Catholic commentary on culture, media, and politics.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Dear President Bush...

Dear President Bush:

I'm about to plan a little trip with my family and extended family, and I would like to ask you to assist me. I'm going to walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and I need to make a few arrangements.

I know you can help with this.

I plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here.

So, would you mind telling your guy, President Vicente Fox, that I'm on my way over? Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:

1. Free medical care for my entire family.

2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.

3. All government forms need to be printed in English.

4. I want my kids to be taught by English-speaking teachers.

5. Schools need to include classes on American culture and history.

6. I want my kids to see the American flag flying on the top of the flag pole at their school with the Mexican flag flying lower down.

7. Please plan to feed my kids at school for both breakfast and lunch.

8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.

9. I do not plan to have any car insurance, and I won't make any effort to learn local traffic laws.

10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from Pres. Fox to leave me alone, please be sure that all police officers speak English.

11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.

12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, and don't enforce any labor laws or tax laws.

13. Please tell all the people in the country to be extremely nice and never say a critical word about me, or about the strain I might place on the economy.

14. One more thing: I'll be needing the English lyrics to the Mexican national anthem.

I know this is an easy request given your policies of hospitality. And I'm sure that President Fox won't mind returning the favor, if you ask him nicely.

Hat tip to Bill Galvan.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Muslim women now permitted to gaze upon the bodies of male strangers

Feminists everywhere must be hailing the bold move by the very progressive President of Iran to let women watch soccer games.

I like the BBC's term "religious right" to describe the mullahs who oppose to this outrageous concession to Western perversity. A) It makes a subtle equivalence with the so-called Christian right in America; and B) It seems to assume there is such a thing as a religious left in Iran.

Chutzpah to the nth degree

My jaw continues to drop at the spectre of swarms of illegal aliens threatening, boycotting, hectoring a country they broke into illegally.

The disgusting spectacle, which seems to grow daily, will eventually create a Mexifornia founded on breaking and entering. And dontcha love how the MSM sticks to terms like "pro-immigrant," "migrant worker rights," etc etc.

Thanks, Mr. Bush.

And thanks, Cardinal Mahoney. Oustanding leadership. Give your pro-abortion Catholic mayor buddy a hug for us. (Ooops, sorry, that would be inappropriate boundary crossing. By your own zero tolerance policy, you'd have to quit your job. On second thought....)

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Radio genius to sell soul to lesser medium

When I first arrived in LA, I used to listen -- mostly in shock -- to a radio show at night here on KFI-AM.

The host had these incredibly stupid, or incredibly bold, guests on his show. He'd interview them and then open up the lines for callers to argue with the "guest," with the host, Phil Hendrie, serving as moderator.

Then I learned the secret: Mr. Hendrie does the voice of all his "guests," but the callers don't know it. I could not believe what I was hearing. He's so smooth and convincing you're sure host is talking over guest. But it's all live.

Hilarious, if you can get past his bitter "lapsed Catholic" angst.

Anyway, he just announced he's quitting radio to work on his acting career.

Ratings must have dropped, which is hard to understand. Seems like a mistake to me but maybe after 14 years he just coudlnt do it one more night.

British Airways run by racists....

Poor Snoop Dogg and his homeys just can't get justice anywhere.

My, that gangsta rap culture is good for young people, ain't it?

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Why are most Jews liberal?

Only a Jew can credibly answer this question, and even then he'll be accused by someone as being either an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew.

Lucky for his readers, and radio listeners, Dennis Prager doesn't lose sleep over empty sloganeering.

Some outsiders are insiders

While many Catholics refuse, or are unable, to see why contraception is evil and ultimately destructive to humanity, good pagans often see what's at stake very clearly:

Before the advent of the birth-control pill, sex and procreation had been eternally, inseparably linked. After it, the link was pretty much optional. Momentous things ensued: chiefly women's liberation and the abortion controversy, all of them arguably the pill's indirect consequences, all of them reverberating to this day.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Mick Jagger tops self in relevancy bid

Did you hear? Mick Jagger's really stuck it to the man this time.

President Bush must be devasted by this setback.

Mick takes a swipe at Bush, 59, on the latest Stones album A Bigger Bang, savaging his Iraq War policy.


Savaging, even.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

How Mexico treat's IT'S illegal aliens

They break the law by crossing the US borders. Along with their more violent criminals, they head north; get a job; swamp American hospitals to the point of shut-down; obtain social assistance; and march in the streets with Mexican flags demanding their "rights." Anyone who says a peep is a racist.

But here is what happens if you're caught crossing into Mexico illegally.

There are double-standards, and then there are double-standards.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

This looks good...

Starting on Easter Sunday, the A&E Network is set to air a five-part documentary titled God Or the Girl. It tracks four seminarians who are at cross roads in their discernment. Think Hoop Dreams in a seminary.

I'm as jaded as the next orthodox Catholic about how the Church gets treated in the media, especially by nitwit documentarians. When I heard about God Or the Girl, the title made me grateful that they probably weren't going to drag in (pardon the metaphor) a token gay seminarian, but I was still suspicious that the other shoe would drop and they'd include a Richard McBrien clone. They always do.

Not this time.

I got an email today from one of the marketers of the show named Brian Walsh, so I called him back and he confirmed everything on the website: God Or the Girl portrays the Church very positively. It's gotten great buzz from many quarters, inclduing secular. For instance, from Timeout.com:

The most impressive thing about God or the Girl is its refusal to treat its subjects as weird: None of the guys embodies straight-arrow stereotypes, and Catholicism is neither swaddled in sentiment nor portrayed as an iron-fisted cult. What ultimately emerges is a series that pulls off the impressive trick of celebrating religion without making nonbelievers feel like jerks.—Andrew Johnston

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Schlafly in 08

Phyllis Schlafly gets to the nub of the "immigrant rights" debate in her winsomely trenchant way.

If she was a liberal, she'd have her own TV show, honorary library and multi-book deal.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Oh, great

So Dan Brown has prevailed after all in British High Court.

A judge decided today that The Da Vinci Code didn't steal its central them from an earlier, even dumber, 1982 book.

Heavy sigh.

Talk about a boon to an already eagerly anticipated movie opening in May. Special thanks to Tom Hanks and Ron Howard for making it yet harder to be an orthodox Catholic in America.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

It's Bush's fault. Whatever it happens to be.

It seems President Bush is to blame for the non-boom in the porn industry.

What you have to understand is that, if there was a boom in the same industry, Bush would be blamed for creating a Puritanical populace that must seek its real sexual needs furtively and unhealthily, via brown paper bags.

Blinding Bush hatred isn't some invention of the far Right. It's a real as blinding Clinton Love.