"We called him a pro-life, pro-gun liberal"

The Wash Times gets the second part of the Huckabee story right--it isn't just about the electability catch 22. The religious right establishment has long been in bed with the government-spending-is-by-definition-bad crowd--yes, of course this is ludicrous by any biblical or theological standard--and Huckabee's considerable populist streak makes him a tough sell.

This combination--setting aside his crazy national sales tax idea and his unwillingness to unequivocably condemn torture, among other things--also makes him a pretty compelling candidate for they younger, more moderate evangelical voters we keep hearing so much about. This is going to be real interesting...

I'm moving this week

Getting up early Wednesday to drive back midwest in a rental.

So, things will be pretty quiet here, at least until Thursday or so.

RIP Porter Wagoner

What a great singer. And what great suits.

Gorski on Focus

In general, Focus on the Family's notorious caution with the media + the MSM's generally reductive understanding of the religious right = precious little in the way of insightful pieces about James Dobson and his empire.

But an exception to the rule today--an AP story by Eric Gorski offers some real insight into the different things that Focus has been and will be in the future.

Two of my favorite things

1. McSweeney's lists

2. Good jokes about how ridiculous it is to suggest that equal civil marriage rights for gays and lesbians will somehow threaten hetero marriages

Thus, I especially enjoyed this.

You're using my work to support WHAT?

Interesting NYT piece--a scientist just retracted his 1955 paper after Googling himself and finding Creationist Web sites with some equivocations in the direction of the "theistic evolution" they used to mock intelligent design Web sites that misused it as support for their positions.

That's what I like about scientists--unlike us arts and humanities types, they're not willing to be well-known for just anything.

The newly ubiquitous Mike Huckabee

AP story and Gail Collins column chime in on the he's-going-to-be-a-contender/why-the-hell-isn't-he-a-contender story.

A side note on the Glover piece: someone at the AP copy desk must know that you don't strum a bass guitar--you pluck it. Or maybe Huckabee DOES strum--it is possible to do so, just not especially useful--and it's an example of his nonconformity or whatever...

Dumbledore or whatever

Disclaimer: I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, not because I think they're stupid, but because I'm not a fan of the genre. I have nothing against them, other than the fact that they're evidence of the incredibly lopsided book industry, in which 10 writers own castles and everyone else is grateful for the chance to hustle for gas money at near-empty chain-bookstore readings. But this sad situation is not Harry's fault per se.

Now: John Cloud has an entertaining and insightful piece about the Dumbledore-is-gay story. He raises good points from the perspective of the gay and lesbian community.

But my problem with this is philosophical--does she really think she can just say something's true about a character in a series of books that are already published? Twentieth-cenutry literary theory is famously obtuse, but the main takeaway, as any college English major knows, is that Rowling's perspective on the sexuality of a character--un-addressed in the book itself--is no more valid than yours or mine. (Okay, maybe more than mine, you no doubt have at least read the books.) Interpretive authority belongs to readers, communities, the text itself--not just or even especially the author.

Of course, as any Tolkien aficionado knows, immersing yourself in an invented world can make an author a bit murky as to the lines between fantasy and reality. No doubt Rowling considers the question in the context of actual speculation about a person she knows very well. This is one of the reasons I don't like fantasy literature--I'd always rather read an author who is just as committed to and immersed in her characters, but whose characters seem more immediately (NOT metaphorically) relevant to the real world than, say, a hobbit or a wizard or a benevolent and sacrificial lion.

But again, I can't judge HP, because I've never read it...

In which I write two consecutive EJ-admiring posts

Every now and then, we hear about something called the "Catholic vote." Today, it's from Seth Gitell. He makes the standard argument that Catholics are the ultimate swing vote, noting that a bare majority of them went for Gore in 2000, that Bush beat Kerry among Catholics 52 to 47 percent, and that 55 percent of Catholics voted for the Democrats in last year's midterms.

In other words, Catholics as a group voted much like the rest of the country. Catholics are assimilated into mainstream culture to the point that the idea of a Catholic vote doesn't mean much anymore. This is not to say that actual Catholic teaching has no radical, countercultural edge--this certainly is not true. But the culture war splits the Church just like it splits everyone else, and individual Catholics prioritize particular Church teachings differently. When all is said and done, in a general election, the Catholic vote is about as substantive a concept as "the tall vote" or "the squeaky-voiced vote."

See this great EJ article from last summer.

EJ on Romney

Good column from EJ Dionne today on the whole Romney's-a-Mormon-oh-what-will-this-mean question.

Dionne points out that the chorus of people urging Romney to give a "Kennedy speech" about his faith are exactly wrong, because the voters he's trying to woo--with a certain amount of success, if the FRC straw poll is to be trusted--do NOT want to hear about how his religion won't shape his policy. But they also want to be assured that his religion doesn't make him all weird. It's a dilemma.

Of course, it's worth remembering that Kennedy's speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association took place after the convention. Should Romney get the nomination, he may well need to do likewise--but not now.

Go to the land our God promised you, and get to work on that temple, so that it can be destroyed, and you can be destroyed, and I can go to heaven

On the weirdest-and-most-cynical-marriage-of-convenience front (i.e., Zionist Jews and end-times-obsessed evangelicals): an AP story about the IFCJ's work in bribing convincing Iranian Jews to move to Israel.

Blame the social gospel first

Alan Wolfe has an interesting, if somewhat predictable, essay in the NYT Book Review on the new 100th-anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis.

The FRC values voters thing

So the much-discussed Washington Briefing straw poll went to Mitt Romney, who inched out Mike Huckabee. But it turns out Huckabee won by a landslide among in-person voters, with Romney doing better with online voters. Via Faith in Public Life, People For the American Way has an informative post about the numbers controversy.

At any rate, I've seen a couple of stories talk about Huckabee as a member of the "top tier." Even this PFAW post suggests as much. That's clearly the main take-away.

Corrupt governance or greedy development--in Chicago, you don't have to choose!

Andrew has a good observation about Chicago alderman-turned-realtor Ted Matlak:

It’s...like being a forest ranger and allowing your friends to cut down all the trees in the forest and plant lemon trees instead, then after you get fired from being a ranger taking the lemons off the new trees and making lemonade.

"If people are dumb enough to pay that much then hallelujah"

That's Rep. Collin Peterson (DFL-MN), chair of the House agricultural committee, on the absurdity of the local and organic food movements. The context is the congressman arguing that organic produce and livestock farmers don't NEED federal assistance--they're obviously doing just fine--so why not give it all to the commodity farmers?

The Democrats--we're supposed to be excited that they're in charge now, remember?--have made it clear they lack the ability/will to bring meaningful reform to our food system, and the consequences for public health, local economies, and the environment will be severe. Five more years till the next farm bill...

Brownback is out

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071018/ap_po/brownback_1

Wonder if he'll endorse Huckabee?

"'We don't because they do' theology"

Jason Byassee have a lively write-up of a recent ACT3 event.

This seems to me like the best kind of ecumenical dialogue--a low-key and friendly environment in which to talk frankly about differences (as opposed to a formal, institutional environment in which to release bland press releases about similarities).

Steven Malanga on "the religious left"

Predictably, Malanga's WSJ commentary is quite critical and only passingly accurate or insightful. Less predictable--or at least, harder to take seriously--is his commitment to the odd idea that liberal religious activism is overwhelmingly about wealth redistribution in general and support for organized labor in particular. The result is one of those WSJ pieces that's full of names and facts but little overarching truthfulness--a red scare posing as a history lesson.

Still, I like one small thing about this--he correctly identifies the Protestant mainline as a driving force behind most left-leaning Christian political activity. Current "progressive" Christian movements are not driven primarily by evangelical ideological realignment, no matter how much those of us who come from that world and yearn to see the religious right's hegemonic grip released may wish that this were true (and no matter how many MSM stories report this as realized fact rather than as the germ of possibility).

So thanks, Malanga, for giving the NCC and the seven sisters (along with the Catholic bishops) the credit they deserve. If only you'd said more (actually, anything at all) about the historic black church, Latino pentecostals, or the peace church tradition...of course, these are pretty far down my list of complaints about the piece.

Obama's rural plan

It looks pretty good. Some nice realism about corn ethanol, and I particularly like the relatively strong language about tightening regulation and pollution loopholes for corporate hog farms.

Speaking of which, take a look at this letter. It's pretty heartbreaking.

"Bumper magnets. Because stickers are tough to get off, and we may change our mind about never forgetting."

Bill Maher is on today. Hyperbolic and prickly as usual, but right on.