Gay and liberal? You’re out!

Two men, two stories.
The Boston Achbishop conceals felonies and exposes (real) children to the predations of child molesters, but that’s ok with the Pope in Rome. The Milwaukee Achbishop* has an ongoing consensual relationship with an adult, and he’s thrown out immediately.
Law in Boston is apparently stright and reactionary; Weakland in Milwaukee is gay and progressive. It’s was a no-brainer, and business as usual, for the leaders of this sexist, autocratic cult.
*The best account appears only on the “premium” (view the entire article only for a fee), Salon site, where it is made clear in The witch hunt against Archbishop Weakland that the relationship in question was intimate and lengthy, yet regulary punctured by the younger man’s venality and, ultimately, the successful blackmailing of the man who loved him.

What’s clear is that the meticulous reporting of sexual abuse by the
Boston Globe — swinging a wrecking ball through a wall of silence
behind which the cries of the innocent were smothered lest they
interfere with business as usual — is in danger of giving way to
sweeping persecution of gay priests. The Marcoux affair, and the
slipshod reporting of his accusations by ABC, suggest it’s open season.

noble Bonobos

We saw a wonderful new play, This thing of Darkness, by Craig Lucas and David Schulner, directed by Lucas, at the Atlantic Theatre in Chelsea last night. (We’re going back a second time, and I never do that.) Lucas’ stageworks include Prelude to a Kiss, Dying Gaul and Blue Window, which just might help prepare you for the evening’s conceits. Schulner is just now establishing a reputation as a playwright, and own works will soon be presented at the Globe in San Diego, the Joseph Papp in New York and South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.
On one level (perhaps on every level) it is the story of friendship, love and family, although nothing that might be familiar to your own friends, lovers or family. Oh, it’s also the story of our destruction of the planet. Why can’t we just get along? And, yes, do you remember the Bonobos?
It’s a very funny, very sad, wonderful, exciting piece of work gifted with an extraordinary cast, and it doesn’t even open officially until the end of the month (closing two weeks later). We’d like to bring the world to West 20th Street in the next few weeks, for its own damn good—no, for all of our own damn good!

New York drops the ball!

And draws a big zero. Suddenly, out of nowhere, “they” have decided how the WTC site and its environs will be rebuilt, and they don’t really care what you think, above all if you have imagination or a real aesthetic. It will be business as usual, with dull dull dull middlebrow power and bureaucratic consensus dictating the fate of a site whose rebirth has been keenly discussed and anticipated by the entire world. This sad but magnificent opportunity, perhaps the opportunity of the century, has been squandered in back rooms by people you shouldn’t trust to build your weekend cottage.
The architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp, who has long campaigned against precisely what is now being presented as a fait accompli, is properly outraged.

The selection of the New York architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle to design a master plan for ground zero and the financial district confirms once again that architecture will play no more than a marginal role in the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.
. . .
Mediocrity, the choice of this firm reminds us, is not a default mode. It is a carefully constructed reality, erected at vast public expense. Ignorance is the brick from which this wretched edifice is built. Secrecy is the mortar holding it together.

We wuz robbed!

The sky is falling!

Horrible to know not only that we can’t expect intelligence or competence from the Bushies, but do we also have to be frightened out of our wits in the process? Can’t Chicken Little at least pretend to have a little dignity? Read the first letter in today’s NYTimes.

Making blanket statements about the inevitable success of terrorism in the United States plays right into the hands of the enemy and contributes to public hysteria.
Instilling fear in a population is a major objective of every terrorist cell.

The writer then offers his suggested outline of the message a government ought to send in these circumstances.

Intelligence a secret?

Reuters reports that Cheney is worried about people finding out stuff.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday he feared a new Sept. 11 inquiry proposed by the top Senate Democrat would leak intelligence secrets and undercut U.S. efforts to prevent future attacks.

Aside from the more than arguable theoretical merits of his position, it seems to me the security problem up to now has been that government “intelligence” has been entirely too secret for our own good.

You didn’t hear this from us!

We, or those with the necessary resources, have to hear this from, yes, the Israeli press. Shoulderchip describes the story being kept from Americans. No wonder we can’t understand what’s going on in the world.

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday said that Israel had made Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority less effective by destroying its security infrastructure, and it absolved Arafat and his senior associates of responsibility for attacks on Israelis in 2001.

Co-op boards on the front line!

Let’s hear it for the co-op boards! Maureen Dowd finds one bright spot in the “war on terrorism,” even as she slams those who tell us they’re fighting it from Washington.

I have no faith in the ability of the U.S. government to keep out terrorists. But I have absolute faith in the ability of New York co-op boards to keep out terrorists.
The F.B.I. has warned apartment managers in New York that the evildoers might try to get a place, furnish it with explosives and blow up the building.
The enemy vermin can dupe the I.N.S. to get student visas, but wait until the East Side co-op president starts grilling them about where they went to school, what eating clubs they were in, which dancing class they attended, and whether they would bother the neighbors with any impolite crashes or unesthetic bangs. If Henry van der Luyden of the Ardsthorpe had interrogated Mohamed Atta, that creep would have been screaming for mercy.

She’s somewhat less sanguine about the chances for success elsewhere, and won’t bet that the Bushie administration can avoid a political setback.

Beyond the co-op boards, however, we’re on our apocalyptic own.
Robert Mueller calls suicide attacks “inevitable.” Dick Cheney says another terrorism episode is “not a matter of if, but when.”
Donald Rumsfeld warns that the terrorists “inevitably will get their hands on” nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
All this fatalism from our leaders and we’re still only on a yellow alert?!?!
There is a red alert going on now, but it’s only in Karl Rove’s office. (There is a severe risk of political damage to the Bush administration.)
That’s why the Bushies are trying to terrify us. They desperately want to change the subject from the stunning lapses of their ostensibly expert foreign policy team — and they cynically want to make it sound as if nothing they do or don’t do really matters in the end.

Is this a government or what!

I’m feeling so good these days about my government. Look at the first five headlines on Reuters as I write this:

N.Y. Police May Issue Landmarks Alert-Official
Rumsfeld: Extremists to Get Weapons of Mass Destruction
Federal Official Rules Out Firearms in Airline Cockpits
U.S. Says Libya, Sudan Helpful Against ‘Terrorism’
White House Backs FBI in Handling of 9-11 Memo

Oops! Merrill’s story just slipped into the mix, but my point remains: How long can we take this stupidity?