Politickles

HURRAY FOR HARVEY!
Each day brings a new allegory
Of goodness and grace and glory:
Paul Harvey’s sly tease
Makes listeners cry, “Please,
Please tell us ‘the rest of the story.’”

It looks like we’ve heard “the rest of the story” for the last time. It’s hard to imagine a world without Paul Harvey. For anyone under 60, he was always there. I’d been listening to him, off and on, for more than 20 years when a friend emailed me early in 2004 to let me know that Harvey had just read a politickle at the end of his radio program. Later that year, he honored me again by reciting another. Paul Harvey read “Damage Control” in February, following Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the Superbowl halftime show, and “Fruitcake” at Christmastime. For what it’s worth, today’s quote worth requoting is by F.R. Duplantier: “Thanks for the stories, Paul — and the plugs!”

The Church in the United States has done a poor job of forming the faith and conscience of Catholics for more than 40 years. And now we’re harvesting the results — in the public square, in our families, and in the confusion of our personal lives. . . . And unless Catholics have a conversion of heart that helps us see what we’ve become — that we haven’t just “assimilated” to American culture, but that we’ve also been absorbed and bleached and digested by it — then we’ll fail in our duties to a new generation and a new electorate. And a real Catholic presence in American life will continue to weaken and disappear. . . — Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

How many Obama bumper stickers did you see on cars parked in front of your church on Sundays during the election season? Are the owners out of their minds? It’s certainly true that the Church has done a miserable job of formation over the last several decades, but doesn’t every Catholic have an obligation to learn and live his faith? Can a Catholic’s vote for Obama really be attributed to confusion? Doesn’t it really indicate an utter disregard for the unborn, an affection for the lies and thievery of socialism, a monumental self-absorption?

If you’ve played host or hostess often, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Planning a party becomes second nature, and there aren’t too many surprises. You know “the drill.” Things can go wrong, of course, but, if you’ve taken care of all the foreseeable details, you can generally handle the unexpected ones.

The first thing you do is prepare a guest list, right? After all, it’s your party and you get to decide who’s invited and who isn’t. It may be just a friendly get-together, or it may be business mixed with pleasure. Either way, there are certain practical matters that will influence your decisions.

First of all, how big is your house or reception area? How many people can it hold? Obviously, you can’t invite more people than will fit at one time. Will it be a cocktail party where everybody stands and lots of people can be accommodated, or will it be a sit-down dinner, with a limited number of seats and place settings? What about your budget? How much can you afford to spend to purchase the necessary food and beverages, or to have the event catered? If your budget is tight, you might have to pare back the invitation list a bit, or settle for a more modest menu.

How long will the party last? When do you want the guests to arrive, and when do you want them to leave? What do you do about the stragglers, the ones who seem to have no intention of leaving, as though they had no homes of their own to return to?

What about the permanent members of your household – your spouse, your children, the other family members who live in your home? They come first, and you don’t want your visitors to disturb or inconvenience them.

Those are some of the questions you have to ask yourself when you plan a party, because it’s your home and the only reason the guests are coming is because you’ve invited them. They can’t invite themselves. If someone shows up uninvited, you have every right to refuse to let him in – even if he’s come with someone you have invited. It’s your home, it’s your party, it’s on your tab, and all the decisions about who comes and how long they stay are yours to make.

Here’s the point: America is your home, too, and mine, and ours. We live here. We call the shots. No one from a foreign country has the slightest right to come here uninvited. No one who has come here has the right to decide for himself how long he gets to stay. Everyone who comes here does so at our discretion. If he doesn’t have the decency to behave properly while he’s here, he’ll be asked to leave. If he won’t leave quietly, we’ll just have to throw him out.

Ultimately, all recessions and depressions resolve themselves into crises of confidence. The instant, global, 24/7 communications of today make them ever more so. President Obama, in his pursuit of liberal big-government spending, has totally neglected the role of the president of the United States in reversing global panic. To the contrary, his every remark and the constant preoccupation of his Cabinet is to heighten the sense of crisis and to escalate the predictions of doom if we do not do as they tell us and raise spending now and taxes later. — Dick Morris

Watch for calls to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Obama will need at least four terms to “solve” this crisis.

Such is the Spartan fare abstemious Catholics in Louisiana must settle for during Lent when we really want a bologna sandwich. Instead of hitting the drive-up window at the corner McDonald’s, we must journey to some exotic locale like Pat’s in Henderson (just east of Breaux Bridge) and spend three or four self-abnegating hours ingesting boiled seafood, seafood gumbo, and crawfish bisque — and fried shrimp, oysters, catfish, softshell crabs, and frog legs. Giving up a Happy Meal just for that is tough, but we do it in the spirit of sacrifice.

The St. Joseph Altar is a New Orleans tradition of which I was unaware as a child. My wife grew up with it, however, and was the first to introduce me to it. Missing the custom after our move to St. Louis, she decided, in 1999, to create a “virtual” St. Joseph Altar online — the first and, as far as we know, still the only one in cyberspace. Her 2009 Altar is now open. Feel free to visit, make a virtual offering, and add the names of deceased loved ones to the prayer list. Other prayer intentions can be added to the message board. Be sure to visit the new Virtual St. Joseph blog, and all the other pages of the site.

It’s Mardi Gras time in New Orleans, in Cajun country to the west, in Mobile to the east and across the Gulf Coast, and even as far north as St. Louis. As tractors tow papier-maché and crepe-covered floats down oak-lined St. Charles Avenue to Canal Street in the Crescent City, parade-goers of all ages shout their traditional plea to the trinket-laden riders: “Throw me something, Mister!” — F.R. Duplantier, “Welfare and the Mardi Gras Mentality”

It’s Carnival time! By midnight tonight, it will all be over, and the blessed six weeks of abstinence begun. In the nation’s capital, however, the carnival continues year-round, and sobriety and self-denial never interrupt the excess.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, I was the Clark Kent of New Orleans — a strikingly handsome, but humble reporter who just happened to be the only guy in town who could get in touch with Superman. Only it wasn’t Superman that I had direct, exclusive contact with, but someone just as exotic: John Smith, the anonymous and mysterious captain-for-life of the Spontaneous Krewe of Platefaces, the world’s cheapest and most creative Carnival krewe. No one knew where Capt. Smith had come from, or cared particularly, but everyone acknowledged that there was something very different about him, and gave him credit for saving Mardi Gras in 1979 by parading as usual when a police strike forced other, more established krewes to abandon their revelry.

As with Superman and Clark, Smith and I bore a striking resemblance, only no one knew because Smith kept his face completely concealed, at all times, behind a paper plate, and I occasionally wore glasses. As a public service, I arranged interviews with Smith for some of the biggest names in New Orleans media: Times-Picayune columnists Angus Lind and Betty Guillaud, Channel Four television reporters Eric Paulsen and Ed Clancy, radio deejays Rick Zurich and Katy Carroway, ETC. But the biggest, most sensational interview of all was the one I conducted with Smith myself for the Baton Rouge weekly Gris Gris. I was determined to scoop my colleagues by getting him to reveal his true identity, but Smith remained elusive as ever. Still, it may have been the highlight of my career, and certainly was of his.