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Wednesday, February 08, 2012

What If Catholic Villagers Gave A Firestorm and Nobody Came?

No More Mister Nice Blog has some chuckles reading the stern handwringing of the New York Times about the Obama Administration decision to insist that even Catholics who want to be in the public-subsidized healthcare business have to provide contraception services in their actual insurance plans, you know, the contraception the overwhelming majority of Catholics use like everybody else? The Times piece declares:
Facing vocal opposition from religious leaders and an escalating political fight, the White House sought on Tuesday to ease mounting objections
and what I want to (and Steve M. concisely does) emphasize is that this "escalating political fight" and these "mounting objections" are actually the phony amplification effects of a small klatch of out of touch villagers confusing their echo chamber for reality.

By "small klatch" I refer to the usual loudmouthed wing-nuts, but in this case mostly recently converted Catholics on something of a tear, like Newt Gingrich, Robert Bork, Sam Brownback, Laura Ingraham, Lawrence Kudlow, and Ramesh Ponnuru, but also their enablers, mostly needlessly worried concern troll Catholics of a usually more moderate bent like Cokie Roberts, E.J. Dionne, and Chris Matthews, all of whom are fanning the flames of a firestorm without a spark.

By "reality" I refer to the obviously relevant state of affairs nicely summarized in this chart that is appearing all across the progressive blogipelago these days:

Note that the only constituency truly out of touch here, is the usual one, "white evangelicals." You know, the white racist authoritarian theocratic war-mongering anti-science gun nut know nothing patriarchal pricks who are voting for the Killer Clowns who are making the Republican nominating contest a rather unedifying suicidal auto-da-fe at the moment.

Chris and Cokie, take a deep breath and take a look at the slobbering loons you are actually enabling here, and get a grip for heaven's sake! Everybody else? By all means continue ignoring the side show until it slinks back to the shadows where it belongs.

1 comment:

jollyspaniard said...

Weird that they compare Catholic with two "White" demographics. I imagine Catholics would include a lot of latinos.

But it makes sense, most Catholics tend to ignore doctrine.