Roomful of hails

Kathryn Jean Lopez has a fetching new picture with her NRO byline, and some outstanding prose:

I made the mistake of walking away from my computer after hitting “play.” All of a sudden, the room was filled with hails to . . . Satan.

I saw that video without walking away, and I can tell you that the hails did not fill the room. They could hardly even be guessed at except for the woman at the very end who said it distinctly into the camera. I'm not saying the filmers were lying, but Kathryn Jean is not exactly being truthful about her own experience.

Given that [Texas State Senator Wendy] Davis has become effectively a heroine of our slouch — if not plunge — toward a culture comfortable with infanticide denial, the scene was fitting, however, I pray, jarring.

She doesn't want to exaggerate by calling it a "plunge" so it's a "slouch". (The less than energetic diver slouched into the water; the stock market slouched on slightly unpleasant news.) The concept of a "culture comfortable with infanticide denial" seems odd—why [jump]

Titian's Danae, impregnated by Zeus in the guise of a shower of gold. Via SenseShaper.

wouldn't you be comfortable with it, unless you were in fact guilty of infanticide? What she means, I guess, is a culture increasingly unmoved by being falsely accused of infanticide on the grounds that it tolerates abortion. Thus she doesn't know whether the Satan-hailing video was jarring or not, since she was heading to the pantry for a bag of Doritos while it played, but prays that it was—that it makes us realize we're aligned with a bunch of devil-worshipers. She really believes this.

 It came during a week that had begun, as our weeks frequently seem to nowadays, with unholy exchanges on the Sunday-morning talking-head shows.... One of the hosts asked a marriage-redefinition dissenter how it could possibly make a difference to a child if he were raised by two “married” men or a man and a woman — mother and father is what we call them, you may still recall.

We call the Sunday-show hosts mother and father? I'm not sure I...

Men and women are, actually, different. And yet we deny it. And, yes, on Sunday morning.

My heavens, Kathryn Jean, why aren't you at Mass? What are you doing hanging out with a culture comfortable with man-woman difference denial, supposing there is such a thing, which I'm perfectly comfortable denying, because I actually believe that men and women are different from each other, though not in such a way that one of them is disqualified from being a parent unless the other one is there. To put it on a level you can understand, do you recall how My Three Sons and the Andy Griffith Show were showing around the same time as Leave It to Beaver? Why did God take Opie's mom away? Was it perhaps to show you that life is sometimes more complicated than you were expecting?

It’s all complicated and emotional given our mixed experiences and encouragements, desires and heartaches, pains and attractions. These neuralgic questions we debate concern the most intimate of issues, and yet we pretend they can somehow be solved by just the right legislation or court ruling.

Or a couple of extra-strength acetaminophens. When I have a neuralgic question I don't wait around for the House of Representatives. Indeed I want them out of legislating anything about desires and heartaches at all, and using some of that extra time to regulate banking and fossil fuel, which have nothing to do with the most intimate of issues. At least mine.

Apparently some wouldbe Breitbartlets at a shop called Live Action have video-recorded abortion doctors speaking truthfully to their patients, even though what they say sounds kind of unpleasant. What the hell kind of doctor does something like that? They say that a woman undergoing induced labor in a hotel room may not make it to the clinic in time:

she’ll want to unlock the hotel door, call the clinic on her cell, and “just sit on the toilet. You don’t have to look at anything.”

But Kathryn Jean has to look.

this isn’t something the rest of us can afford to look away from. Whether it’s a hotel bathroom or a state-of-the-art women’s clinic, this is a gravely miserable state of affairs, as we drown in euphemisms* about women and health and freedom. 

I never look at women sitting on the toilet and never will unless somebody specifically asks me to, which I regard as unlikely. I'm gravely miserable enough as it is. I believe women have a right to choose and a right to keep the bathroom door closed, whether they are having induced labor or merely taking a whiz.

Does anyone really think this is healthy? Unless, of course, you’ve made a sacrament of abortion itself. But most of us** haven’t....

*On euphemisms, according to KJL's interview subject Mollie Hemingway:

While I find euphemisms to be particularly problematic when talking about abortion — we’re completely addicted to them — there’s nothing wrong with the word fetus when describing some unborn humans.

"Euphemism" means "term not used in the Catechism." 

**Those who have include "late-term-abortion superstar" Dr. Leroy Carhart, who speaks

in almost sacramental terms. “I think out of respect and love and honor for this baby that you’ve lost, you will find yourself being a better person,” he said. 

What a monster, huh?

Trampling the Cross. From The History Blog.

You know who's really a devil worshiper? Kathryn Jean Lopez, trampling the Cross of the Suffering Christ in her spite against the poor and the complicated. I'm not even kidding.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]