My grandfather, Adm. Parks, thought the NYT was too liberal and too influential. The only person brave or foolish enough to disagree with him was my father, who said, “The New York Times is the most influential paper in the country because it’s the best paper in the country, and you should read it.” I think about that whenever I read a well-reasoned editorial on religion and politics and wish it were published somewhere it’d do some good, like maybe the Washington Times. On the radio in Orlando I heard a talk show go on at length about the credentials of a guest author, which included his long-running gig at the Washington Times– not exactly a respected paper, given that it’s run by the Moonies, loses millions every year, and exists solely to push a dramatically slanted view of the world.
But really it’s all about the hypocrisy of moralists like Bill O’Reilly and its absurd mandates for a world which no longer comes close to fitting its rules. I’ve hoped for some time that the Republican party would have some sort of nervous breakdown, and Frank Rich seems to predict a similar outcome:
Mrs. Cheney and her surrogates are in effect doing exactly what Elizabeth Edwards had the guts to say they were doing: they are sending the message to Mr. Rove’s four million that they are ashamed of Mary Cheney. They are disowning her under the guise of “defending” her. They are exploiting her for the sake of political expediency even as they level that charge at Democrats.
…
Sooner or later this untenable level of hypocrisy is going to lead to a civil war within the Republican party. But this hypocrisy is not just about homosexuality – it’s about all sexuality, as befits a party that calls for the elimination of Roe v. Wade and the suppression of candid sex education that might prevent teenage pregnancy and AIDS alike.
Secretly Ironic 