30 Days.

Okay, so there are 30 days left over at my attempt on Kickstarter to raise money for Alphonse issue two. We're at not quite one-quarter funded. But you know what? I'm gonna keep hoping. Thanks to everyone who has donated.

52 Movies for the Year of the Priest at Korrektiv

Rufus & Co. are having a festival! I've gone and italicized the ones I've seen, and starred my favorites. Because dammit, it's my blog.

"Korrektiv and Transcendental Musings are celebrating the Year for Priests (or the Year of the Priest, if you please) by launching an entirely unofficial 52-week (beginning last week) festival of films about priests.

What follows is our list -- hammered out over a bunch of Twitter posts and blog comments, a few beers and prayers -- of 52 movies in which a priest or priests take center stage or at least play a pivotal role in the development of the films' concerns.

I've arranged our selections chronologically, with the notion that it might be interesting to thus trace the evolution of filmmaking over the past seventy years while at the same time considering how perceptions of the priesthood, as reflected in these cinematic images, may have changed over that same period.
1. San Francisco (1936) [view the week of 6/19/09*]
2. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) [6/26/09]
3. Boys Town (1938) [7/3/09]
4. The Fighting 69th (1940) [7/10/09]
5. The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1941) [7/17/09]
6. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) [7/24/09]
7. Going My Way (1944) [7/31/09]
8. The Bells of St Mary's (1945) [8/7/09]
9. The Fugitive (1947) [8/14/09]
10. Monsieur Vincent (1947) [8/21/09]
11. Fighting Father Dunne (1948) [8/28/09]
12. The Miracle of the Bells (1948) [9/4/09]
13. Diary of a Country Priest* (1951) [9/11/09]
14. I Confess (1953) [9/18/09]
15. Father Brown (1954) [9/25/09]
16. On the Waterfront* (1954) [10/2/09]
17. The Left Hand of God (1955) [10/9/09]
18. The Miracle of Marcelino (1955) [10/16/09]
19. The Prisoner* (1955) [10/23/09]
20. Seven Cities of Gold (1955) [10/30/09]
21. Nazarin (1959) [11/6/09]
22. Hoodlum Priest (1961) [11/13/09]
23. The Cardinal (1963) [11/20/09]
24. Becket (1964) [11/27/09]
25. The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) [12/4/09]
26. The Exorcist (1973) [12/11/09]
27. The Massacre in Rome (1973) [12/18/09]
28. Hounds of Notre Dame (1980) [12/25/09]
29. True Confessions (1981) [1/1/10]
30. The Scarlet and the Black (1983) [1/8/10]
31. Mass Appeal (1984) [1/15/10]
32. The Assisi Underground (1985) [1/22/10]
33. The Mission (1986) [1/29/10]
34. Au Revoir les Enfant* (1987) [2/5/10]
35. The Fr. Clements Story (1987) [2/12/10]
36. Under Satan’s Sun (1987) [2/19/10]
37. Don Bosco (1988) [2/26/10]
38. Francesco (1989) [3/5/10]
39. Black Robe (1991) [3/12/10]
40. Zycie za Zycie (Life for Life) (1991) [3/19/10]
41. Sleepers (1996) [3/26/10]
42. Molokai: The Story of Fr. Damian (1999) [4/2/10]
43. The Third Miracle (1999) [4/9/10]
44. Keeping the Faith (2000) [4/16/10]
45. The Confessor (The Good Shepherd) (2004) [4/23/10]
46. The Ninth Day (2004) [4/30/10]
47. Saint Ralph (2004) [5/7/10]
48. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) [5/14/10]
49. Pope John Paul II (2005) [5/21/10]
50. The Novice (aka Crossroads) (2006) [5/28/10]
51. Doubt (2008) [6/2/10]
52. Gran Torino* (2008) [6/9/10]


Alternate Selections
· Francis of Assisi (1961)
· The Reluctant Saint (1962)
· A Man for All Seasons (1966)
· Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
· Jesus of Montreal (1989)
· Stigmata (1999)
· St. Patrick: The Irish Legend (2000)
· Papa Giovanni John XXIII (2002)
· The Order (2003)
· Twist of Faith (2004)
· Into Great Silence (2005)
· Karol: The Man Who Became Pope (2005)

"Fields of Gold" in my living room.

The sound is terrible, but that is the fault of my recorder - not the guitarist.



The man has a gift. Go buy his stuff.

How it's done.

Now that's a pie:



The Wife goes from strength to strength.

Happy Feast.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Help Us Perpetually.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy...

...they allow to self-interview. Me yammering to myself about Alphonse.

What's that? The Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, my Patron Saint, was yesterday? Sigh.

While attending a local Friends church a couple weeks back, I heard, for perhaps the first time, the following line preached from the pulpit: "Though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him."

That's Job talking. But it might have been John the Baptist, he of the great insight that "He must increase, I must decrease." It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

The Feast of St. Thomas More Ended Half an Hour Ago...

...but I'm gonna post this from the Patron of Lawyers anyway: "But truly I will give counsel to every good friend of mine that unless he be put in such a position as to punish an evil man in his charge by reason of his office, he should leave the desire of punishing to God and to such other folk who are so grounded in charity and so fast cleaved to God that no secretly malicious or cruel affection can creep in and undermine them under the cloak of a just and a virtuous zeal. But let us that are no better than men of a mean sort ever pray for such merciful amendment in other folk as our own conscience shows us that we have need of in ourselves."

Overheard.

"This is KPBS noise...news."

Classic.

Alphonse in the news.

Deal Hudson weighs in at Inside Catholic: "The subtitle for the completed novel, 'A Monster for Our Times,' reminded me of Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus. People forget that Frankenstein is the doctor, and his creation is referred to only as the 'creature' or the 'monster.' Lickona's 'monster for our times' has a name and a voice but, like Shelley's creature, fights to live in the face of a creator who wants to murder him."

This Father's Day, Let Us Pause Again...

...to consider the often hilarious way in which "old" pop music is equated with "safe" pop music...

Standing in the kiddie zone at Knott's Soak City Water Park, watching First Daughter and Third Son frolic to their hearts' content, and hearing this classic come-on over the sound system:

What's your name?/Who's your daddy?/Is he rich like me?...

Good times.

This Father's Day, Let Us Pause...

...to consider what happens when you let someone who most likely does not have children of his/her own design a clock for your Los Angeles Children's Hospital:



There are times, the clock seems to say, when your children will dance happily on the hands of a clock high above the city streets. And there are other times when they will be hanging on for dear life, dangling from those selfsame hands, cursing the irony that places them in such peril even as they work to advertise an establishment that helps injured children.

Calling all artists.

I would be very interested to hear what people think of actor Jim Caviezel's comments on art, recounted here. Go thou and comment.

I wrote a story!

Well, part of one. This week we have bits from the paper's three restaurant critics. Well, their two genuine restaurant critics and their former pinch-hit restaurant critic. That's me.

Weekend in LA - the Getty, Part III

The Wife took a stroll in the garden...

Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival

(Thanks to RAnn for the invite - I think I'm doing this right...)

Last week, I released Alphonse, a comic book I've been working on for a while.

I also had a fun chat with Joseph O'Brien and Katy Carl at Catholic Radio International about Catholic writer Andrew McNabb's very fine book of short stories, The Body of This.

Weekend in LA - the Getty, Part II

Very much enjoyed the exhibit on carbro photography. Liked the Richard Miller stuff even better than the headliner, Paul Outerbridge. Can easily understand Miller's sentiment here: "In 1962, Miller entered semi-retirement, occasionally shooting motion picture and other assignments. That same year, the McGraw Colorgraph Company of Burbank, California discontinued production of carbro tissue. When asked about this development, Miller said, ‘I stopped making carbro prints long before they stopped making the materials. Otherwise it would have broken my heart. When you look at these carbro prints, you realise that you cannot do this with any other colour process. They are exquisite.’"

Exhibit included this awesome ode to ketchup on eggs (shout-out to the old man):



Also, this fairly heartbreaking portrait of one Norma Jean Dougherty (nee Baker), taken when she was just a contract model in LA. (That's her own wedding dress, from her marriage in 1942, at age 18, to Jim Dougherty. The marriage was about to end - Norma Jean had decided to pursue a career in modeling.)

Weekend in LA - the Getty

Smile, baby.

Second Son Went Fishing

Ten

Alphonse

Flannery O'Connor had her Misfit. I have my monster.

(And no, I have no delusions of literary grandeur.)

Here we go.

Edelstein on Food, Inc.

"After an hour and a half of sighing, wincing, and clucking over the manifold outrages portrayed in Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc., I gave up the thought of “reviewing” the documentary and decided, instead, to exhort you: See it. Bring your kids if you have them. Bring someone else’s kids if you don’t. The message is nothing new if you’ve read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation or Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (both are in the film). But every frame makes you choke on your popcorn—if for no other reason than the focus on government-underwritten corn and the companies who put it into everything from soda to Midol to the gassy, E. coli–ridden bellies of factory-farmed cows. The sheer scale of the movie is mind-blowing—it touches on every aspect of modern life. It’s the documentary equivalent of The Matrix: It shows us how we’re living in a simulacrum, fed by machines run by larger machines with names like Monsanto, Perdue, Tyson, and the handful of other corporations that make everything. We humans can win, but we should hurry, before Monsanto makes a time machine and sends back a Terminator to get rid of Schlosser and Pollan. — David Edelstein

Cool San Diego

It's one thing to see a bike like this at a car show. It's another to see it motoring along the 8 East. (Click to enlarge.)

Today in Porn, Cornstarch Edition

[I dunno - The Wife thinks this one is a bit much. Gentle souls may wish to turn aside.]

Thanks to porn's collaboration with the music industry, and thanks to the fact that I work for an alternative newspaper that covers the Southern California music scene, I have managed to land my lucky self on publicist April Storm's email list. And that means that I can tell you that porn legend Tera Patrick will be signing at the Fleshlight Booth at the upcoming Erotica LA, as she promotes her "best-selling toy, the Tera Patrick Fleshlight."

What is a Fleshlight? It's shaped sort of like a flashlight. Here's a cross-section - see if you can figure out the rest!



From the press release: "'Fleshlight makes a terrific product,' Tera says. 'We have collaborated on the best selling toy in the world so this will be a great opportunity to meet fans and show them the Tera Patrick Fleshlight. As much I would love to be with each and every one of my fans, there just isn't enough time. The Tera Patrick Fleshlight is the next best thing to being there.'"

Get that, guys? Tera would love to have sex with each and every one of you - but there just isn't enough time. Thank heavens for the Fleshlight - and cornstarch!

From the Fleshlight FAQ: What is the best way to clean the Fleshlight? 
Simply rinse your Fleshlight insert with warm water from your sink and allow time for both to dry before storing. Do NOT use soap to clean your insert. For tough cleaning, we suggest using a little isopropyl alcohol. To maintain that soft feel, sprinkle a liberal amount of corn starch on the insert and shake off the excess powder. We do NOT recommend the use of talcum or baby powder. NOTE: Powdering an Ice Fleshlight with anything other than corn starch will cause it to cloud over."

Man in supermarket: Um, where's the cornstarch?

Supermarket employee: Making some gravy?

Man in supermarket: Um...not exactly.

Nostalgia

Remember how frustrated you'd get when the girls who were your third-grade classmates would chant "Girls go to Mars, they get candy bars/Boys go to Jupiter and get more stupider," and you would reply, "Actually, 'more stupider' is an improper use of grammar, so it's actually girls who are stupid," and it just didn't matter - because the girls didn't care about your sad little comeback, because you were a boy and therefore stupid and mean?

Yeah, me neither.

Back Cover

All right, people - last time. The gluttons for punishment over at Catholic Radio International have once again gathered us in to discuss Andrew McNabb's excellent book of short stories, The Body of This. I had fun; I hope you will, too. Also: buy the book!

Terrible Joke Thought Up While Sick After Finishing Story

Terrible in so many ways, not least of which is the fact that it requires you to mispronounce Proust's name...

What do you call it when a guy makes a deal with the devil so that he will be able to write brilliant literature, but every time he finishes a work, he'll become physically exhausted to the point of sickness?

A Proustian bargain.

Gad. It's the fever. And no, I don't suppose what I just finished to be brilliant literature - hell, it ain't even fiction. Just a Reader story. But it keeps the mortgage paid for another month, and that's all that matters.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

The train is the red thing in the lower right quadrant. I should have waited another split second so that more of it would be in view, but gosh, that plane was moving pretty quickly. Taken at the Shell station, corner of Laurel and Pacific Highway.

What parody can teach us.

Okay, so first off, this is simply hilarious. But what is almost as delightful is The Wife's reaction: "Wow. When I saw this video as a kid, I thought, 'Wow, that was weird.' Now, I think, 'Wow, the guy who made this video got molested at a Catholic boys' school and is now very gay.'"

Spinning ninjas!

Very special hat-tip to Smokee for passing this along.

Oh, dear.

Anybody else remember that episode of The X-Files with the life insurance salesman who could see how a person would die? Peter Boyle played the role, and I have never forgotten the deep disappointment in both his look and tone when he looks at Mulder and says, "Auto-erotic asphxiation?"

A.O. Scott has had it with immature dudes.

From his review of The Hangover:

"The city itself is not a place of sin but rather, for Stu, Phil and Alan, an Eden of the narcissistic, infantile id. Alan, in spite of his heavy beard, is almost literally a giant baby, his soft-bellied body appearing swaddled in a sheet and, most memorably, in a jockstrap that looks like a badly applied diaper. Until the end credits — which shuffle through still photographs from a harder-edged, more nastily and candidly adult movie — the on-screen nudity consists of male buttocks and a woman’s breast in the mouth of a nursing infant. This pretty much sums up the movie’s psychosexual condition, which old-school Freudians might identify as pregenital, more preoccupied with eating and elimination than with, you know, other stuff.

The tiny handful of women who have speaking roles in 'Hangover' may at first seem to be conventional figures in the straight-male imaginary — the sweet and patient bride; the emasculating, hypocritical shrew; the friendly prostitute (a sunny Heather Graham) — but they are all really incarnations of mommy. There is a bad mommy who won’t let you play, a good mommy who cleans up your mess and kisses your boo-boos and an extra special mommy who offers you her nipple even when you don’t pay for it as most of the other kids do. What hangover? This movie is safe as milk."

Damn.

Dept. of Awesome

Hellgate, a River Styx-themed boat ride at Coney Island, 1911.

Today in Disturbing Celebrity Lookalikes

When even the celebrity news turns tragic (RIP David Carradine), sometimes it's best to just point and laugh at the excesses of Photoshop. I mean, how do you make Johnny Depp look like Mickey Rourke? Is it the smirk, the flesh around the eyes, the meatiness of the cheeks?

Today in Porn, Not Really About Porn, More About Prostitution and the Priesthood Edition

New York Magazine's Sex Diaries column is a fun place for learning about the sexual habits of those different from married dudes with six kids in 21st-Century America, mostly because the diarists provide a lot of context for their sexual exploits and not a whole lot of detail about the exploits themselves. A recent entry proved a little sadder than some, as it involved a dude too old to be going on spring break going on spring break, a lot of self-soothing, and a little, um, professional action. The comments section came alive on the question of paying for it, and I found this entry sort of fascinating:

"Let me put moral judgment aside, go for judgment where it hurts, instead. (Unless you're a priest, moral judgment never does....) Pros are for losers. If one can't get it because a woman WANTS it, one is per my def. a loser [when it] come[s] to sex. And I can very well understand why women wouldn't want Accountant, here.

As for the moral judgment, the way I see it, any woman can choose any career for herself. Some pros do it because they want it. See it as easy money or whatever. Ok, their choice. May regret it later, but that's their business and they have to handle that for themselves.

Others do it because don't see other alternatives. They're forced to it for financial reasons or because of trafficking or blackmail of sorts. That's a fact, and that is worse. 'Using' such a pro is a variety of rape. A woman forced to sex by someone else than the man having sex with her is still forced to it. For the customer just picking up a pro, it's pretty close to impossible to see the difference between the two kinds of motivation. And if you ask me, that's what makes buying it morally unsound. If one does not know or care if the sex one is having is 'almost rape' or 'voluntary' one does not respect the woman in question - and probably not women/people in general - much."

So it's not that the commentator doesn't think a moral judgment is warranted - it's that she doesn't think it will hurt. Unless you're a priest. Fascinating.

Bookmark

Lifted whole-cloth from Terry:

"If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it. The moment the public sniffs propaganda they stay away, and curiously enough, I am all in favour of the public coming to the theatre, paying for their seats at the box office, and enjoying themselves."

- Noël Coward, "The Art of Acting" (The Listener, Oct. 12, 1961)

While we're on the subject...

The New Mexico Nurse has passed along this essay by Caitlin Flanagan, concerning "abortion and the bloodiness of being female."

"About 15 years before my mother took her weekend trip to Fire Island, she was a little girl living in Brooklyn in a bad situation. It was the Depression, her father was an unemployed laborer, and her mother—28 years old, a young woman from Coal City, Alabama, very far from home—had a toddler, a 3-year-old, and my mother, age 8. One day, according to the great and fearsome legend that shaped my mother’s life and so much of my own emotional life, my grandmother did something very ordinary: She ate a can of tuna fish. The can of tuna fish was tainted with botulism poisoning. She began to have great pain in her abdomen, and—this is a very important part of the story—the doctor wouldn’t come. Apparently he sent word that the woman in question had gas, and that she would be better in no time. She was dead in no time. 'That’s why I became a nurse,' my mother said so many times in her life that it would have been a stock phrase, except for the anger and sorrow of the way it ended: 'so that they couldn’t do to anyone else what they did to my mother.'"

Except maybe not. Flanagan later learned that her grandmother died of gangrene, and that led her to wonder. "Maybe my grandmother ate bad tuna fish—or, according to an alternate version of the story, bad peaches—and the food killed her. Or maybe she was 28 and living through one of the greatest disasters in American history, with no end in sight, trying to feed and look after three small children, and she found herself pregnant again, and she just couldn’t cope. Maybe someone in that Brooklyn neighborhood knew someone who could help her out. Maybe the reason the doctor refused to see her is that he knew what she had done, and he wouldn’t go near her. It turns out that badly canned food—with its risks of ptomaine and botulism poisoning—was an ideal culprit on which to blame the sudden death of an otherwise healthy young woman: My family would not be the first to contain such a face-saving legend. In any event, my grandmother died, her husband was overwhelmed with misery, and the children were put on trains and scattered to relatives, and that was the end of that little family.

The history of abortion is a history of stories, and the ones that took place before Roe v. Wade are oftentimes so pitiable and heartbreaking that one of the most powerful tools of pro-choice advocates is simply telling them. The Choices We Made is a compendium of such stories, and while you could read it in an afternoon, you should not make the decision to do so lightly: It will trouble you for a long time afterward. In it, women whom we know for the large space they occupy in the world—writers Grace Paley, Linda Ellerbee, and Ursula K. Le Guin, and actresses Polly Bergen and Rita Moreno among them—tell us about a time in their lives when they were reduced to begging for a simple medical procedure that, because of the circumstances in which it was performed, almost killed several of them and left at least one infertile. Abortionists in those days included a handful of merciful and scrupulous doctors willing to risk prison, and more than a few monsters who considered groping or sexually assaulting their patients a droit du seigneur. Who would complain? And who didn’t have it coming? In those days, it was not uncommon for a woman to receive a D & C without anesthetic shortly after being lectured about the wages of being a slut."

And then, against The Story, she sets The Image: "But my sympathy for the beliefs of people who oppose abortion is enormous, and it grows almost by the day. An ultrasound image taken surprisingly early in pregnancy can stop me in my tracks. In it is much more than I want to know about the tiny creature whose destruction we have legalized: a beating heart, a human face, functioning kidneys, two waving hands that seem not too far away from being able to grasp and shake a rattle. One of the newest types of prenatal imaging, the three-dimensional sonogram—which is so fully realized that happily pregnant women spend a hundred dollars to have their babies’ first “photograph” taken—is frankly terrifying when examined in the context of the abortion debate."

Do read the whole thing. I had some difficulties with some elements of the piece, but NMN is right to point out the bravery of this juxtaposition - the expression of genuine sympathy for both sides.

Cool San Diego

Leaving St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral last night, I spotted this mosaic in a basement alcove. Not sure what the metal bar is for - at first, I wondered if it was supposed to hold an actual sword, a physical "spiritus gladius." Which led me to wonder where it was now...

Wow.

Look, I know nobody reads this blog, and so there is little point in pointing to a blog that a great number of people already read, but Godsbody reader Charles (but didn't you just say that nobody read your blog? Shut up!) pointed out this essay from Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic. McArdle, who is pro-choice, bravely states the radioactive argument:

"We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders--had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer's actions. In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions. Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court. If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action? To shrug? Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes? Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn't seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right? We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it."

Do read the whole thing.

CATHOLIC BISHOPS ADDRESS THE MURDER OF DR. GEORGE TILLER

From the Catholic Key blog:

We, the four Catholic Bishops of the Dioceses of Kansas, unequivocally condemn the murder of Dr. George Tiller that occurred in Wichita earlier today. The Catholic Church believes that every human life is sacred. The murder of a human being is the gravest of crimes and is an intrinsic evil. Such an act of violence against human life is a contradiction of the most fundamental principle of the Pro-Life movement. The fact that this attack occurred in a church, a place of prayer and worship, only adds to the horror of this terrible crime. We prayerfully commend Dr. George Tiller to the mercy of God and we pray for comfort and consolation for his family and friends.

Most Reverend Joseph F. Naumann, Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas
Most Reverend Ronald M. Gilmore, Bishop of Dodge City
Most Reverend Paul S. Coakley, Bishop of Salina
Most Reverend Michael O. Jackels, Bishop of Wichita

Here it comes.

Michelle Goldberg in The Daily Beast:

"The man arrested for Tiller’s murder, Scott Roeder, posted at least one comment on the Web site of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue suggesting that antiabortion activists attend Tiller's church en masse. According to local news reports, he had the group’s phone number on a Post-It in his car when he was arrested. He could be a lone lunatic, but he might also be part of a movement that’s reemerging after years of relative dormancy."

Here's what the Washington Post had to say about that comment on the Operation Rescue site:

"A posting from May 2007 on Operation Rescue's Web site, from a person identifying himself as 'Scott Roeder,' sought volunteers to 'attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside)' to 'ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members. . . . Doesn't seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.'"

I repeat: the pot has been stirred enough, and in a terrible way. To use the above comment as a lead in to saying that "he might be part of a movement that's reemerging after years of relative dormancy" is deeply unfair. Roeder's post to OR, the suggestion he made to the organized pro-life movement, was about talking - however awkward the social circumstance of what he proposed. What he did on his own was about shooting. Don't conflate the two.

Here it comes.

So the Washington Post has this:

"Operation Rescue President Troy Newman, whose group is based in Wichita and whose Web site carries a 'Tiller Watch' feature, said he was 'shocked' by the killing. 'Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice,' Newman said in a statement. 'We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning.'

But Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, called Tiller 'a mass murderer' and added: 'We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.'"

Why the "but" before Terry's comments? The two are not opposed. If Terry had said "I refuse to denounce this act of vigilantism because Tiller was a mass murderer," then they would have been opposed. But that's not what he said - or at least, that's not what was reported.

I'd say the pot was plenty stirred without any journalistic help.

Where do you find God during hard times?

Apparently, not in a book:

"Sales of religious books [in 2008], previously a bright spot for the publishing industry, plummeted 10 percent to 247 million copies from 275 million copies."