Joseph Bottum

My friend Dimitri Cavalli pointed me to an article in Foreign Policy —and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gap this big between a deliberate title and an essay: “Why Did the Pope Keep Quiet About the Holocaust?” is the title. Now read the text —and see how you could . . . . Continue Reading »

Comedy Central—the origin of the South Park program that had its references to Mohammad censored— has apparently announced that it is developing a new cartoon about Jesus Christ, the premise of which will be that God, preoccupied with playing video games, loses track of Jesus, who moves . . . . Continue Reading »

A sign that the New York Times will not be halting its seemingly daily effort to link the Vatican to the priest scandals: today’s article on Cardinal Levada, written by Michael Luo , who has been covering economics and the recession for the newspaper. In the middle of a dangerous economic . . . . Continue Reading »

The Italian press is reporting that Cardinal Pell will be leaving Australia and heading to Rome to become prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. When the official announcement comes, it will mark a loss for Australia and a gain for Rome—say I, who probably shouldn’t, since I am an . . . . Continue Reading »

There are moments when I think Terry Pratchett is the funniest writer alive. Funny, that is, the clever sense of funny. It is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a . . . . Continue Reading »

An important note from Richard Grenell , the former long-time spokesman for U.S. ambassadors at the United Nations: U.S. mission staff have confirmed that [United States ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice] wasn’t at the U.N. and therefore wasn’t able to so much as drop by the . . . . Continue Reading »

Meghan McArdle suggests —as a time capsule—looking back in the order history to see what the first thing you bought from Amazon was. On May 21, 1998, she says, she bought The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn of the Millenium . An interesting experiment. . . . . Continue Reading »

Over at National Review , Kevin D. Williamson has a nice posting writes about William Saletan’s latest piece in Slate : Beyond the non-obvious argument that Bush’s “fatal flaw” was that he was too much of an abstract thinker (!), Saletan here is, forgive the hackneyed . . . . Continue Reading »

A kind of exhaustion always settles in, murky and miasmatic, after battle. The nation’s conservatives foresaw the apocalypse if the Democrats’ plan for health-care reform passed, and on Sunday”yesterday, as I write”it did pass. The world didn’t end. The people didn’t . . . . Continue Reading »

The atmosphere of the reporting on the scandals, and the reaction to that reporting, has been much in my mind . So what am I to make of this? Over at the CNN website, there’s a sad news story about the murder of an American priest, Fr. Esteban Woods, in Venezuela. And though the story . . . . Continue Reading »