Scott Simon Improvises, SWNID Analyzes

NPR news broadcasts, as regular listeners know, are carefully scripted at most points. Though many stories are presented as a spontaneous question-and-answer sessions between host and reporter, in fact the questions and answers are written out.

But there are exceptions, mostly for the veteran hosts and reporters. But this morning's Weekend Edition Saturday illustrates that even the veterans foul up when they go off script too much.

Enter Scott Simon, honey-voiced weekend anchor and homey essayist, and Daniel Schorr, veteran of Edward R. Murrow's CBS operation, Watergate reporter, self-styled whistleblower on the CIA barely saved from citation for contempt of Congress for publishing classified documents and not revealing the source of the leak, and since the 1970s a regular bloviator on what some still call Radio Sandinista.

Simon and Schorr, in a manner made famous by Bob Edwards and Red Barber but without the charm, were filling a slot with chat (a.k.a. "analysis") about the week's news (i.e. Katrina, Iraq and John Roberts). Nearing the end of the rather pointless and obvious discussion, Simon offered something that he said, "just occurred to me." He then notes that in 1960, John Kennedy's Roman Catholicism was for some a campaign issue, but now John Roberts' Roman Catholicism was not. Schorr agreed and said that it is good that we have at least got over one form of bigotry.

Fine stuff, eh? Well it happens that if Roberts is confirmed, he will be, per the Catholic News Service, the fourth justice on the current court who is a Roman Catholic communicant (Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy are the others), and the tenth overall. And let's not forget that JFK was not the first Roman Catholic presidential candidate nominated by a major party. He was just the first whose daddy bought him the election. Al Smith ran for the Ds in 1928 and lost to Herbert Hoover (no D had a chance after the fine administration of Calvin Coolidge; N.B. a famous SWNID motto: We'll know that the Revolution has been successful when they take FDR's picture off the dime and put on Coolidge's).

But that's really only half of it. What's more interesting is the way that conservatives have played the anti-religious bias card to prevent the Ds from raising the issue directly. Anti-Roberts web sites are filled with complaints that the right wing is accusing all who oppose Roberts of anti-Catholic bias. This exaggerated claim does have a clear element of truth in it. The pre-emptive statements and accusations are all out there. And the Rs' move clearly has been successful, judging both from the number of complaints about it on left-wing sites and from the relative absence of questions about Roberts's "personal" views in the Senate hearings.

But let's consider whether you have to ask a question about "religion" to demonstrate an anti-Catholic bias. The fact is that most people know what Catholics are supposed to believe, and being generous minded, they assumed that folks who profess Catholic faith actually have it. It's candidates like John Kerry who have to talk about their "faith" repeatedly, simply to show their liberal base that they are running away from it, or to convince faithful Catholics that they're just as Catholic, even though they don't believe what the Church teaches.

This is why the conservative charge of anti-Catholicism on the left is absolutely correct. The left loves Catholics, as long as they don't believe what the Catholic church teaches. And the left will never accuse a Catholic of being unqualified for judicial office because he is a Catholic. They'll simply say that his views--that is, those demanded by his faith--are "out of the mainstream."

For the left, the mainstream is secular, or at worst mainstream Protestant, which is to say the same thing. If you're not secular--i.e. Evangelical, Catholic or observant Jew--you're on the fringe. Along with maybe 65% of Americans, of course.

Now jb from ca will object that this still isn't anti-Catholicism, as the objectionable views are held by others who aren't Catholics, and those folks meet with the same lefty viturpation. Agreed. But note the political outcome: if the left gets its way, no Roman Catholic who actually believes and practices Roman Catholicism can ever hold public office or sit on the judicial bench. This is all the more significant because Roman Catholics are more numerous than any other religious group in our country, and the Roman Catholic church has contributed an outrageous number of significant conservative political thinkers in the last century (start with Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley). Many notable conservatives of the moment are adult converts to Roman Catholicism (e.g., Alan Keyes).

So these many folk are unacceptable to the left unless they stop believing their religion. And that's the condition of the body politic that Scott Simon says marks historic progress.

But don't fret, gentle readers. Roberts will be confirmed easily. Doubtless the crucial support came from Conservative Bloggers Who Support the Gay Judge Roberts. Hmm. Maybe we've made progress on bigotry after all.