The Rage Is Not About Health Care

Frank Rich photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

By FRANK RICH

The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Published: March 27, 2010

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.

The Pope and those pesky sex scandals of the priestly kind

Pope will ‘not be intimidated by petty gossip’ over sex abuse scandals

Pope Benedict XVI began Holy Week on Sunday by suggesting in his Palm Sunday address that the Catholic Church would “not be intimidated” by the sex abuse scandals sweeping it.

By Nick Pisa in Rome
Published: 3:30PM BST 28 Mar 2010

Pope Benedict XVI Leads Palm Sunday At St. Peter’s Square Photo: GETTY

In a clear indication that the Vatican continues to insist the stream of abuse revelations are part of a conspiracy the Pope said: “From God comes the courage not to be intimidated by petty gossip.”

Although he did not directly mention the crisis that has seen claims of abuse from Ireland, Germany, Austria, Holland and Brazil the 82 year old Pontiff’s message was evidently clear.

As he spoke, thousands of pilgrims who had gathered in a sunlit St Peter’s Square clapped and shouted “Viva il Papa” (Long Live The Pope). The scandals seemingly not to have had an impact on their faith.

Last week the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said the abuse allegations were part of an “ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict XVI and his closest collaborators at any cost”.