Andrew,
Your eloquence about staying out of the GOP (most recently, in your reaction to Frum) is solid stuff. I only wish you would apply the same reasoning to your membership in the Catholic Church. The Church commits the same sins as the GOP but yet adds to it an ethical and moral authority just as damning to you.
Frum merely applies your "stay in the Church" reasoning to the GOP.
BTW, I'm a hetero white male, a moderate liberal, and a Catholic churchgoer as well. And I pray for you, Andrew, for all the misplaced hell you have to go through as you seek to follow your faith. And I pray that the Church will, within our lifetimes, live up to the faith you place in it.
Your pal,
Fred
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Sarah Palin's book sales
Andrew,
As a published (and HarperCollins) author yourself, I'm surprised you would think that anyone has a clue right now about whether Palin's book will earn out her advance. Of course Harper is touting the sales and printing figures right now, but nearly all those books are going to bookstores. Are they being purchased by people--you bet. But *none* of those numbers include returns, which is why political books normally have sales drop offs like a rock off a cliff.
Whether the advance earns out of not (i.e., whether Harper turns a profit) depends upon whether sales continue to be positive before the end of the next royalty accounting period. In six months, in other words, will Harper be ordering more books from the printer, or will they be telling Borders to remainder those books in-place and offer credits of $20/book so they don't have to take back thousands of unsold copies of the book back in their Scranton warehouse? If Coulter and other recent political books are any indication, you betcha it'll be the latter.
The only two things we can be certain of at this point, is that Palin has made a boatload of money (she keeps that advance even if the book doesn't earn it out) and that Harper will be able to leverage the frontloaded sales of this book to roll the dice on future politi-celebrity books because their efforts make Harper more attractive to those authors.
Your pal,
Fred
As a published (and HarperCollins) author yourself, I'm surprised you would think that anyone has a clue right now about whether Palin's book will earn out her advance. Of course Harper is touting the sales and printing figures right now, but nearly all those books are going to bookstores. Are they being purchased by people--you bet. But *none* of those numbers include returns, which is why political books normally have sales drop offs like a rock off a cliff.
Whether the advance earns out of not (i.e., whether Harper turns a profit) depends upon whether sales continue to be positive before the end of the next royalty accounting period. In six months, in other words, will Harper be ordering more books from the printer, or will they be telling Borders to remainder those books in-place and offer credits of $20/book so they don't have to take back thousands of unsold copies of the book back in their Scranton warehouse? If Coulter and other recent political books are any indication, you betcha it'll be the latter.
The only two things we can be certain of at this point, is that Palin has made a boatload of money (she keeps that advance even if the book doesn't earn it out) and that Harper will be able to leverage the frontloaded sales of this book to roll the dice on future politi-celebrity books because their efforts make Harper more attractive to those authors.
Your pal,
Fred
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Diocese of Scranton, Ctd.
Andrew,
As a follow-up to your note about Rev. Edward Lyman from the Diocese of Scranton, I note that the Rev. Robert Timchak was in court today regarding charges he accessed child pornography, after the Diocese was tipped off about it through an anonymous letter:
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091104/NEWS/911049983
This is the same Diocese in which the former Bishop (Joseph Martino) resigned due to stress--probably due to his unceasing efforts against gay marriage (including telling a Catholic university it was failing in its Catholic identity by having a gay rights speaker on campus) as well as against Barack Obama's election:
http://www.wnep.com/wnep-speech-goes-on-dispite-bishops-disapproval,0,2547224.story
and
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14123
But hey--Joe Biden is from here!
Fred
As a follow-up to your note about Rev. Edward Lyman from the Diocese of Scranton, I note that the Rev. Robert Timchak was in court today regarding charges he accessed child pornography, after the Diocese was tipped off about it through an anonymous letter:
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091104/NEWS/911049983
This is the same Diocese in which the former Bishop (Joseph Martino) resigned due to stress--probably due to his unceasing efforts against gay marriage (including telling a Catholic university it was failing in its Catholic identity by having a gay rights speaker on campus) as well as against Barack Obama's election:
http://www.wnep.com/wnep-speech-goes-on-dispite-bishops-disapproval,0,2547224.story
and
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14123
But hey--Joe Biden is from here!
Fred
Saturday, October 24, 2009
For some nativists, America really was pretty much all white
Andrew,
Nice posting on the Pat Buchanan essay on race in America. One aspect of the "real" America push that I haven't seen discussed is that for many of these Buchananites their "real America" revolves around a heavier religious component than is currently the case. In fact, for a wide swath of those people, their religious activity *is* their reality.
But we can't talk about religion on America without at least discussing the fact, as Obama pointed out, that "Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America." If their future reality is, in fact, a wistful look back at past churchgoing, it should be no wonder that their memories are filled with almost all white people.
The fact that secular America is and always has been suffused with multiculturalism doesn't touch that reality.
Your pal,
Fred
Nice posting on the Pat Buchanan essay on race in America. One aspect of the "real" America push that I haven't seen discussed is that for many of these Buchananites their "real America" revolves around a heavier religious component than is currently the case. In fact, for a wide swath of those people, their religious activity *is* their reality.
But we can't talk about religion on America without at least discussing the fact, as Obama pointed out, that "Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America." If their future reality is, in fact, a wistful look back at past churchgoing, it should be no wonder that their memories are filled with almost all white people.
The fact that secular America is and always has been suffused with multiculturalism doesn't touch that reality.
Your pal,
Fred
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tea Party Apologist
Andrew,
You're probably getting a lot of email in response to the letter you reprinted from the tea party apologist, but here's my take on it, from a fiscal conservative.
Your letter your reader sent you is most notable for what it doesn't say. The reason that the tea partiers aren't taken very seriously is not that they aren't looking "backwards" but because they haven't even attempted to explain why they made no objection to the debt piled up during the Bush Administration and what has changed for them since the election on this issue.
I keep looking for a "we thought the debt was less important than the War on Terror but now we see we lost our focus" or "we believed Bush that the increased debt was managable over time but the economic downturn makes us more scared than ever" but there is nothing even close to that. They are cynical budget deficit flip-floppers, whose refusal to come to grips with good vs bad debt makes it appear that they believe all our economic problems should be laid at the feet of Obama.
Your letter writer is, indeed, looking forward. But while another 3 1/2 years of blaming Obama for every problem, real or imagined might be forward thinking in the temporal sense, it isn't in the connstructive sense.
Your pal,
Fred
You're probably getting a lot of email in response to the letter you reprinted from the tea party apologist, but here's my take on it, from a fiscal conservative.
Your letter your reader sent you is most notable for what it doesn't say. The reason that the tea partiers aren't taken very seriously is not that they aren't looking "backwards" but because they haven't even attempted to explain why they made no objection to the debt piled up during the Bush Administration and what has changed for them since the election on this issue.
I keep looking for a "we thought the debt was less important than the War on Terror but now we see we lost our focus" or "we believed Bush that the increased debt was managable over time but the economic downturn makes us more scared than ever" but there is nothing even close to that. They are cynical budget deficit flip-floppers, whose refusal to come to grips with good vs bad debt makes it appear that they believe all our economic problems should be laid at the feet of Obama.
Your letter writer is, indeed, looking forward. But while another 3 1/2 years of blaming Obama for every problem, real or imagined might be forward thinking in the temporal sense, it isn't in the connstructive sense.
Your pal,
Fred
Friday, March 20, 2009
blog purging, and AIG
Andrew,
Your recent purging of names from your blog roll brought to my mind a snarky response at first: "If those were AIG blogs, they'd be getting paid to stay in the Blog Love box."
But on second thought your action made me think that there is a better conservative response to the AIG bonuses: Why would any conservative want companies and employees to be locked into jobs that those employees aren't very good at? Isn't a conservative response to encourage job movement, so as to get people into jobs that they are good at? Like paying farmers not to grow food, saying that taxpayers need to pay to keep bad employees at AIG turns the free market on its head.
AIG (and their apologists) seem to be saying that the worst thing would be for those employees getting the bonuses to leave (presumably to competitors, though that's probably not true in the short term because of non-compete contracts and the crappy market for financial services workers anyway). I think giving financial services workers the opportunity to find work in other industries is probably the best thing, for them and us.
Fred
Your recent purging of names from your blog roll brought to my mind a snarky response at first: "If those were AIG blogs, they'd be getting paid to stay in the Blog Love box."
But on second thought your action made me think that there is a better conservative response to the AIG bonuses: Why would any conservative want companies and employees to be locked into jobs that those employees aren't very good at? Isn't a conservative response to encourage job movement, so as to get people into jobs that they are good at? Like paying farmers not to grow food, saying that taxpayers need to pay to keep bad employees at AIG turns the free market on its head.
AIG (and their apologists) seem to be saying that the worst thing would be for those employees getting the bonuses to leave (presumably to competitors, though that's probably not true in the short term because of non-compete contracts and the crappy market for financial services workers anyway). I think giving financial services workers the opportunity to find work in other industries is probably the best thing, for them and us.
Fred
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
View from Your Church
Andrew,
Your letter writer is dead on when asking "where is the grace?" when it comes to the Catholic Church.
But grace comes from the Holy Spirit. And a Church which is infallible in "core" areas doesn't need the Holy Spirit anymore, do they?
Grace doesn't come from obedience. But power does. I suspect Pope Benedict understands the latter quite well, and has a well crafted agreement about the former.
Fred
Your letter writer is dead on when asking "where is the grace?" when it comes to the Catholic Church.
But grace comes from the Holy Spirit. And a Church which is infallible in "core" areas doesn't need the Holy Spirit anymore, do they?
Grace doesn't come from obedience. But power does. I suspect Pope Benedict understands the latter quite well, and has a well crafted agreement about the former.
Fred
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