Ah, good ol' Joe Biden, America's favorite uncle.
At least, the American Left's favorite, according to Newsweek's Katie Connolly in her March 30 "Web exclusive" entitled, "Say It Just So, Joe: Liberals love Joe Biden because he keeps things interesting in the White House."
"Hot on the heels of Kucinich's declaration of support for health-care reform, the Associated Press is reporting that Catholic nuns are urging Democratic lawmakers to support health-care reform," Newsweek's Katie Connolly informed readers of the magazine's The Gaggle blog this morning.
"This is a major break with the church's bishops, who have strongly opposed the legislation on the grounds that some federal subsidies may end up funding abortions," Connolly gushed, later closing her blog post with the conclusion that "[a]t the very least, the letter damages the validity of [pro-life Democrat Rep. Bart] Stupak's argument."
Both Connolly's post and the underlying AP story failed to delve into this, but the letter in question was not simply cobbled together by apolitical nuns. It was pushed out to the media by a group with a left-wing agenda, reports CatholicCulture.org:
Newsweek's Katie Connolly, on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show over the weekend, determined that Barack Obama, even in the face of the stunning loss in Massachusetts, needs to become more entrenched in his liberal ways and not bother working with the GOP as she advised the President to “bully Republicans.” After host Chris Matthews prompted the White House correspondent to report on how the administration viewed the effectiveness of the State of the Union Address, Connolly, playing political strategist, offered her own take instead: “My personal view is they need to ditch all of this talk of bipartisanship, post-partisanship....What they need to do is start calling Republicans out...” [audio available here]
The following exchange was aired on the January 31 edition of The Chris Matthews Show:
<p>Reminiscing about how her father would end dinner table squabbles between her and her sister, Newsweek's <a href="/people/katie-connolly" target="_blank">Katie Connolly</a> on Tuesday rejoiced that President Obama had said "Enough!" <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/12/15/time-for-oba... target="_blank">in order to get Senate Democrats in line</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Today, it sounds like the president has finally reached that point with the Senate Democrats and their increasingly aggravating health-care squabbles. He's ready to issue a steely "Enough." And not a minute too soon. </p></blockquote><p>Not a minute too soon? Isn't Connolly supposed to be an objective reporter, not a cheerleader for a political party and its agenda? Oh, that's right, this is Newsweek, the magazine <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/business/media/09newsweek.html?_r=2&am... target="_blank">whose editor actually aspires</a> to a smaller (and more liberal?) audience. </p>
<p>Newsweek writer and native Australian <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/pages/katie-connolly.aspx" target="_blank">Katie Connolly</a> set out to lecture American readers today on the magazine's Gaggle blog yesterday about how Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize isn't really about the man or the United States as a country, but rather the U.S. as a lofty ideal -- an ideal she reckons in the eyes of "the collective world" to have been "almost entirely undone" by the Bush administration.</p><p>As such, Connolly <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/12/09/the-nobel-pr... target="_blank">tells us in her December 9 post</a> that Obama had to show kindly Norweigans that his countrymen aren't such a rude, rabble-rousing lot after all, an impression she insists was given by how many Americans exercised that all-too-American ideal of free speech when they criticized the awarding of the Nobel to the freshman president (emphases mine):</p><blockquote>
Is Newsweek even pretending to be a news magazine (or news site) any more? On their Gaggle blog, political writer Katie Connolly decried Sen. Orrin Hatch for reinstating federal funding for abstinence-only sex education: "I've been trying to think of a measured way to riff on this, but instead I'll be frank. It's an absolute waste of money." Newsweek doesn't favor a "measured" take these days. But Connolly’s conclusion about “pointless moralizing” really cranks up the editorializing:
Let's face it. Teenagers are going to have sex. They always have, they always will. Sure there will be a decent number of teens who choose to abstain and they should feel supported in that decision, but there will still be a large chunk of teenagers doing the dirty. Making them stop is a fools errand. It's about as likely a seeing the Pope in a speedo. It's like asking the Queen to declare her hatred for corgis. It's not going to happen. Sex education policies should take into account this basic reality and tailor programs that broadly educate teens about their choices, abstinence included. Policies should be set up to work. Anything else is just pointless moralizing.