A registered nurse in Little Rock, Arkansas, checks on a COVID-19 patient Aug. 16, 2021, at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. (CNS/Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)
At the Black Catholic Messenger, Alessandra Harris offers a spot-on criticism of the Guadalupe Radio network host David Gray, who disparaged the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with a 20-minute rant filled with slurs, inaccuracies and the bizarre insistence that the holiday was "incompatible with the Mass." Guadalupe Radio is the largest affiliate of EWTN Radio. In 2020, the station dropped Gloria Purvis' show after she spoke out about racism and replaced her with Gray, who is also African American. What he said is offensive and stupid.
If I had a dollar for every conversation I have heard about the fact that Democrats need to do a better job reaching out to Latino voters, I would be a rich man. But, as Sabrina Rodriguez reports at Politico, it seems the GOP continues to outpace the Dems in outreach to Latinos and it is far from clear that Democratic candidates have the message discipline needed to reach Latinos. The money quote is from Chuck Rocha, who was a senior advisor on Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign:
"When we as Democrats allow Republicans like Donald Trump to steal our economic populist message, we should be knocked up around the head. We allow them to have that narrative when we're talking about whatever social issue of the day is a hot button instead of digging into populist economic issues that say, 'We are here to work for you.' "
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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In The Washington Post, senior reporter Aaron Blake has assembled a timeline of Trump's efforts to derail the census, especially the accurate counting of undocumented persons. Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was at the center of the efforts, but other so-called establishment Republicans joined in. The whole episode demonstrates that not everything that is rotten in the GOP will be eradicated if Trump absconded tomorrow to a foreign country.
In The New York Times, a video essay featuring nurses who make the case that the health care crisis in this country is caused by greed. That diagnosis is correct but not exhaustive. Greed found many intellectual acolytes in the postwar era, starting with writers like Ayn Rand and economists like Milton Friedman. Greed morphed into an ideology that, improbably but successfully, glommed onto the language of liberty associated with the American founding and the rugged individualism celebrated in Hollywood westerns. The results of the market became confused with the optimal moral result. Social Darwinism became a thing, and it is the thing that has also ruined our hospitals.
Next Wednesday night, at 7 p.m. (Eastern), I will be pleased to join a panel discussion sponsored by Sacred Heart University on the topic "Francis: Is a Schism on the Horizon?" Also on the panel will be my colleague at the Tablet, Christopher Lamb, theologian Tina Beattie and David Gibson, director of Fordham's Center on Religion and Culture. The moderator will be Michael Higgins from the University of British Columbia. You can watch the event here.
