Stealing Shepherds

Five Anglican bishops in England, staking their vocations on a bizarre and illogical insistence that female priests should be banned from the episcopacy, go to Rome, which is, at least, consistent in its medievalism.

The Mountain Of Muhammad

Yesterday a St. John's friend invited me to speak to her and her fellow AP students at Mission Viejo High School. They're studying the power of ideology in our political and cultural life and wondered how Richard Nixon fit into the picture. I argued that Nixon embraced just one ideology, anticommunism, which he transcended -- or, rather, leveraged -- in order to make the world safer by virtue of his openness to constructive relationships with communist regimes in Moscow and Beijing.

I took along some show-and-tell items, including this late-1980s photo of me (with hair and spectacles) loitering behind Muhammad Ali, Nixon, and former New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. Nixon had given up his Secret Service protection in 1985, so in crowded rooms it sometimes fell to his private guard or me to take the point. At this event, a fundraiser in Manhattan for a Nixon friend's medical charity, I was edging forward, my eyes over my shoulder on the boss, when I ran up against a brick wall that turned out to be the former heavyweight champion of the world.

View From The Second Floor

Outside the St. John's School administration offices, about 3 p.m. this afternoon

Can't Find City Hall

Israel's PM again claims to be surprised as municipal authorities announce plans for 1,000 housing units in east Jerusalem, which Palestinians envision as their capital.

Roger That, For Pete's Sake

Over on Facebook, a St. John's buddy, Jim Leach, thinking about the just-concluded silly season, posted this stunning performance (from the 1979 documentary "The Kids Are Alright") of Pete Townshend's ambiguous political anthem, "Won't Get Fooled Again," which famously ends, "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss." To hear Townshend tell it, he wasn't decrying political change as mush as warning us not to put too much faith in its agents -- advice which, as I age, I find I have less and less difficulty heeding.

No three-piece (not counting Roger Daltrey's powerful vocals) has ever rocked like the Who. I regret not introducing myself to bassist John Entwistle when we were both having a drink with colleagues (his were musicians from his tour, mine were tacticians from the Nixon Center, who were helping me gird for a brewing assault by Nixon family members) in the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown in 1996. His thundering, peripatetic runs (listen especially to what he plays during the chorus) and Keith Moon's exquisitely musical drumming have been quieted. What would I have said to the bassist forever known as the Bear? Probably the only thing you can say to an artist who's given you years of joy: Thanks.

Centering Prayer

Can Obama be the new Clinton? The Lexington blog at "The Economist" isn't sure:

As to whether President Obama can pull off the same trick, there is as yet simply no way of knowing. But just note the differences. The Republican speaker this time is going to be the cautious and experienced John Boehner, not the fiery and impetuous Newt. That could make compromise easier, but it will also be harder for the Obama White House to out-manouevre the other side. Second, the Republicans in 1994 had a worked-out strategy, the Contract with America, from which Clinton could cherry-pick; this time they have only the broad slogan of spending cuts. Third, in 1994 the Clintons had watched their health reform go down in flames; this time the president has enacted his big reform already and will certainly do his utmost to defend it from repeal.

Last is the question of presidential beliefs and temper. As the proud author of health reform, what Joe Biden memorably called that "big...deal", it is going to very much harder for Mr Obama to rebrand himself as a plausible centrist, even if he would like to. And moving to the centre has dangers: it could further alienate his disappointed base and perhaps prompt a presidential challenge from the Democrats' left.

I think the only impediments are the president's inexperience and his inflexible temperament. So I don't buy the plausibility argument, especially because Clinton came off as more of a leftist in 1993-94 than did Obama in his first two years. (I'm talking, of course, about the real Obama, not the fictional one portrayed on Fox News.)

Man Up, And Pass The Iced Tea

Richard Dreyfuss's snarling caricature of Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone's "W." seemed way off base. but now the former president himself has described being called out by his real-life #2 over fine bone china:

At one point during their private weekly lunch, Mr. Cheney questioned whether Mr. Bush would follow through on the threats against Mr. Hussein. “Are you going to take care of this guy, or not?” Mr. Cheney demanded.

Hope, Always

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers ponders the differences between agonistics and "non-fundamentalist" Christians:

I can't help but think that the agnostic, at the end of the day, reads all the great old books that dwelt on all the great questions self-aware man has posed to himself, and shrugs. He acknowledges mystery but does not seem to care about the source of that mystery, or even if he is responding to something "real" when curious moments of spiritual transcendence actually occur. There is, of course, a certain sanity in this response -- at the least he won't end up an ideologue. I wouldn't mind having an agnostic for my neighbor. Yet all this seems to amount to a form of evasion. Its a form of studied non-observance.

The non-fundamentalist Christian experiences doubt within the framework of faith, and above all hope.

"Just War" Theory Is So Yesterday

Lindsey Graham endorses an unprovoked preemptive against Iran.

Worrying About What's Irrelevant

Want to know what it's like to be bitten by a shark? Jose Molla describes the experience and lessons:

Funny how the fragility of life can you make stronger. Funny how being so close to death can make you feel more alive.

Seeing a fin in the water is not nearly as alarming as not seeing that we spend our lives worrying about what’s irrelevant. I’m convinced that the shark didn’t come to take a piece of me but instead to leave me with something. A kind of wisdom that I will never ever forget, written with eighty stitches and my own blood.

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan