He tells everybody he is going to help them and never does anything. He can't give money to Catholic schools without a vote in Congress, and any money allotment to parochial schools of any denomination will get sent to the Supreme Court. The bishops must know this, and they must also know that Catholic schools are not seen by most Americans through the same rose-colored glasses the bishops are wearing.
Can't prolife find a candidate who'll save human embryos (has Drumpf actually done this?) without killing me, tearing down the country and destroying the planet? Did Cardinal Dolan join the loopy evangelicals in a Pine Sol margarita toast?
Winters to Catholic clergy: "Stay away from the president. Talk to his staff, as is necessary, but know that he himself will always coopt any event and any person into his own psychodrama. You will become a political pawn in his game because he is incapable of any other mode."
Good advice.
Would be interesting to know how many fellow bishops cringed at Dolan's suck-uppery. The bishops, understandably, want to speak with one voice, but is Dolan's chumminess with the president representative of the way most bishops want to position themselves with Trump?
My guess is that Dolan is a knee-jerk backslapper, the type who likes to make a lot of happy noise and work the room. Guys like that are often so busy spreading exaggerated cheer that they don't see the big pile of sh#t they're about to slip in.
Yeah he sliced all the bishops open and applied hot lights to their hearts, killing any life there. And Cardinal Dolan, swooning, didn't realize that he was getting sloppy seconds when The Don watched his Mass Sunday because he was off with the Rev. Jeffries the previous Sunday. The White House has more than one TV set. He can pretend to watch a religious service without missing a minute of Fox. Look, let's have a test. Let him present himself to Dolan for "the cracker and sip of wine" next Sunday, and then see if St. Patrick's is left standing.
The bishops created this monster when they launched 14 days to Freedom, accompanied by a K of C movie about gun-firing NRA priests driven to it by the secular Mexican government, all to prevent Barack Obama and Kathleen Sibelius from turning this country into the devil's domain. Well, judging by the way The Don is running it, Obama and Sibelius succeeded.
This is an are where Joe Biden and the Democrats need to push back. They shouldn't let the Rs claim the high road on life issues. They need to point out the ways in which the Rs are not pro-life except in an exceedingly narrow way. And the Dems need to carve out a niche where people who oppose abortion can feel comfortable voting for them.
Wow. That's pretty much a campaign commercial. In Chicago, where I think Cardinal Cupich is a little more circumspect, we don't really do the Donald love-fest.
That said: Trump is, as unsubtly as one would expect from him, trying to push all the right buttons. Those same buttons are there for Biden and Democrats to push. Certainly, support for employment for Catholic employees and Catholic school teachers should be low-hanging fruit for them. And Trump was all but daring them to pick it. But I predict they won't.
Jim, You picked the two presidents who best turned deep faith in the mystery of God into secular political language. Lincoln's Second Inaugural may be the best sermon ever delivered on these shores. IMO. (It certainly tops Dolan's best efforts by miles.)
Fintan O'Toole -- Margaret's guy -- pities us. He is behind a paywall in the Irish Times, but his lede Saturday was:
"However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful."
The money graf, though -- what he sees and †he bishops don't but they need to ponder -- is:
"There are very powerful interests who demand 'freedom' in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that 'freedom' is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber ('I Need a Haircut' read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection."
That is the abuse of the word "freedom" the bishops buy into when they spout on about "religious liberty" and nod their mitres at "religious freedom" in the denatured language of this corrupt and pitiful milieu.
Somewhere in the mess of today's news was a story reporting that AG Barr has asked federal prosecutors around the country to look into unnecessary lock downs lest there be a violation of anyone's civil rights (tee hee!).
This brought to mind the fact that Dolan of the Trump phone call, a sermon from the cathedral pulpit, and a Fox News appearance, and Barr are both New Yorkers (Dolan, of course, a transplant from St. Louis via Milwarkee).
From time to time in my sojourn here in NYC, I have met conservative Catholics...they make that clear because they recognize I remain a Chicago Catholic. They are often well-off, professionals, and like myself opinionated. After a conversation, each of us marking our opinion territories, I realize I have a better understanding of what has been called "integral Catholicism." One example was Actione Francaise; others are Faith and Family activists from Argentina, and no doubt there were German equivalents in the thirties to say nothing of the Spanish.
Dolan's current behavior reminds us that the Catholic Church has a long history of favoring and benefiting from the unification of church and state. In spite of clear directions about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God...what is God's, and collaboration with governments dies hard. Apparently it still struggles with Dolan, and in Barr's case with--like the cardinal--sucking up to the president as if it were part of the Nicene Creed.
To Tom (and Fintan O'Toole's point), freedom for me, but not for thee. That is at the heart of the integralist Catholic understanding and that is what the U.S. gave the Catholic Church via John Courtney Murray, and his capo, Cardinal Francis Spellman, one of Dolan's predecessors.
I have to say: immigration is such an exigent issue, I just can't let it go that, at least as reported in the Crux article, not a single bishop took advantage of this face time (or at least voice time) with the president to raise the issue with him. It doesn't even have to be raised in a confrontational, "prophetic" way. It could be raised in a collaborative, let's-find-a-way-to-work-on-this-together way (if, in the bishops' judgment, being collaborative with the president is the right approach).
What good would that do? Trump thinks he already has the answer: Keep the borders shut. As far as he's concerned, the only problem is that there is no wall. Trump is not a "let's work together" type of person.
Trump has his collaborative moments. He has shown that he can work with conservatives on judicial appointments. Plus, the prospect of losing an election might concentrate even his mind.
Yeah he works with conservatives on judicial appointments. I don't get that that's a big problem for him. He pretty much gets his list from the Federalist Society.
Hope springs eternal. But I grew up with crazy people, and they'll agree and flatter you to get attention, and then forget about it or turn around and pick a fight with you about what you just agreed to. It's long past time to apply the 25th Amendment to Trump.
Jim, your complaint is not only appropriate, it is timely in light of Margaret's note about Billy Barr asking prosecutors around the country to look into unnecessary lockdowns for potential civil rights violations. Many of the immigration compounds are packed with non-violent offenders shoulder to shoulder with coronavirus positives. In fact, when the story of all the prison systems' responses to Covid-19 is written, the subtext will be that one you're in, no one cares if your prison sentence turns into a death sentence.
The ACLU has lawsuits all over the place about this. Our own county prison population is getting masks -- ta-da! -- this week. Dying of Covid-19 is a sad way to end an 18-month term early. Seems to me, there are some rights violations there for Mr. Barr to attend to.
"I grew up with crazy people, and they'll agree and flatter you to get attention, and then forget about it or turn around and pick a fight with you about what you just agreed to."
I'm glad you wrote this, because it clarifies something I've been sensing.
At this point,no need for us to go in-depth on the president's many character flaws (although I'll paste something below that does that, in an amusing way). The narcissism, the absence of the conscience gene, and so on, have been manifest for years.
But these flaws are compounded by another factor: the president is erratic. As one top-of-mind instance, seemingly he can't decide whether to encourage or discourage the open-up-the-economy-now protesters. As another, he'll try to charm the media one day, and go to war with them the next.
What explains his being so erratic and inconsistent? Part of it may just be that, in general, he's undisciplined. He's easily bored, refuses to study, etc. Another part of it may be that he's easily influenced; I read somewhere that, when the White House is trying to figure out where to land on a particular issue, whoever manages to get face time with him last is the one whose ideas will carry the day with him. And of course, Putin, Erdogan, Kim and other world leaders have basically bamboozled him.
But what I've been intuiting is that, in addition to all of the above, I think he's coming unmoored from his rationality. He's not young, and the presidency is a pressure cooker for anyone.
If I'm right about that - then that, by itself, is a reason not to re-elect him (and of course there is a myriad of other reasons).
What frightens me is that I'm not certain that Biden's faculties are significantly better moored. He exhibits an erratic streak, too. In fact, paranoid me wonders whether his extraordinarily low profile during this crisis moment, with his opponent clearly floundering, is a conscious decision on the part of his campaign managers to minimize his exposure to the public.
Well, in my zeal to write about the flaws of another, I managed to exhibit (at least) one of my own: forgetfulness. I said I'd paste something amusing, and then forgot. So here it is. It amuses me; ymmv. This is from Kevin Williamson's Tuesday newsletter, The Tuesday. Every edition includes a feature entitled "Words About Words". This is yesterday's installment:
"Honoré de Balzac’s novel Eugénie Grandet, translated by M. A. Crawford, contains some wonderful old English words. The story concerns the competition for the hand of the titular heiress. A scene: “He kissed Eugénie on both cheeks and offered her a workbox with fittings of silver-gilt. It was a trumpery enough piece of goods, in spite of the little shield bearing the initials E. G. carefully engraved in Gothic characters, a detail which made the whole thing appear more imposing and better finished than it in fact was.”
"I cannot recall another instance of trumpery being used as an adjective. The noun trumpery, which means something that appears to be of value but is not, has gone through several iterations. As you might guess, it is derived from the French root trompe, meaning “deceive,” as in trompe l’oeil, a style of decorative painting that creates an illusion (e.g., painted-on paneling or millwork, or a painted landscape seen through a painted window), or the great Pixies album Trompe le Monde (“fool the world”). Its subsequent sense of superficial showiness is based on that underlying sense of deceit. Merriam-Webster defines trumpery as “worthless nonsense” or “trivial or useless articles” or “tawdry finery.” The last of these is described by the Merriam-Webster editors as “archaic.” To my eye, the word is archaic in general — but very useful nonetheless. It is due for a comeback.
"Because trumpery suggests the name of the current president of the United States, some fun has been had with it by the president’s critics, to the extent that Snopes felt obliged to create a “trumpery” entry in which it affirms that, yes, that is a real English word that means showy, deceitful, worthless, and fraudulent. Snopes really leans into it, in fact, listing these synonyms: balderdash, baloney, bilge, blather, claptrap, codswallop, drivel, foolishness, garbage, hogwash, humbuggery, stupidity, tommyrot, and twaddle.
"The need for words such as trumpery will outlive the political career of Donald J. Trump. This is a golden age of trumpery. A word I write frequently is meretricious, meaning “superficially attractive or impressive but having no real value.” Meretricious comes to us from the Latin meretrix, “prostitute,” and its oldest English meaning was “pertaining to prostitutes and prostitution.” It came to mean something like trumpery in that it describes that which is painted, done up, and adorned in a superficial way. In a more general sense, it means pretentious. Both trumpery and meretricious carry a denotation of tawdriness but emphasize the deceptive and superficial character of the attraction.
"We need honest language for deceitful times, precise language for vague ones"
Jim, trumpery is a very good, descriptive word. Also makes me think of the word "pomps", as in the Baptism promise of rejecting Satan and all his works and pomps. And the synonyms makes me think of one very funny Saturday Night Live skit, in which there was a thesaurus editor's funeral. They went on at length with all the synonyms and euphemisms for death, such as pushing up daisies, buying the farm, taking a dirt nap, etc. Funny the tangents one's mind takes.
That said, we hear rumors. This is a DC after all, and people always know people who have some kind of insider gossip. However, I will take Biden anyway because he will have decent staff, decent advisors, and he will listen to them.
Link to the America story: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/04/27/fox-news-cardinal-dolan-praises-trumps-sensitivity-feelings-religious
ArchbishopDolan could learn something from Governor Andrew Cuomo. Will he? https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-andrew-cuomo-press-conference-live-video-20200414-tdir6nk6lresjbzmqzsavbhsx4-story.html
Matt Malone of America disagrees with me on the bishops broaching immigration: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/04/28/trump-bishops-white-house-call-plight-catholic-schools-coronavirus
I let America lapse abut the time Matt Malone took over because there seemed to be creeping non-Jesuit commentary like this: "So it makes sense to me that the Catholic bishops of the United States decided to focus on Catholic education during their recent conference call..."
Blah blah blah. The other side of their conversation didn't focus on Catholic education (of course). He focused on himself (can't help it), his election chances (always uppermost) and his ego ('nuf said). So they sat there, sticking to the subject like mind-controlled automatons while The Don ran over them like they were just more stooges, like the ones some of whom are currently in jail, saying, "Yessir, Your Brilliance." If Malone can't notice that those "pastors" were used and abused, willingly, he doesn't belong in an editor's chair.
Though still a subscriber to "America", I was not comfortable with the decision by Fr. Malone to not discuss "liberal" vs. "conservative", not even using the terms. There exist divisions and this sounded like wishing them away, the way our infantile president thinks problems can be ignored into oblivion.
"I was not comfortable with the decision by Fr. Malone to not discuss "liberal" vs. "conservative", not even using the terms."
Way too many Catholics, I think the pope is included there, are unwilling to acknowledge that a schism exists and has done so for quite some time now. If unity is one of the marks of the church, said church no longer exists.
Jimmy: Way too many Catholics, I think the pope is included there, are unwilling to acknowledge that a schism exists and has done so for quite some time now. If unity is one of the marks of the church, said church no longer exists.
He tells everybody he is going to help them and never does anything. He can't give money to Catholic schools without a vote in Congress, and any money allotment to parochial schools of any denomination will get sent to the Supreme Court. The bishops must know this, and they must also know that Catholic schools are not seen by most Americans through the same rose-colored glasses the bishops are wearing.
ReplyDeleteCan't prolife find a candidate who'll save human embryos (has Drumpf actually done this?) without killing me, tearing down the country and destroying the planet? Did Cardinal Dolan join the loopy evangelicals in a Pine Sol margarita toast?
ReplyDeleteMichael Sean Winters was pretty scathing today. Seems to me some prelates and prominent Catholics are falling into temptation.
ReplyDeleteThat was actually a decent effort by Winters.
DeleteWinters to Catholic clergy: "Stay away from the president. Talk to his staff, as is necessary, but know that he himself will always coopt any event and any person into his own psychodrama. You will become a political pawn in his game because he is incapable of any other mode."
DeleteGood advice.
Would be interesting to know how many fellow bishops cringed at Dolan's suck-uppery. The bishops, understandably, want to speak with one voice, but is Dolan's chumminess with the president representative of the way most bishops want to position themselves with Trump?
My guess is that Dolan is a knee-jerk backslapper, the type who likes to make a lot of happy noise and work the room. Guys like that are often so busy spreading exaggerated cheer that they don't see the big pile of sh#t they're about to slip in.
Yeah he sliced all the bishops open and applied hot lights to their hearts, killing any life there. And Cardinal Dolan, swooning, didn't realize that he was getting sloppy seconds when The Don watched his Mass Sunday because he was off with the Rev. Jeffries the previous Sunday. The White House has more than one TV set. He can pretend to watch a religious service without missing a minute of Fox. Look, let's have a test. Let him present himself to Dolan for "the cracker and sip of wine" next Sunday, and then see if St. Patrick's is left standing.
ReplyDeleteThe bishops created this monster when they launched 14 days to Freedom, accompanied by a K of C movie about gun-firing NRA priests driven to it by the secular Mexican government, all to prevent Barack Obama and Kathleen Sibelius from turning this country into the devil's domain. Well, judging by the way The Don is running it, Obama and Sibelius succeeded.
This is an are where Joe Biden and the Democrats need to push back. They shouldn't let the Rs claim the high road on life issues. They need to point out the ways in which the Rs are not pro-life except in an exceedingly narrow way. And the Dems need to carve out a niche where people who oppose abortion can feel comfortable voting for them.
ReplyDelete"are" should be area.
DeleteWow. That's pretty much a campaign commercial. In Chicago, where I think Cardinal Cupich is a little more circumspect, we don't really do the Donald love-fest.
ReplyDeleteThat said: Trump is, as unsubtly as one would expect from him, trying to push all the right buttons. Those same buttons are there for Biden and Democrats to push. Certainly, support for employment for Catholic employees and Catholic school teachers should be low-hanging fruit for them. And Trump was all but daring them to pick it. But I predict they won't.
So who is has been the best president, from the point of view of Catholic doctrine and social teaching?
ReplyDeleteMy instinct is to vote for Lincoln - he's usually a good bet. I'm sure there will be an FDR contingent here, too.
Jim, You picked the two presidents who best turned deep faith in the mystery of God into secular political language. Lincoln's Second Inaugural may be the best sermon ever delivered on these shores. IMO. (It certainly tops Dolan's best efforts by miles.)
DeleteFintan O'Toole -- Margaret's guy -- pities us. He is behind a paywall in the Irish Times, but his lede Saturday was:
ReplyDelete"However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful."
The money graf, though -- what he sees and †he bishops don't but they need to ponder -- is:
"There are very powerful interests who demand 'freedom' in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that 'freedom' is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber ('I Need a Haircut' read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection."
That is the abuse of the word "freedom" the bishops buy into when they spout on about "religious liberty" and nod their mitres at "religious freedom" in the denatured language of this corrupt and pitiful milieu.
Tom, amen to that, especially your last paragraph. They are interpreting "religious freedom" in a very self-referential, entitled way.
DeleteSomewhere in the mess of today's news was a story reporting that AG Barr has asked federal prosecutors around the country to look into unnecessary lock downs lest there be a violation of anyone's civil rights (tee hee!).
DeleteThis brought to mind the fact that Dolan of the Trump phone call, a sermon from the cathedral pulpit, and a Fox News appearance, and Barr are both New Yorkers (Dolan, of course, a transplant from St. Louis via Milwarkee).
From time to time in my sojourn here in NYC, I have met conservative Catholics...they make that clear because they recognize I remain a Chicago Catholic. They are often well-off, professionals, and like myself opinionated. After a conversation, each of us marking our opinion territories, I realize I have a better understanding of what has been called "integral Catholicism." One example was Actione Francaise; others are Faith and Family activists from Argentina, and no doubt there were German equivalents in the thirties to say nothing of the Spanish.
Dolan's current behavior reminds us that the Catholic Church has a long history of favoring and benefiting from the unification of church and state. In spite of clear directions about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God...what is God's, and collaboration with governments dies hard. Apparently it still struggles with Dolan, and in Barr's case with--like the cardinal--sucking up to the president as if it were part of the Nicene Creed.
To Tom (and Fintan O'Toole's point), freedom for me, but not for thee. That is at the heart of the integralist Catholic understanding and that is what the U.S. gave the Catholic Church via John Courtney Murray, and his capo, Cardinal Francis Spellman, one of Dolan's predecessors.
Deletecorrection: I mean JC Murray provided the opposite: separation of Church and State..
DeleteA link to Barr's order to federal prosecutors:
Deletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national/attorney-general-barr-coronavirus-state-restrictions/2020/04/27/0a5832ce-88b9-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html
You can read O'Toole's full article here:
Deletehttps://www.stripersonline.com/surftalk/topic/787764-however-bad-things-are-for-most-other-rich-democracies-it-is-hard-not-to-feel-sorry-for-americans/
I have to say: immigration is such an exigent issue, I just can't let it go that, at least as reported in the Crux article, not a single bishop took advantage of this face time (or at least voice time) with the president to raise the issue with him. It doesn't even have to be raised in a confrontational, "prophetic" way. It could be raised in a collaborative, let's-find-a-way-to-work-on-this-together way (if, in the bishops' judgment, being collaborative with the president is the right approach).
ReplyDeleteOpportunity missed. Or am I missing something?
What good would that do? Trump thinks he already has the answer: Keep the borders shut. As far as he's concerned, the only problem is that there is no wall. Trump is not a "let's work together" type of person.
DeleteTrump has his collaborative moments. He has shown that he can work with conservatives on judicial appointments. Plus, the prospect of losing an election might concentrate even his mind.
DeleteYeah he works with conservatives on judicial appointments. I don't get that that's a big problem for him. He pretty much gets his list from the Federalist Society.
DeleteHope springs eternal. But I grew up with crazy people, and they'll agree and flatter you to get attention, and then forget about it or turn around and pick a fight with you about what you just agreed to. It's long past time to apply the 25th Amendment to Trump.
DeleteJim, your complaint is not only appropriate, it is timely in light of Margaret's note about Billy Barr asking prosecutors around the country to look into unnecessary lockdowns for potential civil rights violations. Many of the immigration compounds are packed with non-violent offenders shoulder to shoulder with coronavirus positives. In fact, when the story of all the prison systems' responses to Covid-19 is written, the subtext will be that one you're in, no one cares if your prison sentence turns into a death sentence.
DeleteThe ACLU has lawsuits all over the place about this. Our own county prison population is getting masks -- ta-da! -- this week. Dying of Covid-19 is a sad way to end an 18-month term early. Seems to me, there are some rights violations there for Mr. Barr to attend to.
"I grew up with crazy people, and they'll agree and flatter you to get attention, and then forget about it or turn around and pick a fight with you about what you just agreed to."
DeleteI'm glad you wrote this, because it clarifies something I've been sensing.
At this point,no need for us to go in-depth on the president's many character flaws (although I'll paste something below that does that, in an amusing way). The narcissism, the absence of the conscience gene, and so on, have been manifest for years.
But these flaws are compounded by another factor: the president is erratic. As one top-of-mind instance, seemingly he can't decide whether to encourage or discourage the open-up-the-economy-now protesters. As another, he'll try to charm the media one day, and go to war with them the next.
What explains his being so erratic and inconsistent? Part of it may just be that, in general, he's undisciplined. He's easily bored, refuses to study, etc. Another part of it may be that he's easily influenced; I read somewhere that, when the White House is trying to figure out where to land on a particular issue, whoever manages to get face time with him last is the one whose ideas will carry the day with him. And of course, Putin, Erdogan, Kim and other world leaders have basically bamboozled him.
But what I've been intuiting is that, in addition to all of the above, I think he's coming unmoored from his rationality. He's not young, and the presidency is a pressure cooker for anyone.
If I'm right about that - then that, by itself, is a reason not to re-elect him (and of course there is a myriad of other reasons).
What frightens me is that I'm not certain that Biden's faculties are significantly better moored. He exhibits an erratic streak, too. In fact, paranoid me wonders whether his extraordinarily low profile during this crisis moment, with his opponent clearly floundering, is a conscious decision on the part of his campaign managers to minimize his exposure to the public.
We should pray for the future of our country.
Well, in my zeal to write about the flaws of another, I managed to exhibit (at least) one of my own: forgetfulness. I said I'd paste something amusing, and then forgot. So here it is. It amuses me; ymmv. This is from Kevin Williamson's Tuesday newsletter, The Tuesday. Every edition includes a feature entitled "Words About Words". This is yesterday's installment:
Delete"Honoré de Balzac’s novel Eugénie Grandet, translated by M. A. Crawford, contains some wonderful old English words. The story concerns the competition for the hand of the titular heiress. A scene: “He kissed Eugénie on both cheeks and offered her a workbox with fittings of silver-gilt. It was a trumpery enough piece of goods, in spite of the little shield bearing the initials E. G. carefully engraved in Gothic characters, a detail which made the whole thing appear more imposing and better finished than it in fact was.”
"I cannot recall another instance of trumpery being used as an adjective. The noun trumpery, which means something that appears to be of value but is not, has gone through several iterations. As you might guess, it is derived from the French root trompe, meaning “deceive,” as in trompe l’oeil, a style of decorative painting that creates an illusion (e.g., painted-on paneling or millwork, or a painted landscape seen through a painted window), or the great Pixies album Trompe le Monde (“fool the world”). Its subsequent sense of superficial showiness is based on that underlying sense of deceit. Merriam-Webster defines trumpery as “worthless nonsense” or “trivial or useless articles” or “tawdry finery.” The last of these is described by the Merriam-Webster editors as “archaic.” To my eye, the word is archaic in general — but very useful nonetheless. It is due for a comeback.
"Because trumpery suggests the name of the current president of the United States, some fun has been had with it by the president’s critics, to the extent that Snopes felt obliged to create a “trumpery” entry in which it affirms that, yes, that is a real English word that means showy, deceitful, worthless, and fraudulent. Snopes really leans into it, in fact, listing these synonyms: balderdash, baloney, bilge, blather, claptrap, codswallop, drivel, foolishness, garbage, hogwash, humbuggery, stupidity, tommyrot, and twaddle.
"The need for words such as trumpery will outlive the political career of Donald J. Trump. This is a golden age of trumpery. A word I write frequently is meretricious, meaning “superficially attractive or impressive but having no real value.” Meretricious comes to us from the Latin meretrix, “prostitute,” and its oldest English meaning was “pertaining to prostitutes and prostitution.” It came to mean something like trumpery in that it describes that which is painted, done up, and adorned in a superficial way. In a more general sense, it means pretentious. Both trumpery and meretricious carry a denotation of tawdriness but emphasize the deceptive and superficial character of the attraction.
"We need honest language for deceitful times, precise language for vague ones"
Jim, trumpery is a very good, descriptive word. Also makes me think of the word "pomps", as in the Baptism promise of rejecting Satan and all his works and pomps.
DeleteAnd the synonyms makes me think of one very funny Saturday Night Live skit, in which there was a thesaurus editor's funeral. They went on at length with all the synonyms and euphemisms for death, such as pushing up daisies, buying the farm, taking a dirt nap, etc.
Funny the tangents one's mind takes.
My mistake, the skit wasn't SNL, it was Johnny Carson.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteJim, according to one NYT columnist, Biden isn’t hiding, he’s “lurking”
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/opinion/joe-biden-campaign.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
That said, we hear rumors. This is a DC after all, and people always know people who have some kind of insider gossip. However, I will take Biden anyway because he will have decent staff, decent advisors, and he will listen to them.
Check out the story at the America website on this. Don’t miss the comments - now in the dozens.
ReplyDelete52 comments when I looked, and only one of them was favorable to what Dolan said.
DeleteLink to the America story:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/04/27/fox-news-cardinal-dolan-praises-trumps-sensitivity-feelings-religious
ArchbishopDolan could learn something from Governor Andrew Cuomo. Will he?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-andrew-cuomo-press-conference-live-video-20200414-tdir6nk6lresjbzmqzsavbhsx4-story.html
Matt Malone of America disagrees with me on the bishops broaching immigration: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/04/28/trump-bishops-white-house-call-plight-catholic-schools-coronavirus
ReplyDeleteI let America lapse abut the time Matt Malone took over because there seemed to be creeping non-Jesuit commentary like this: "So it makes sense to me that the Catholic bishops of the United States decided to focus on Catholic education during their recent conference call..."
DeleteBlah blah blah. The other side of their conversation didn't focus on Catholic education (of course). He focused on himself (can't help it), his election chances (always uppermost) and his ego ('nuf said). So they sat there, sticking to the subject like mind-controlled automatons while The Don ran over them like they were just more stooges, like the ones some of whom are currently in jail, saying, "Yessir, Your Brilliance." If Malone can't notice that those "pastors" were used and abused, willingly, he doesn't belong in an editor's chair.
Though still a subscriber to "America", I was not comfortable with the decision by Fr. Malone to not discuss "liberal" vs. "conservative", not even using the terms. There exist divisions and this sounded like wishing them away, the way our infantile president thinks problems can be ignored into oblivion.
Delete"I was not comfortable with the decision by Fr. Malone to not discuss "liberal" vs. "conservative", not even using the terms."
DeleteWay too many Catholics, I think the pope is included there, are unwilling to acknowledge that a schism exists and has done so for quite some time now. If unity is one of the marks of the church, said church no longer exists.
Jimmy: Way too many Catholics, I think the pope is included there, are unwilling to acknowledge that a schism exists and has done so for quite some time now. If unity is one of the marks of the church, said church no longer exists.
DeleteYup. It's been obvious for years now.
"But what I've been intuiting is that, in addition to all of the above, I think he's coming unmoored from his rationality."
ReplyDeletePray tell: WHAT rationality? Surely you jest.