Nobody Does It Better
Atrios links to a mutual hero, Charles Pierce subbing for Eric Alterman
WELCOME AGAIN TO THE MUSTANG RANCH
This overripe piece of faith-based palaver has been on the newsstands for four days now, long enough for the rot to endanger whatever honest journalism may be placed next to it on the shelf. For sheer sucking up to established power, Howard Fineman makes Larry King look like Thomas Paine, and there is so very much in this with which to make happy sport. (Cover your ears, Nick Kristof.)
Let us begin with the obvious: there’s absolutely no goddamn way how to know how genuine someone’s faith is. Perhaps W does spend every morning with a book of sermons. (The Bible, after all, has all those inconvenient passages about rich men, camels, and the eyes of needles.) It doesn’t matter if he spends it playing handball with the ghost of Thomas Aquinas. What goes on in his mind — insert cheap joke here — as regards the family Deity is so far beyond empirical proof that you might as well assert as fact that he’s leading the country based on his dreams.