Excerpted from The Judge Report (The Book):

Dear Editor:

I must say, I just don’t get it.  Why do liberal intellectuals feel threatened by Christmas?  Most of their core constituencies don’t. Certainly African-Americans, Hispanics and blue collar labor unionists are among the most Christmas-loving people around.

Sure, I appreciate that some of the overly-educated consider the whole Christmas tale a myth, but so what? As myths go, it’s a pretty good one. We’re not talking about monsters and vengeance and people eating their children and stuff like that. We’re talking about a story that has the Creator of the Universe looking down at this tiny spec of a planet that’s filled with worthless and ungrateful people unworthy of His attention, let alone affection, and deciding to become one of us.  Not as conqueror or king, but as a helpless infant in a smelly old stable relying on mere humans for his help and support.  Then He grows up and teaches us how to act with charity toward one another and if that isn’t enough offers Himself up as the supreme sacrifice for the sins of all mankind.

I happen to believe all that, but even if I didn’t it would still seem pretty wonderful to me.  And I think I would understand why commemorating the moment when the Word became Flesh would be pretty important to most people, and I would hope I would have the good sense to know that when folks said “Merry Christmas” they would be saying something to me that is at once both terribly friendly and awesomely profound.

Robert N. Going

Including some I share with O’Reilly.

We had a mutual friend in Joe Spencer, a classmate of my brother Tim, who went on to become a correspondent for ABC News and died in a helicopter crash in 1986 while covering a story.

Joe’s birth name was Spaletta. His dad Phil ran our local radio station and a regular lunch companion of my father’s and later of mine, long after I had ceased working for him as a weekend DJ and jack of all trades. My first recollections of him were of a chubby, but gregarious 14 year old. Among other things, he was a customer of Mom’s after supper tutoring service, a whole-family operation. Private lessons (mostly in math) were two bucks an hour, group lessons a dollar apiece. Joe was bright and didn’t need a lot of extra help, but I’m sure Phil recognized a bargain.

My little brother Sean had problems saying Spaletta as a three year old and usually called him Joe Spaghetti.

Joe became my sidekick when I was a senior and student varsity baseball manager and scorekeeper. Eventually he replaced me when I retired midway through the season ( causing a precipitous drop in the batting averages of Joe Riley and Jim LaBate). He eventually filled my shoes on the radio as well, though he had been born into that. He had an engaging style and for a while was known as Joe “Saturday” Spencer.

Then he went on to media school, by and by landing in Denver where he and O’Reilly became fast friends. Read the book for their hilarious adventures together.

Fast forward to the 1980 GOP convention in Detroit.

You couldn’t get on the floor without the proper credentials, of course. But by the second or third day a couple of us delegates conspired to share credentials for an hour or so to allow our wives to come down out of the balcony and join us. No sooner had Mary sat down with me (looking incredibly guilty, as I recall) then a real official looking guy came to the end of our row, pointed to me and signaled for me to come over.

I froze.

“Bob! It’s me, Joe Spencer!”

I laughed heartily. No longer the pudgy kid, he was strikingly handsome with a $50 haircut and All-American smile.

Joe was then working for a tv station in Detroit and his dad had asked him to look me up and record my thoughts for the folks back in Amsterdam.

Once we got that out of the way, we made up for lost time and brought each other up to date. He was a man on the way up.

“Seriously, Bob, my goal is to be back here in four years as a floor correspondent for one of the networks.” I had no doubt he could do it, though it took him just a little bit past the four year cycle to get to ABC. 1988 would have been a sure thing.

*******

The two principal eulogies at St. Michael’s Church in Amsterdam were given by Peter Jennings and Bill O’Reilly. (Peter Jennings, by the way, called Phil and Fran Spencer every year thereafter on the anniversary of Joe’s death). O’Reilly tells the story well. According to what Phil told me some time later, Roone Arledge was so impressed with O’Reilly’s off the cuff remarks that he decided to hire him, which happened a few months later.

Joe was 31 years old and recently married.

The whole town was numb, of course.

I thought back on our last conversation, sometime when he had come home for Christmas. He told me how he envied his younger brother, Phil, Jr.

“Phil will never leave Amsterdam. He loves it here. He’s perfectly happy hanging out with his friends at a sports bar on the south side every Friday and Saturday night. You don’t know how much I wish I could be like him. But I can’t.

“I’ve got this driving ambition. It’s all-consuming. I have to be the best. I have to go as far as I can go.”

He shook his head, as though he didn’t understand it.

And I remembered the happy-go-lucky 14 year old and his happy-go-lucky little brother.

Sometimes there are just no explanations.

[UPDATE 2/2/2009: Anyone who can explain the sudden extensive interest in this post tonight, please leave a comment! Thanks]

Sister Marietta presided over us at SMI in eighth grade, 1964-65. I recall her as being personally delightful, full of whimsy, and if there was a hard edge to her anywhere she never revealed it. She was a native Amsterdamian, though she hadn’t attended St. Mary’s. One of her classmates at Wilbur H. Lynch High School had been a fellow named Isadore Demsky, Izzy to her and Kirk Douglas to you.

Under her tutelage I produced an epic one page novella, The Monster Visits the World’s Fair, which would have made a terrific Ed Wood movie (perhaps I’ll post it in the comments section after I get home if I still have it). Her continuing encouragement caused me to break out in new directions on my own, and in an incredible burst of genius I also authored that year my first musical, Don’t Cry Over Spilled Nitro, or Bye Bye Laboratory. Characters in that play, Russian spies Gherman Shnitova and Vladimir Isnovitch, moved to England the following year in my magnum opus musical North Atlantic, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by moi.

Eighth grade marked the last vestiges of childhood innocence, transitioning rapidly to puberty and high school. Perhaps that is why I remember it so fondly. But it helps to have fond people to remember.

Her printed obituary states, “A diligent worker with a generous spirit, Sister Marietta leaves a legacy of devotion to faith and family and kindness and compassion to all.”

That’s about right.

Eternal rest grant unto her, o Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.

That he would continue to lie about his own record is understandable, because it is a position that is as repugnant and repulsive as almost any imaginable.

Everybody please read Mona Charen’s Deniers for Obama.

Here’s the money quote:

Barack Obama is a charming and intelligent man. But there is no other way to interpret his position on BAIPA than this: A woman who chooses an abortion is entitled to a dead child no matter what. That is an abortion extremist.

*******

Far be it for me to presume to advise Mr. Obama on how to run his campaign, but running on death issues is a loser. I’m not just speaking of the above wacky position, but rather the conscious and concerted effort by Obama to inject abortion as a campaign issue. This tactic has been tried time and time again and it always fails. Pro-abortion candidates are encouraged by polls which show that a majority of voters support a right to abortion under some circumstances. The various caveats to that I will ignore for the moment and just accept the general premise.

What the polls don’t show is that when it comes to the voting booth, the general philosophic acceptance of abortion does not translate into votes for an assertive pro-abortion candidate. The reasons are many. Part of it is that the pro-life vote is far more focused on the issue, far more likely to treat it as a make or break decider.

And part of it is simply that most voters feel extremely uncomfortable with candidates promoting death, whether they agree with the “right” or not. This reality is not limited to abortion or party. Republicans have made he same mistake over and over themselves by assuming that general public support for the death penalty will translate into votes for a pro-death penalty candidate. I remember several losing campagns in New York along these lines. Mario Cuomo stated right out that he would not enforce a death penalty in New York even if one passed. People disagreed with that, but respected him for it, because it was grounded in  morality. And there was just something creepy about running for office proclaiming you will put more people to death than the other guy. That is something I’ve never been fond of George W. Bush for, and I recall Bill Clinton establishing his “moderate” credentials by running back to Arkansas during his first campaign to ensure a criminal would be put to death before the election.

And I truly can’t think of a single pro-life legislator who was thrown out of office on that issue. Despite all the talk of suburban Republican women eagerly protecting their right to choose, it just never happens that way. Sure, the most pro-life guy in the Senate, Rick Santorum, got tossed a couple of years ago, but only after the Democrats cynically recruited the son of the nation’s most revered pro-life Democrat (an admittedly small field, but Bob Casey Senior was a good guy) to run against him.

So keep bringing it up, Obama. Keep reminding us.

I’m Bob Going and I approved these despicable lies.

But something else was happening. Absent from the stage was Assistant Principal John Davey, who ordinarily might have been expected to be up there when his kid brother graduated. Bryan Davey went through with the ceremony, and the handsome, popular star athlete received a well-deserved ovation, took a deep breath and walked quickly down the aisle to his seat, exhaling only once.

A week earlier and he might have been awaiting with fond anticipation the raucous cheers of his younger sister and his fourteen older siblings, but no shouts came from the Davey family on Saturday. Instead, Bryan’s dad Jack and the others sat numbly in the upper bleachers. Bryan’s mom had been found dead a couple of days earlier at 61.

*********

It is impossible to calculate how many lives Joanne Davey touched over the years, directly or indirectly. She produced by far the largest Amsterdam family of her generation. And she raised those kids well, every one a credit to their parents and the community.

And she did it while maintaining her career as a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital. Not just a nurse, but the best nurse in the place: caring, compassionate, competent beyond words. Organized.

Organized! But then she’d have to be. I remember running into her in the supermarket about midway through her brood and seeing her cart stacked with three gallons of milk, multiple loaves of bread and all kinds of other stuff.

“Joanne, just out of curiosity,” (the whole town was curious),”how often do you have to shop?”

“Oh, every day.” There just wasn’t enough storage room anywhere  to hold food enough for that many.

When we were having kids ourselves (they already had about eleven) Joanne served as the head night nurse and often participated in the deliveries. Mary was going through the usual trauma with one of ours and when she looked up and saw who was in the room she said, “Oh, thank God you’re here, Joanne! Knowing how many times you went through this makes it easier for me to get through this once!”

I’ve seen her tired many times. I never once saw her slow down.

She was a very pretty woman when she married Jack at 21, and her beauty endured and grew deeper and deeper until it extended to the very core of her being.

********

Forty years after their marriage, Jack and the kids received hundreds of mourners in a line that extended from the chapel of St. Mary’s Church, down the hallway, through the church proper, out the main door and back down East Main Street.

The wait gave me some time to reflect.

Jack Davey was a high school junior basketball star when I first attended St. Mary’s Institute in 4th grade. Mom, his English teacher, used to comment on what a nice boy he was.

Jack was my hero. I’d follow him around the school and even took his picture once on the basketball court at the Armory, with a cheap plastic camera and a flash bulb. It came out pretty good. I gave it to his oldest son when he was seventeen to remind him that beneath every father is a seventeen year old kid.

By the time I was getting ready to turn seventeen myself, Jack was coaching varsity baseball at Bishop Scully High School (and I think already in the early years of his long teaching career at Fonda-Fultonville), and I was the team manager and scorekeeper (I helped Jim LaBate and Joe Riley into the record books). Jack and I ended up talking a lot of baseball and about pretty much everything else.

Very often he would give me a ride home to Trinity Place after a game. “Bobby, don’t ever stop with your education. Get as much of it as you can. Education is its own reward. Remember that.”

You could just tell that he was looking forward in fond anticipation to his pending nuptials  with the 21 year old beauty Joanne. The baseball season ended just a few weeks before the ceremony.

“Have a nice marriage!” I said to him as I exited the car after the last game.

********

I looked around the church. Sixteen baptisms, first communions, confirmations, weddings, then starting all over again with the grandchildren. They had a big van, but after a while they would take the kids to Mass in shifts.

Parents were required to attend special classes prior to the big sacramental occasions. I’d laugh to see Joanne there in later years. “I think maybe you should be teaching this.”

But an obligation is an obligation, and she dutifully participated each time.

Aisle shuffling companion turned to me.

“You know, Bob, Joanne is a saint. Everybody knows it. You should start a committee for her canonization. Skip all the preliminaries. Tell the Vatican not to wait. Get it started now.

“Put it on your blog.”

*********

Your Holiness, on behalf of the parishioners of St. Mary’s Parish, Amsterdam, NY USA, I present to you the cause of Joanne Davey: wife, mother, nurse, friend. She led a life of heroic virtue, kept God first, and by her work, teaching and example provided a perfect archetype of the Christian life, such that many have profited and will profit from her shining goodness.

Santo subito!

Sainthood now!

With the completion of the railroad and the death of the Western movie genre, unemployed cowboys desperate for work turn to Professional Synchronized Swimming.

Inspiration courtesy of Fra. Alessandro

On his first evening in New York City, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI received a special nighttime tour of the New Yankee Stadium, now under construction adjacent to the site of the House that Ruth built (that’s Babe, not the Jewish Matriarch).

He was personally greeted by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who attempted to slip the Pope a pair of 2008 World Series tickets in hopes of obtaining a Plenary Indulgence at the moment of death.  Instead, he received a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a chuckle.

Pope Benedict, sometime affectionately called “Big Papi”, then dug a hole in the turf beneath the future third base and placed a small object therein before covering it and extending what was believed to be a special Papal Blessing.

When asked what exactly he had left behind, the Pope simply replied, “All things shall be revealed in the fullness of time,” with a decided twinkle in his eye.

Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus!

I said to Mary afterwards, “I love this church. It’s the most peaceful church I have ever been in anywhere.”

********

Father George Rutler is a most remarkable man.  He mixes easily in the highest councils of the land.  He thinks, and he writes wonderful books containing great thoughts.  He conveys his message globally on EWTN.  It is not unusual to spot famous people at his Masses.  He is, among other things,  the “unofficial chaplain of National Review.“

And he is the pastor of a church, just like hundreds and hundreds of other priests.  He guides his parish flock.  He pays attention to detail and is a respecter of the great traditions of the Catholic Faith.  When he preaches the Gospel, you know he believes every word of it.  When he consecrates the host, you know he knows that he is in the presence of Almighty God.

His parish church, the Church of Our Saviour on Park Avenue in New York City, four blocks south of Grand Central Station, exudes sanctity at any time of day.  In slightly over an hour last Friday, Mary and I experienced quiet reflection, the Angelus, noon Mass with a fine little sermonette on the life of St. Patrick, Stations of the Cross and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.  Father Rutler has his congregation well-trained. As he gently swung the thurible back and forth, the incense carrying his prayers to heaven, he alternated between English and Latin, with multiple voices echoing the responses in the appropriate tongue. (I did pretty good except for the middle of the second half of the Pater Noster, which I can never get right, though I present a strong finish.)

Afterwards he slipped gently out of the sanctuary, leaving the Blessed Sacrament exposed for worship, and quietly stepped into the confessional, where a long line soon formed.

For all his fame, he seems at heart a humble parish priest as we used to know them, bringing the mercy of God to his people one soul at a time.  And that’s what I really like about him.

*******

And after the Solemn Mass on Palm Sunday he said to me, “Are you still judging?  Justice Scalia had a bunch of us over Friday night for brandy and cigars.  I had a great time! Didn’t get home until after midnight!”

Frankly, I like that part of him too.

To the Tune of the MARTINS AND THE COYS

1. Now in Latin there are only five declensions
All the endings you must memorize and say:
“a” is for the NOMIN-A-TIVE.  “ae” GENITIVE AND DATIVE
“am” ACCUSATIVE. The ABLATIVE long “a”.

Chorus:
Start with
a-ae-ae-am-a…….then ae – arum – is – as – is
And repeat the first declension every day:
“a” is for the NOMIN-A-TIVE, “ae” GENITIVE and DATIVE
“am” ACCUSATIVE,The ABLATIVE long “a”.

2. Now the second one is very very simple:
us – i – o – um –o…….i – orum – is – os – is
And the neuter starts with bellum – belli – bello – bellum – bello
Plural: a- orum – is -a -is.  

Chorus :
Start with:
us-i-o-um-o. Then i – orum – is – os – is.
It is masculine. Remember five apiece.
And the neuter starts with bellum – belli – bello – bellum – bello
Plural a- orum – is –a- is.

3. You will find that when you come to third declension
Nouns’ll end in l….and . . . .r….and….s….and….x
Dux and ducis duci ducem duce…….lucis, luci lucem luce
CONSUL…… IMPERATOR….. MILES…. REX.

Chorus:
Start with:  
blank -is -i -em -e.  Third declension for today
es – um – ibus – es – ibus. Say it next:
dux and ducis duci ducem duce…. .lucis luci lucem luce.
CONSUL. . . . ..IMPERATOR….. MILES. . . . .REX.
 
4. One….two….three….and then we come to Fourth Declension
us – us – ui – um – and – u. It’s Just a ball
Plural us – uum. – ibus – us accusative and ibus.
Now we’re ready for the fifth and that is all.

Chorus:
Start with:
es – ei – ei – em – e……then the plural right away:
es and erum ebus, es – ebus……..too
First you SAY IT then you PLAY IT. But be sure you EVERY DAY IT
And with all the five declensions you are through.

5. NOW YOU HAVE TO LEARN YOUR VERBS AND CONJUGATIONS
Present o – as -at and -amus -atis – ant.
The imperfect starts with -abem –abes -abat.Then -abamus    
-batis, ending up third plural vocabant.

Chorus:
Start the future
vocabo … .vocabis … and vocabit
Vocabimus, vocabitis, vocabunt. 
Start the perfect: with vocavi… .vocavisti. …. and vocavit
Vocavimus.. ..vocavictis, and -erunt.

6. To the perfect stem add: -eram -eras -erat
Then -eramus.,. then -eratis….. then -erant
When you’ve ended the pluperfect——Future Perfect:
-ero -eris -erit –erimus  -eritis and erint

Chorus:
Start:
ille, illa, illud…..qui, quae, quod….and hic, haec, hoc
Is and ea id….acer, acris, acre
Ego, mei, mihi, me, me…Tu and tui tibi te te
That’s the end and now it’s time to shout HOORAY!

Somewhere around three centuries ago a branch of the Going family left Ireland for Australia and later wandered over to New Zealand where they encountered Mormon missionaries, sometime in the 19th century, and converted.  One of them ended up in southern California a few miles from my brother.

Our branch of the family settled in Upstate New York in the mid-19th century, less than three hours via the Thruway from Palmyra where Joseph Smith began the whole thing, but the Mormons had gone by then and we missed the whole thing. 

The better part of thirty years ago the last Going in Ireland, also Robert, put me in touch with the old fellow in California, Lionel Going, and we kept up a lively correspondence for a while.  If you like genealogy, and it’s one of my favorite hobbies, there’s nothing like having a Mormon 12th cousin, and Lionel Going was invaluable in my research, sending me acres of hand-written charts.

Along the way he also let me borrow original manuscripts of both his and his wife’s autobiographies, and they were fascinating.

Mrs. Lionel Going, then pushing 90, as I recall, had been born into a polygamous Mormon sect in Mexico.  Part of the deal for Utah entering the Union involved giving up polygamy, and those who held to it as an article of faith fled the country and managed to live unbothered south of the border.  Another child born into that sect was George Romney, whose monogamous parents returned to the United States at the time of the Mexican Revolution.

George, of course, grew up to run (and rescue) American Motors and got himself elected Governor of Michigan.  He was, in the parlance of the time, a “me too” Republican, that is, essentially a Democrat in philosophy who knew how to run things better.

In 1964 he became a stalwart in the STOP GOLDWATER movement, in which a triad of big state liberal Republicans, Romney, Nelson Rockefeller of New York and William Scranton of Pennsylvania, pooled their resources in an attempt to prevent the conservatives from taking over the Republican Party, caused a ruckus at the convention in San Francisco, walked out while Goldwater was speaking and then sat on their hands in the fall.

I may have been only thirteen at the time, but I sure recognized that George Romney was not a guy I had any use for.  He was not only belligerently anti-conservative, but humorless as well, a handsome man to be sure, but with all the charm of John Kerry.

He was the leading candidate of the “moderates” for the 1968 election (Rocky was lurking in the background hedging his bets, several times announcing his “active non-candidacy”), but blew it all in a famous flip-flopping double-barreled  suicide  when he announced his opposition to the war in Vietnam, claiming that his previous support had been due  to “brainwashing” by the generals.

A compassionate Richard Nixon rescued him from total oblivion by making him Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a position for which he was well-suited.

***********

So what’s all this have to do with his son Mitt? 

Well, I’m just outlining my prejudices so you know where I’m coming from.  I’m no natural fan of the Romney family.

Clearly the administrative skills of the father were inherited by the son.  Mitt Romney’s ability to muscle the Olympic bureaucracy for the Salt Lake City games demonstrated mastery bordering on genius.  The political skills honed there served him well in Massachusetts, a state  where it’s hard to put together a dinner party if you’re only inviting Republicans.

Mitt is comfortable with today’s conservatives, though personally I don’t consider him “one of us” in the sense that there are quite a few clearly defined “movement conservatives” who, though disagreeing on any number of things, lend a hand to each other with various causes and certainly recognize each other as natural allies.

Romney, I think, is more of a loner than a joiner.  He is certainly conservative in temperament, values, virtues and for the most part philosophy. He has leadership skills, but he is not a Conservative Leader, in the sense of a Taft, Buckley, Goldwater and certainly Reagan. 

One can imagine him running the federal government competently, but not making the major changes or waves that some of us would like to see.  He’s really just a friendlier version of the old man, tolerant and maybe even affectionate toward the conservative wing of the party, but not of it.

No problem voting for him in November, and nobody would look more like a president than Mitt, but for right now I don’t think he makes my top three.