Find him
Bind him
Tie him to a mast and
Break his fingers
To splinters...

Ponnuru once mused that Mormons might get a better reception in the South if they renounced their claim to Christianity. I really don't like public commentors to opine seriously on theology. If Romney is asked about the doctrine of the trinity in a public forum, the secular experiment is over.

john edwards' failure to denounce john jay raises serious questions about his managerial skills and tolerance of bigotry.

Who cares? It's Carlson. He has a nice head of hair and not much else.

not much else.

SCMTim's failure to acknowledge bow ties makes it hard to consider his religion Christianity.

I like that Tucker's reason for ruling out Obama's church - 'a theology that ministers to one group of people, based on race' - would rule out most Christian churches for most of the time since Christ.

I'm also sure that every member of an AME church throught the country is delighted to hear that noted theologan Tucker Carlson has declared them un-Christian. On the other hand, he didn't make a cheap PG-13 joke about the Holy Spirit.

I believe there are far fewer black who voted for Bush than Catholics who voted for Kerry last time around. Nonetheless, it would be stupid for any GOP candidate to hire Tucker just as it was incredibly stupid for Edwards to hire Amanda and Melissa.

P.S. Tucker was NOT wearing a bow tie this time.

Gallic Jackals and frog-eating? Is that the 18th century version of "he looks French"? Did they also use "curd consuming capitulating simian"?

I'm afraid you can't call yourself "Bob" here unless you're the true Bob; the Bob who is lost to us. Keep commenting if you will, but call yourself Rob, or Bobby, or something.

To be fair, Danton and Robespierre weren't exactly giving French populism a good reputation those days.

11: In this situation, we usually advise people to just spell the name backwards. You could try that.

Now there's a plan.

13: But he was already *doing* that.

If he had15: true, but he got his casing wrong. he should be boB.

And to add to 12: Monroe, while minister to France, was pretty unwisely sympathetic to the French.

Has this Tucker dude never been to an ethnic church? In Pittsburgh you used to be able to go to a Mass said in Croatian, for crying out loud. Churches often work to better their communities.

And what 2 said. Orthodoxy schmorthodoxy.

To be fair, Danton and Robespierre weren't exactly giving French populism a good reputation those days.

True, true. But I didn't find (or not as much) this tradition of fear of the French Ogre in other european cultures. The pearl clutching, boos, hisses, etc is more present in english speaking countries (i take it as a late hommage paid to the former colonial master, it's a personal theory, and it's Gigondas tonight). This kinda works with Napoleon too.

The quote is interesting - possible genealogies for the present francophobia.

Even I haven't seen the one true Bob in awhile.

I like to think that bob's like King Arthur (or unf): he will return when he's most needed, as on the Greatest Thread Evar.

19.---True, the countries that were actually invaded by the French seem to have gotten over the Revolution and the Napoleonic menace better than the English did. But then, those were some nasty pamphlet wars.

More seriously, I think it's because the American Revolution wasn't a class revolution that the line between it and the French Revolution became so important to police. So the 19th-c English and the American middle classes had a lot at stake when they wrote all of those bloody denunciations of Jacobin massacres.

Even I haven't seen the one true Bob in awhile.

Blame the baby.

We are all Bob. We shall sit under the Bobhi tree until we discover the truth. There is Bob in all of us. We must follow the Bobba-Dharma, the way of the higher truths, until we achieve Bobksha or Bobvana.

We are all Bob.

Bobbhisattva!

I also like thinking of pamphlets as really slow blogs.

19, 22: The shear nastiness of reaction on both sides of the Atlantic in those days always shocks me. I more-and-more sympathize with Hazlett's depression after Waterloo, and his diagnosis: It was the defeat of a tyrant by tyranny itself. Thank god that never happens anymore. I look back on the Hornblower books I read as a kid with contempt and anger.

Hazlitt. Can't spell when seeing red.

There was some pretty substantial support in the US for France, though, especially in the early years of the revolution (republican solidarity and all that). Madison and Jefferson, among others, wanted economic policy to discriminate against the English in favor of France, and some even were willing to risk war with England; the Jay Treaty was such a big deal because it meant no war with England (for a while) and likely an improvement in commercial relations. Huge crowds were against it, before they were for it. Or rather before the actual details became public.

Elkins and McKittrick, The Age of Federalism, is really a pretty good book, with a nice discussion of foreign relations and an interesting digression on French-American relations in general. It's taking me forever to read, though.

There is no Bob but Bob, and Ogged is his prophet.

What about this guy?

There's a Rolling Stone piece on Obama that has some stuff on Wright:

The Trinity United Church of Christ, the church that Barack Obama attends in Chicago, is at once vast and unprepossessing, a big structure a couple of blocks from the projects, in the long open sore of a ghetto on the city's far South Side. The church is a leftover vision from the Sixties of what a black nationalist future might look like. There's the testifying fervor of the black church, the Afrocentric Bible readings, even the odd dashiki. And there is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher, a kind of black ministerial institution, with his own radio shows and guest preaching gigs across the country. Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."

Obama wasn't born into Wright's world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell's nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church -- the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and "felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."

Obama does honestly believe all the corny stuff about hope, I think.

18: Pretty sure you still can, albeit not in the original, historical church (which the parishioners want to save, but the Diocese wants to demolish).

Oh crap. Now I can't get hired by a political campaign.

Whatever Dickerson might think, and however beyond race he can sometimes come off as, I would hope Obama's having chosen that church, and Christianity, chosen to marry a black woman, an American, chosen to live and work on the South Side of Chicago, chosen to be a black man in effect, when he didn't have to, not to the extent he has, would count for something. It matters to me.

Actually, the church the parish now occupies features amazing, radical murals painted by a Croatian muralist in 1941. If you're ever in town, and want to be reminded that the RCC (at least on a parish level) used to be a progressive voice for the people, check 'em out. Plus, there's an incongruously-located, amazing French bakery down the street.

32: I thought it had been demolished. I remember the article about how it was so sad it was going to close but the diocese was fresh out of priests.

Some one should follow the usual tradition and turn the old church into a bar.

24: Coconut Grove, the ex-bohemian neighborhood near Miami, hosts (or used to) a parallel Orange Bowl Parade, called (I think) the King ORange Strut, which was all about wackiness - think a straight Gay Pride kind of thing. And one of the features was the Bobs, who marched along, chanting "We're Bob, and you're not."

Bobs of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your individuality. Such as it may be.

Those are some wizard cocksucker murals.

25:I will shine on your Japan and sparkle in your China but I am an untrue Bob.

35:"Obama does honestly believe all the corny stuff about hope, I think."

Nobody's perfect. But I am committed to Edwards now, and Obama's flaws and mistakes will not weaken my loyalty.

35: The Diocese is committed to that Never Happening Again. They would rather see the buildings, with their rich family histories and gorgeous architecture (generally built by volunteer labor), destroyed than see them profaned.

I happen to know this from inside information, and they actually got the City's preservation ordinance changed so that churches are, effectively, exempt. But St. Nicholas itself is, in fact, a City Landmark, and so can't be demolished without a series of public hearings.

Because you all care about this.

Fuck everyone that won't put lights in his windows and sit up all night fucking John Jay.

I am committed to Edwards now

That was some quick switch in positions, Bob.

19, 22, etc.: Don't forget that France spent centuries arming the Scots and Irish against England - invasions or no, the English had ample reason to mistrust/hate France. The course of the French Revolution only complicated matters.

That said, I think that Americans are often ignorant about how deep anti-English sentiment was in America up to and including WWI. Given the huge German and Irish populations, it was an open question in, say, 1915 which side the US should support. But most history books and certainly popular media give the impression that by, say, 1820 all was hunky-dory.

Shit, I hope hunky-dory isn't somehow offensive when discussing US-UK relations.

Standpipe Bridgeplate used to write for Bache's Aurora.

42: For the record, that last line was purely a joke; I'm totally on board with the anti-articulate crew.

39: I'd rather see it be used as a church, all things considered, or at least a chapel, or museumified. But it would suck to have it torn down.

P.S. your plum pictures are very nice.

42:I try to comment on multiple blogs, about 5 really, without repeating myself and with a little different personality and style on each. Sp I can be hard to follow. I shouldn't assume everyone here follow the complete comment threads at those other blogs, but I enjoy doing things I shouldn't.

The committment to Edwards was expressed and explained on ObsWi, as a act of of solidarity with Chris Bowers and the feminist blogs, and because over there, at the time, it was contrarian.

45: The parishioners would like to use it as a museum of Croatian-American culture (I think, ideally, they'd like to continue it as a church of course), but the Diocese won't give it to them.

Thanks. Good lord, did we have a lot of plums (in East Liberty!). I think it ended up being 13 lbs. from one little tree that, in 5 years, had put out a total of 7 plums. I just hope it happens again.

46 was to 41, of course. I think we need a program to shuffle the comments or number, or maybe both, so we can have long threads that are nothing but re-referencing.

Sometimes trees need time to acclimate before they bears tons of fruit, so maybe you'll have plums this year, too.

It has always been an insane country.

There's a strong case that this isn't so: that it was an insane country then and is an insane country now, but that in-between, and particularly in the period between the 1870s and 1970s, public-sphere insanity decreased significantly, only to rise again later.

There's an actual scholarly argument that the rise in actually informative journalism was a result of competition. You might argue therefore that the reduction of competition in major media journalism would lead to a reduction in actually informative journalism.

This is a minimally credible explanation why so many of us oldsters greet this kind of rhetoric with such dismay.

On the other hand: The Tolerance Trio

On the third hand:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.

Has anyone else noticed that in the Iconic Obama religious photos Obama is usually lookin up, while in the Bush Halo photos GWB is looking down in humble gratitude?

I think is just the critical thing, the key distinction in good religion vs bad religion. Satan can fool ya sometimes.

During the debate over the annexation of Texas, John Quincy Adams described the Constitution as having become "a menstrual rag."

The annexation of Texas? Well, look how that turned out.