Monday Morning You Sure Look Fine

Being so caught up in the (ultimately futile) Terri Schiavo situation, I missed a few of the other significant things going on in the world. A few quick observations on other recent news:

• As a Reformation Christian, I have deep, significant theological differences with the Pope. I don't wish to gloss them over, because I believe that they, above all things, are of eternal import. But having said that, Pope John Paul II was man of significance. As one of the major figures in the fall of communism, the world owes him a great debt. And I deeply respected his inflexibility on important matters when many in the Church (particularly on the American side of things) wanted him to "change with the times."
  
  The word "secular" comes from the Latin saeculum , which literally means "right now," "the present world." Those who believe that the preferences and fashions of the day should rule everything are secularists in the truest sense of the word--whatever religious garb they may put on. Whatever JPII's faults, the man was no secularist, to his great credit.

• Former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger pleaded guilty on Friday to stealing classified documents from the National Archives and destroying them. You remember this story, don't you? It's the one that completely disappeared from the mainstream media through the entire 2004 election cycle, even though at the time Berger stole the documents he was working as an advisor to the John Kerry campaign.
  
  Oh, and he stole them during the 9/11 investigation, while doing "research" on the Clinton Administration's response to terror threats. Do you think if it had been, say, Condoleeza Rice stuffing top secret documents on the Bush Administration's handling of the terror threat into her bra, we might have heard something about it occasionally during the presidential campaign?

• How unfortunate that Dan Rather threw away his entire career trying to pass off forged documents on President Bush's National Guard service, when he had at his fingertips a real story about a Democratic national security advisor who was advising a presidential campaign stealing and destroying classified documents—a story which Rather completely ignored.

• Last week I watched HBO's documentary about the launch of the liberal Air America radio network. It reminded me of every bad experience I ever had working in the sleazeball world of commercial radio. The malformed egos, the desperate, pitiful need for constant approval, the relentless narcissism...and that's just Randi Rhodes.
  
  My favorite part is where she complains about her name not being included in any of the initial Air America promotions, telling anyone within ear shot "I'm the only real radio person here. I'm the only one whose ever scored huge ratings on a radio show." She says it about a hundred times.
  
  But being a South Floridian, I know something about Randi's "huge ratings." Her "huge ratings" were in the heaving metropolis of West Palm Beach, Florida (market #47, behind Greensboro/Winston-Salem, NC and Austin, TX), perhaps the only town in America both small enough and liberal enough to make her "successful." Her radio company then tried to put her on in the #12 Ft. Lauderdale/Miami market, an experiment which lasted a few months and ended in dismal, ratings-less failure.
  
  As far as HBO's picture of the network in general, I'll say this: when the most seemingly decent, centered person on your staff is Al Franken, you know you've got problems.