WLADYSLAW PLESZCZYNSKI: The Pleasure of Her Company
Huffington, Arianna
The Slaughterhouse b o o K s I n R e v I e W St. Augustine’s distinction between the differing but interlocking spheres of religion and the secular. D’Souza explains: “Augustine argued that...
...Forgetting how she turned herself into a gold digger, she says it’s Bush voters who were “all right with firing gay Americans from their jobs...
...D’Souza explains: “Augustine argued that during our time on earth, the Christian inhabits two realms, the earthly city and the heavenly city...
...Because he never has her on, he gets variously abused as “priapic” (Arianna is nothing if not single-minded), a “conventional wisdom zombie,” “credulous,” and (back to the erectile mode) “Russert Interruptus...
...Athe many juicy little hypocrisies that sprinkle Something tells me she’s still f--king with us...
...Ultimately, she concludes, torture became a staple of Bush rule because of some Salem witch hunt-like compulsion on the part of the “radical Right” or J u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 0 8 t H e a M e R I c a n s P e c t a t o R 9 9...
...She also identifies with Socrates, “my compatriot,” she calls him, despite their age difference, and even invokes Thucydides to condemn the Iraq war, an effort that she quickly sabotages by basing her understanding of his History of the Peloponnesian War on the account in Wikipedia...
...Although I must admit that using the founding father of philosophical subjectivism, Kant, to make arguments for Christianity will prove irritating to any healthy Aristotelian/Thomist of the strict observance...
...Here he challenges Richard Dawkins’s assertion that “ ‘what matters is…whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things...
...In a more serious vein, such is her resolute hatred of all things Bush, neoconservative, conservative, “nea-conservative,” right-wing, Iraq warrelated, and now even all things McCain, whom she sees as someone out of Dr...
...On the other hand, the deaths produced by more than 500 ostensibly Christian undertakings of religious warfare or internal persecution, such as the Inquisition, the Crusades, and witch burnings, amount to only one percent of the body count accumulated by the atheistic ideologies of Stalin, Mao, and Hitler...
...Augustine’s distinction between the differing but interlocking spheres of religion and the secular...
...The Slaughterhouse b o o K s I n R e v I e W St...
...I was seated right across from her, reveling in her undecipherable Greek accent and the unintentional humor lost count), I can measure how far her Americanization has come...
...She loves baseball talk, at least in the opening chapter, before pinchThe Pleasure of Her Company Gmore than a decade ago...
...So “George Tenet and I are both Greek,” she notes, but only to throw out a Greek term at him, filotimo, in order to suggest that this former CIA director, like all the non-Greeks in the Bush inner circle, lacked “honor, conscience, and integrity,” which she, as someone who knows a Greek word or two, exemplifies...
...Bush speaks English—after a fashion, it’s true...
...Arianna had arrived latest book, Right Is Wrong (her eleventh, unless I’v e h t s k n ha T . r ha c e h c at one of our Saturday Night Club dinners gant, if girlish, high-p d e l a e r , d e e d I rahver, we’ve got to fuckus,” she exclaimed it nev n er fails t it o p ev rovide i . t com d pelling m facets of he o r ele e r - late that night, and she was understandably agitated, having been forced to take a seat at the far end of the table, a good ways from the center of the action where Grover Norquist, in his customary spot directly Wladyslaw Pleszczynski is editorial director of The American Spectator...
...Only at the end of time will God integrate the two into a single majestic kingdom ruled by Him...
...Another way they reveal themselves is in long summer vacations, the impat e t : s s e i z l h u B n w o n k - l e e t rianna’s frustrations show no signs of abatm h ay w be l simply as a s “by a -pr n oduc t h of e 9–5 wo t rkday, th ” e Achilles’ heel...
...her book...
...Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rummy, Rove....this Murderers’ Row of lethal bat-swingers has already guaranteed a place for itself in the Fear-Mongering Hall of Shame with Ruthian blasts...
...Somewhere along the way it loses its connection to intelligent design (another object of her scorn...
...See what happens when a writer allows her name to evolve from Arianna Stassinopoulos to Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe (and what you need to know to end the madness) By Arianna Huffington (alfreD a. Knopf, 388 pages, $24.95) Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington to Arianna Huffington...
...There is not the smallest evidence it does.’ ” D’Souza points to the 100 million or so deaths inflicted by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao (all professed atheists) during the 20th century, which surely qualify as “bad things...
...He simply ignores differences between Reform Christians and Catholics that are indeed substantial but nevertheless do not affect the power of his arguments, a clever and generally pleasing way to address his major antagonists —both ideological atheism and religious ignorance...
...She calls Newt Gingrich “the original barbarian at the GOP gate,” without explaining why back in 1995 she wrote an article called “Why Newt Must Run” for president (for Bill Kristol’s magazine—and sent out advance copies of the piece without informing her editors...
...across from host Bob Tyrrell, enjoyed a clear advantage controlling that evening’s discussion...
...D’Souza, a Catholic, has managed to make this book both useful and palatable for Reform Christians as well as Catholics...
...recounts the time she listened in on a cellphone conversation Bill Kristol was having aboard an Amtrak train to Washington...
...she writes, not hearing herself...
...I prefer when she underwrites, as in “Cheney cleared the bases on Meet the Press...
...If her salty language was once accidental, she’s now one of the guys in tossing out words like “blowjob” (in defending Bill Clinton), “wackjob” (in attacking the “twisted” GOP) and “erectile dysfunction pills” (she’s for them...
...I suspect George Stephanopoulos would disagree...
...No doubt, she’d be the first to argue that the great success she’s had at her Hollywood website would never have come about if it were called “The Stassinopoulos Post...
...She condemns the administration’s supposed “warrantless mass eavesdropping on American citizens,” yet gleefully Arianna has been all too willing to deracinate herself, shunning her one unmistakable asset, her Greekness, as if it were her (for lack of a better word) Reviewed by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Not that I want to get George in trouble...
...Luckily, Tim Russert is the one Sunday host Arianna truly seems to loathe...
...In any case, D’Souza has written a book that both Chesterton and Lewis would have appreciated and that perhaps even Billy Graham and Pope Benedict XVI could agree is a masterpiece of modern apologetical writing destined to set the standard for years to come...
...On the other hand, Protestants may find the defense of some Catholic doctrines and elements of Church history that provoked the Protestant revolution—Reformation—somewhat dismaying...
...Strangelove, she actually defends Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, implying he became a Holocaust denier and America hater only in response to administration policies...
...She dismisses Bush’s sex- education efforts to “preach abstinence,” but praises Colin and Alma Powell’s establishmentapproved “highly successful youth abstinence program...
...In perhaps his most convincing chapter, D’Souza examines “A License to Kill: Atheism and the Mass Murders of History...
...Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the worst mass murders of history...
...l i a t e h d i e w c n i ing...
...Therefore, we must conclude that “the claims of the earthly city are limited, that there is a sanctuary of conscience inside every person that is protected from political control, that kings and emperors, however grand, cannot usurp authority that rightly belongs only to God...
...In D’Souza’s words, “It’s time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the main source of human conflict and violence...
...9 8 t H e a M e R I c a n s P e c t a t o R J u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 0 8 b o o K s I n R e v I e W hitting for her initial ghostwriter...
...True, in her new book, she does on occasion allude to her ethnicity, but strictly for tactical reasons...
...As for the torture state institutionalized by the Bush presidency, she reminds readers that the Gestapo itself wasn’t big on torture...
...On the other hand, I am concerned that Arianna has been all too willing to deracinate herself, shunning her one unmistakable asset, her Greekness, as if it were her (for lack of a better word) Achilles’ heel...
...I think she gives credit to Andrew Sullivan for that insight...
Vol. 41 • July 2008 • No. 6
