Andrew Sullivan completely misses Gerson’s point. But Joan Walsh doesn’t: “As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me … I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who… Continue reading

Michael Gerson on Obama’s speech: But haven’t George Bush and other Republican politicians accepted the support of Jerry Falwell, who spouted hate of his own? Yes, but they didn’t financially support his ministry and sit directly under his teaching for decades. The better analogy is this: What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in… Continue reading

And, as if to emphasize the point of Westfahl’s piece below, comes now the news that Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. For me his best book remains Rendezvous With Rama.

I’ve always been a fan of space travel, if not a huge fan of space travel fiction (because so little of it is really exceptional), but I think Gary Westfahl makes a good point: Just over five years ago, on the date of the Columbia disaster — February 1, 2003 — I wrote an essay… Continue reading

Book NotesI’ve just finished reading Philip Lawler’s new book, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture. It’s an excellent overview of the clergy-abuse scandal, specifically in the degree to which it documents and strongly condemns the corruption of the American hierarchy. But it’s more ambitious, stepping back to take a wider view of… Continue reading