With the recent Bridgegate controversy, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has exhibited piss poor leadership, a general willingness to sacrifice the public good for petty revenge politics and, as a culmination of the two, why he truly is presidential material.
The Article: America is still a deeply racist country by Chris Arnade in The Guardian.
The Text: A week after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I walked into my old hometown bar in central Florida to hear, “Well if a nigger can be president, then I can have another drink. Give me a whiskey straight up.”
Only one day in the town and I thought, “Damn the south.”
I had returned home to bury my father, who had spent much of the 1950s and ’60s fighting for civil rights in the south. Consequently, my childhood was defined by race. It was why our car was shot at, why threats were made to burn our house down, why some neighbors forbid me to play on their lawn, why I was taunted at school as a “nigger lover”.
If only it really were just two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions – on a sesame seed bun.
A little less Norman Rockwell, a little more Grinch.
The Article: What Pope Francis Can Teach The GOP by Sally Kohn in The Daily Beast.
The Text: When the Catholic Church eclipses the Republican Party on social policy, it’s time to start looking skyward for frogs. Yesterday, when the Vatican released the pope’s latest statement offering a softer tone toward the gay community than pontiffs in the past, it suggested that the Catholic Church may have figured out what the Republican Party hasn’t yet grasped—that the fading of the institution’s flock can only truly be addressed by reversing some of the fading norms driving the flock from the fold.
And so you have, just to pick one example, failed Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli saying about gay rights, “I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.” Versus Pope Francis saying, “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?”
