The Catholic Church is also getting into the fearmongering and small-stuff sweating game, though I really do wish the Holy Spirit would rigorously apply the Cosmic Clue-by-Four to the backs of a few bishops' heads starting any day now. Of all the problems in the world the bishops could choose to care about, they're worried about who is boffing whom? Worse yet, rather than face the possibility that they might not be able to discriminate quite as freely against their LGBT flock as they are accustomed to doing, the Washington archdiocese has threatened to shut down all of its charitable institutions in the city, cutting off food and shelter and health care to the poor and the elderly. I know I'm not the only Catholic in America who is simply livid at the very idea; I'm also pretty sure I remember reading something, once upon a time, in a pretty important book, something about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked... Oh, yeah, it was this:

Ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ ὁ υἱὸς τῶν ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῇ δόξῃ αὐτοῦ καὶ πάντες οἱ ἄγγελοι μετ' αὐτοῦ, τότε καθίσει ἐπὶ θρόνου δόξης αὐτοῦ· καὶ συναχθήσονται ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, καὶ ἀφορίσει αὐτοὺς ἀπ' ἀλλήλων, ὥσπερ ὁ ποιμὴν ἀφορίζει τὰ πρόβατα ἀπὸ τῶν ἐρίφων, καὶ στήσει τὰ μὲν πρόβατα ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ, τὰ δὲ ἐρίφια ἐξ εὐωνύμων. τότε ἐρεῖ ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῖς ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ· δεῦτε οἱ εὐλογημένοι τοῦ πατρός μου, κληρονομήσατε τὴν ἡτοιμασμένην ὑμῖν βασιλείαν ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου. ἐπείνασα γὰρ καὶ ἐδώκατέ μοι φαγεῖν, ἐδίψησα καὶ ἐποτίσατέ με, ξένος ἤμην καὶ συνηγάγετέ με, γυμνὸς καὶ περιεβάλετέ με, ἠσθένησα καὶ ἐπεσκέψασθέ με, ἐν φυλακῇ ἤμην καὶ ἤλθατε πρὸς με. τότε ἀποκριθήσονται αὐτῷ οἱ δίκαιοι λέγοντες· κύριε, πότε σε εἴδομεν πεινῶντα καὶ ἐθρέψαμεν, ἢ διψῶντα καὶ ἐποτίσαμεν; πότε δέ σε εἴδομεν ξένον καὶ συνηγάγομεν, ἢ γυμνὸν καὶ περιεβάλομεν; πότε δὲ σε εἴδομεν ἀσθενοῦντα ἢ ἐν φυλακῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν πρός σε; καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρεῖ αὐτοῖς· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐφ' ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε.

Whenever the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, at that time he will sit upon the throne of his glory and all the peoples shall be gathered together before him and he will separate them one from another, just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He shall place the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. And then the ruler will say to those at his right hand, "Come here, you who are blessed of my Father; inherit the realm that was prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked, and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me, in prison, and you came to visit me." At this point the just will respond to him and say, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty, and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?" The Ruler will say to them in answer, "Amen I tell you, as often as you did it for one of the least of these my brothers and my sisters, you did it for me."

--Matthew 25:31-40, my translation from the original Greek

Should the archbishop decide to follow through on his threat, I would recommend that he read the rest of that pericope first. I don't think he's going to like how it ends. Jesus never said a single word about homosexuality (hardly surprising, given that neither the term nor the concept had come into being in his day), but he had quite a bit to say about taking care of the last and the least among us--and what those who neglected that most important task could look forward to when they came to face him at the end of their days. In fact, there's another passage from Matthew's Gospel that the archbishop might want to include in his lectio divina: it's Matthew 23:13-33. Verse 23 seems particularly appropriate.

This, on the other hand, DID surprise me

End of the Anglican crown - 300 year bar to be lifted

Downing Street has drawn up plans to end the 300-year-old exclusion of Catholics from the throne. The requirement that the succession automatically pass to a male would also be reformed, making it possible for a first born daughter of Prince William to become his heir.

It makes an enormous amount of sense. But when have "sense" and "politics" and "religion" ever gone together at the same time? Being British and being Protestant have, at least in the popular mindset, been more or less coextensive for a very long time indeed. If I'm not mistaken, there were some rumblings not terribly long ago because Cherie Blair, wife of the then-prime minister, is Catholic.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Resurrecting history

It's another good day to be me. Yesterday, Reuters announced that an online consortium will virtually "reassemble" the oldest extant manuscript of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus. Written sometime in the early 4th century (probably in Alexandria, or at least following an Alexandrian text), this massive volume contained both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures in Greek, plus the Epistle of Barnabas and parts of another early Christian document known as the Shepherd of Hermas. The volume is called "Sinaiticus" because at one point it was kept in the Monastery of St. Catherine near Mount Sinai.

In the 19th century, a German scholar named Constantin von Tischendorf claimed to have seen some parchment leaves in a wastebasket that were about to be burned, and recognized them as belonging to the Septuagint, as the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures is called (from the tradition that it was translated from Hebrew by a group of seventy scholars; "septuaginta" in Latin means seventy). He got the monks to let him take some of the leaves back home with him to Leipzig, where they still live in the university library. As Tischendorf talked about his find and published work drawn from the leaves he'd "rescued," more scholars went to the monastery (including Tischendorf himself, several times), in an attempt to find more of it. The monks eventually parted with the codex, which Tischendorf sent to Tsar Alexander II, who had it published in facsimile.

After the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty, and when the fledgling Soviet Union was hard up for hard cash, they sold the volume to the British Library for a hundred thousand pounds in 1933. That's probably well in excess of a million dollars in modern currency, which gives some idea of the importance of this manuscript. Subsequently, during renovations at the monastery, an additional dozen leaves were discovered in a crypt. Since then, those 12 leaves have remained at the monastery, while fragments of three leaves are in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. Tischendorf's 43 leaves are in the collections at Leipzig University, and the British Library has the remaining 347.

Hence my excitement at the announcement that they're going to be digitized and presented online. For anybody who's ever read a scholarly edition of the Christian Scriptures in the original, you'll see the sigil for this codex all over the place: the Hebrew letter aleph, designating this as the first extant manuscript. It's next to impossible to get permission to work with the original text, it's so valuable. According to the wiki entry, only four scholars have been allowed the privilege in the last 20 years. Putting it online makes it available to the whole scholarly community--and without the need to travel to four countries to see all the pieces that still survive.

Wankers

If the events of the past week are any indication, clearly I should have extended my vacation. It was really quite pleasant not to wake up every morning to further grim economic and political news, and to stay in touch with things that really matter--like friends, and nature, and good food. Unfortunately, as is always the case, time away ends and we have to come, willy-nilly, back to what we are pleased to designate the "real" world.

It seems that one of the things that happened while I was gone was a brouhaha between PZ Myers and William Donohue and his so-called Catholic League. (No, I am absolutely not linking to either one of them: I categorically refuse to drive any more traffic to either place. Use teh Google if you want to get more details.) The brouhaha actually spilled over into last week, and since I've been commenting on it all over Left Blogistan, I figured I might as well write about it here where at least I can keep track of all the comments a little easier.

To reduce a great deal of sound and fury that might have signified little or nothing had not two ginormous egos gotten involved into something a little less cumbersome, here's a quick summary of the events as I understand them. A college student in Florida (who may or may not be Catholic; I haven't seen any clarification on that point) went to Mass and took Communion. But instead of consuming the Eucharist, he held on to it to show a friend (or so he says). This action upset a few people at the parish in question, and apparently there was some remonstration with the young man, who did, eventually, give back the host in question. Had it stayed there, no one not involved in the parish in question would likely ever have heard about it.

It did not, however, stay there. Bill DonoWho, blowhard and media-hog extraordinaire, got involved. I don't know how he found out about the incident, but he did, and he and some of his minions began calling for disciplinary action against the student in question. It is at least alleged that some of the people from DonoWho's group made death threats against the student--he has gone on record as saying that he felt his life was in danger. DonoWho himself merely called for the student to be disciplined, and hoped that expulsion would be on the table as one of the possible penalties.

That this reaction on the part of DonoWho and his minions is over-the-top is self-evident. But here, too, this mess might have stopped--had the other supersized ego not gotten involved: to wit, PZ Myers. PZ, for those of you who are not familiar with him, is a biology professor at a small state institution in Minnesota. He is also an avowed atheist. I want to make it very clear before continuing that I have absolutely not the slightest problem with PZ's atheism. I could wish, however, that PZ could manage to find a similar level of toleration for my Catholicism, as further details will more than amply demonstrate.

Once more unto the breach

I realize that castigating the so-called "traditional media" for their tendency to over-generalize and their seeming inability to grasp (or at least to report) anything more subtle than, say, a Maxim ad or a celebrity mishap is rapidly becoming so commonplace as to be clichéd. But after spending most of the early morning either getting ready for work or driving thereto, while listening to the folks at National Public Radio attempt to portray George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI as best friends forever without a hair's breadth of difference between their moral stances, I simply can't sit back and hold my tongue. This kind of garbage is especially galling given the fact that the people who were trying to tell me Bush's values and Benedict's are all but identical this morning are exactly the same folks who spent all of last week telling us how much better at this reporting thing they are than all those other folks at commercial radio stations, in the second installment of their annual beg-fest. If today is any example, they really ought to consider revisiting and revising their scripts for pledge week.

As even NPR admitted, Bush is officially a Methodist. Benedict, obviously, is Catholic. That simple affiliational fact means there are substantial differences between the two men on many significant areas of belief. (Not least of which, naturally, is the precise role of the guy who, like Benedict at present, sits upon the Throne of Peter.)

It is certainly true that Benedict is a theological conservative, just as his predecessor was. Not, as NPR correctly reported this morning, as theologically conservative as either the liberals in the Church feared or the conservatives would have liked, but still far closer to the conservative end of the spectrum than toward the liberal end, or even to the middle of the road. Bush, too, is alleged to be a conservative--though the conservatives in this country seem to be in the process of rethinking that claim. But really, when you get right down to it, that's about the extent of the similarity between his positions and those of His Holiness. Both oppose abortion, and both oppose gay marriage. Both seem to feel that there is a "faithful remnant," variously defined, that is under siege by malevolent forces in the culture at large.

All that said, however, the two men's positions start to diverge--and diverge quite quickly and quite radically. As governor of Texas, the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer signed the death warrants for more than 150 people during his six years in that office--or around 25 executions per year. While the Catholic Church does not explicitly forbid the use of capital punishment, it teaches that the state "...ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent" (John Paul II, encyclical letter Evangelium vitae, 25 March 1995, no. 56).

Or how about Bush's pet war in Iraq? It is difficult to see how it meets any of the conditions for a "legitimate defense by military force" laid out in Section 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, much less all of them, as required:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

And while the prayer of His Holiness on Sunday at Ground Zero in New York is almost certainly primarily directed toward those responsible for carrying out the acts that caused the "incredible violence and pain" he addresses in the opening of that prayer, its conclusion seems equally apposite in response to the Hedgemony's seemingly endless global war on whatever it is we're at war with this week:

God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world:
peace in the hearts of all men and women
and peace among the nations of the earth.
Turn to your way of love
those whose hearts and minds
are consumed with hatred.

God of understanding,
overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy,
we seek your light and guidance
as we confront such terrible events.
Grant that those whose lives were spared
may live so that the lives lost here
may not have been lost in vain.
Comfort and console us,
strengthen us in hope,
and give us the wisdom and courage
to work tirelessly for a world
where true peace and love reign
among nations and in the hearts of all.

It is also not difficult to read between the lines of the schedule and discern a certain, shall we say, diplomatic unease on the part of the Holy Father at being in the presence of the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer. The official welcome at Andrews Air Force Base was to last no more than 15 minutes according to the official schedule of the visit on the Vatican's web site. Pope Benedict will not be staying at the White House during his time in Washington; instead, he will stay at the residence of the Apostolic Nuncio, the Vatican's diplomatic representative in the United States. Tomorrow, His Holiness will go to the White House mid-morning for a formal welcoming, which is to be followed by a 90-minute "courtesy visit" (a private audience in everything but name) in the Oval Office. He isn't staying for lunch, and while the White House plans a Bavarian-themed dinner tomorrow evening in honor of the pope's 81st birthday, the pope won't actually be there: he'll be celebrating Evening Prayer (Vespers) at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception with the U.S. Catholic bishops. He goes nowhere near the White House all day on Thursday, nor does he visit again before taking his leave on Friday morning and flying to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly.

As His Holiness is making that address, the White House is planning to ask John McCain and a bunch of other Republican flunkies in, at what it is pleased to call the National "Catholic" Prayer Breakfast. Their definition of "Catholic," however, leaves quite a bit to be desired, given that in the minds of the president, the White House, and the people organizing this affair, "Catholic" appears to be synonymous with "Republican." The trouble with that, however, is that the word "catholic" means "universal." Anything that is universal is by definition non-partisan: hence the obvious problem with inviting a bunch of Republicans to breakfast and trying to pretend it has anything to do with Catholicism.

Not surprisingly, this event hasn't exactly attracted a great deal of attention from the traditional media. Of course, from what I could observe this evening, the coverage of the papal visit was pretty scanty to begin with. By the time they dispensed with the arrival shots and a couple of soundbytes, they were out of time. Not that one ought to expect much better from a bunch of allegedly professional reporters who could keep a straight face while trying to pretend that George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI have "the same values."

Bishops 1, Media (and most of Left Blogistan) 0

At the end of the public portion of its annual meeting this past Wednesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released what is widely being described as a voter guide (PDF link), just as it has done ahead of every presidential election for the last 30 years. A long version of the bulletin insert is also available (PDF link).

Virtually without exception, the major media outlets, and most people I've seen discussing this statement in Left Blogistan, have seriously mischaracterized both its intent and its content. Take this story from the AP, which has been widely used as the starting point for a lot of online verbiage. It is headlined "Catholic bishops instruct voters," and here's how it starts:

BALTIMORE - Roman Catholic voters and lawmakers must heed church teaching on issues ranging from racism to abortion or risk their eternal salvation, U.S. bishops said Wednesday.

The bishops didn't recommend specific policies or candidates in the 2008 election, and emphasized that "principled debate" is needed to decide what bests promotes the common good. But they warned Catholics that their votes for politicians and laws affect more than just civic life.

"Political choices faced by citizens have an impact on general peace and prosperity and also may affect the individual's salvation," the bishops said. "Similarly, the kinds of laws and policies supported by public officials affect their spiritual well-being."

I'll give the AP credit for at least getting the fact that the document endorses neither any specific candidate nor either political party both correct and in the second paragraph. But that's about the only good thing I can say about the AP's reportage. The bulletin insert that will be all most Catholics are likely to see of this document (and not even all Catholics will see it, much less pay attention to it) contains none of the language found in the third paragraph I quoted above from the AP story.

Predictably, discussion of this document in Left Blogistan has frequently devolved into a bathetic orgy of Catholic-bashing. Judging by some of the comments I've seen--and we're not talking fringe sites, either--the Catholic Church and its leaders (some even go so far as to include all Catholics, clergy or lay) is the fount of all evil, the chief source of everything that is wrong or bad or out-of-whack in modern society. Religious belief itself, we are confidently (stridently, even) told, is a pathetic crutch suitable (and necessary) only for those too dumb or too frightened to face "reality." (Whatever that is supposed to entail.)

Looking at the ensuing hoo-ha, it's not hard to see why we on the left are often described as being, not just irreligious, but anti-religious. And that's just a load of bull--as is most of what has thus far passed for commentary on the U.S. Catholic bishops' statement.

Iustorum animae in manu Dei sunt

It's something of a melancholy day in my world. I learned yesterday that a friend and former editor of mine died early yesterday morning, after a brief illness. As I awoke this morning, the local NPR station was having a technical issue and played a few seconds of a story that seemed to indicate that the former cardinal archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, had recently died. (I was able to confirm that when I checked the headlines on my news reader, though NPR never did replay the clip.) And today is, of course, the sixty-second anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.

I'm going to start with the NPR glitch, because frankly, I'm more than a little cheesed off that they didn't find the story of sufficient importance to feature it on the morning newscast. I would happily have foregone the usual Monday morning five minutes with Cokie Roberts (who as usual had nothing of any substance to say), or the puff piece about quinceañeras, to hear a bit more about the life and times of the son of a Polish rabbi who became a Catholic during the Phony War, and rose to the dignity of the crimson in his adopted land and somehow managed to be a bridge (though not always an uncontroversial one) between the Judaism of his birth and the Catholicism of his adulthood, the strictly secular country in which he was born and lived and the church he loved and served. Once upon a time, that is exactly the kind of story one heard routinely on NPR. That seems to happen less and less often now, and that's unfortunate.

Not the best reading over dinner

I'm ready to come home. Today was not my best day in Europe. Awakened at 5:30 by the fire alarm in the hotel. (Turned out to be a false alarm, but couldn't get back to sleep for love or money.) Consequently, I was late catching my train this morning. Probably due to the confusion caused by lack of (a) sleep and (b) food for some 18 hours, I mis-read my map and wound up at the wrong station, headed in the wrong direction. After walking through what seemed like a mile of connecting tunnels, and climbing or descending approximately 47 staircases, I managed to get to the proper correspondance, only to find the line absolutely clogged with morning commuters.

All of which meant that, instead of having time to sit down and read the morning paper over a fairly leisurely breakfast before registering at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I got there, hot and sweaty, just in time to register ahead of the last-minute rush before the first entry at 9 a.m. They had the files I'd requested on Friday ready for me, but then wouldn't let me take pictures of them--if I wanted copies, I had to pay to have them photocopied or microfilmed. So I transcribed. All day. No breakfast, no lunch--and no dinner the night before. Finally on the way home, I seemed to wind up with every slowpoke, every elderly or handicapped person, God love them because I surely wasn't!, and every lost or confused tourist in Greater Paris directly in front of me or between me and where I wanted to go.

Got back to the hotel, and while the internet was working, it wasn't working well. The shuttle company that I'd found this morning to take me to the airport on Thursday so I don't have to manhandle a suitcase, a briefcase, and a shopping bag full of goodies through the Metro and/or the RER on the hour's journey to Charles de Gaulle, informed me that because my hotel was in the suburbs and not in Paris proper (a condition not mentioned on their website), it would cost me 90 euro instead of the 27 they'd advertised. I said "No, thanks." Went to the local pizza chain for dinner and asked the waitress for a quiet corner where I could read the paper and sip my wine in peace, only to have a talkative family group and an anxious baby seated within spitting distance of me--and I was about ready to spit, by that point.

Fortunately, dinner (and more importantly, a quarter-liter of a nice rosé from Provence) arrived and I became less interested in infanticide and more interested in the pleasures of the table. That's when I turned to page 9 of today's issue of Le Monde, and started breathing threats and murder again. Follow me below the fold for a discussion of why that happened.

Things at the Catholic League must be really dire

Just in time for the start of Holy Week, the self-appointed, self-important blowhard at the head of the so-called "Catholic League" has--yet again--gotten his Opus Dei-approved camel's hair panties in a twist. This time, the object of his outrage is a roughly life-sized sculpture of Jesus done in milk chocolate that was set to be exhibited in a hotel in New York City.

Now I have to admit, as a friend of mine in Left Blogistan has already said, I'm always just a tiny bit suspicious whenever I hear about an artist producing something controversial. It's certainly within the realm of possibility that the artist failed to consider fully the implications of creating a life-sized, anatomically correct nude rendering of Jesus and planning to exhibit it during the holiest week of the Christian church year. It is equally within the realm of possibility (and considerably more likely, in my estimation) that the artist was counting on exactly the reaction he got.

Be that as it may. No less predictable was the outrage of William DonoWho, professional apoplectic where all things Catholic are concerned. (Or at least all things Catholic of which Mr. DonoWho approves, anyway. Funny how he never seems to be all that concerned about people exploiting the poor, stealing from widows and orphans--you know, all that liberal, sentimental, bleeding-heart shit that Jesus Christ actually cared about.) Like a bad penny, DonoWho is the gift that just keeps on giving--even when you wish more than anything else that he'd just shut his hateful piehole and slink away into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

Just as with the artist, though, I am always cynical about the ulterior motives behind any move DonoWho makes. Whenever he pops up on Faux News to spew his venom masquerading as the Gospel truth, I'm sure he gets a surge of donations and subscriptions. The cynic in me cannot help but see a necessary connection between the financial situation at the Catholic League and DonoWho's need to stir the pot a little at the start of a new fiscal quarter.

General quarters! General quarters!

We're still sorting out just exactly who is running for the presidency in 2008, and the S.S. John Edwards has already taken a torpedo forward and is down by the head with water coming in. I refer, of course, to the great Blogger Controversy of 2007.

As I wrote last week, the Edwards campaign was taking heat from über-Catholic and soi-disant protector of the faith William Donohue (hell, no, I'm not linking to any site of his: Google his name if you must, but I recommend a prophylactic dose of holy water first, and a thorough exorcism of your computer afterward). The flap was over some of the sentiments expressed by newly hired Edwards campaign staffers Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister: sentiments that were, in Donohue's opinion, defamatory to Catholicism and dismissive of Catholics. Never mind that the women in question were not employees of the Edwards campaign at the time they made those statements, nor that they were made on their own respective blogs and not on any site affiliated with the campaign. They made the statements and, in Donohue's warped and twisted world, that meant that Edwards was personally responsible for them, just as if he had made them himself.

That view is, of course, pure bullshit. And if Edwards and his campaign people had been smart, that would have been their first line of "defense" against this contretemps. The second should have been to find some of Donohue's more inflammatory statements about people of other faiths (not hard to do; just pick up any press release he's written in the last couple of decades) and ask him when he had decided to stop being a racist, sexist, misogynistic homophobe. The third line could have been to dig up some of the more salacious comments made by some of the people Donohue hangs out with (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, et aliae all spring readily to mind) and demand that Donohue immediately cease supporting them.