I've been on the road with my family this week, and admittedly away from the news more than normal. Maybe that's why I've only got two things rather than three that struck me as mind-boggling this week? Or maybe it's because these two were just head and shoulders above all the others that they stood out. Regardless, here we go:
Apology for thee, not for me
It's the age-old internet dilemma: do you…
(1) Ignore those who are transparently trolling in order to provoke reaction and generate clicks?
OR
(2) Call them out for their obvious insincerity and hypocrisy so as not to allow them to become wise in their own eyes?
I find myself encountering this predicament regularly when it comes to New York Times columnist David French's weekly anti-right schoolmarm routine. The fact that he's cashing big checks from The New York Times by agreeing to be their stooge "conservative voice who writes nothing but conservative hit pieces" tells me he's probably not too worried about what I have to say.
But this was truly one of French's finest:
The thing is, David French is 100% correct in his assessment that it is fundamentally anti-Christian to refuse to admit mistake, ask for forgiveness, or to reject the necessity of repentance. It's why back on May 1, I rebuked David French publicly for his public slander of Jesus' bride, the church. I asked him, as a brother in Christ to repent. He did not.
It's also why so many believers are waiting, some less patiently than others, for David French to repent for having publicly slandered them and their reticence to take the Covid shot. French was a signatory to a now-infamous "Love Your Neighbor, Get the Shot!" statement that claimed science justified government mandates and capitulation to the state was obedience to God.
And it got worse, as Seth Dillon pointed out in this internet body-blow:
If I believed that French was serious about his call for us all to be more humble, less brash, and more willing to admit mistake, I'd stand shoulder to shoulder with him. But for a man who has made a living in recent times using the cross of Jesus to shame people he disagrees with politically or scientifically, he has become the epitome of Luke 4:23 - "Physician, heal thyself!"
The invisible grandchild
I have followed politics since my dad ran for public office in 1988 and I got caught up in the parades, fish fries, billboards, bumper stickers, and late-night envelope-licking sessions. For that reason, I was already aware of Joe Biden in 2008 when Barack Obama plucked him from his relative obscurity as perennial back-of-the-pack.
I know what Biden did to Clarence Thomas. I know what he said of women he disagreed with. I know how he repeated ethnic cliches and made racial stereotypes the punchlines of his jokes for years. Nothing about his Senate career would have ever made a person believe that he was, by nature, a uniting figure.
That's why I felt like I was living in a bizarro world when in 2020 the media pretended Biden was as beloved a figure as Dolly Parton. For a majority of his first term, as the president has proven as divisive and contentious as he has always been, the media has unsurprisingly failed to report on it.
That's why I was flabbergasted when Maureen Dowd of The New York Times appropriately took the president to task for his heartless treatment of his seventh grandchild. Navy Joan Roberts, the daughter of Lunden Roberts and the president's troubled son, Hunter, has been seemingly disowned by the Bidens. It's an interesting choice for a man whose "mantra," Dowd writes, "has always been that ‘the absolute most important thing is your family.'"
I know some people speculate that Dowd is just joining in the sudden willingness of leftwing journalists to criticize Biden because they are desperately concerned about his ability to win re-election in 2024. But whether it's strategic or politically calculated, or not, it's still correct. So, credit where it is due. And it is certainly due the author of this devastating concluding statement:
The president's cold shoulder - and heart - is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it's out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead.
