Society

As a child, I was fond of a catchy little ditty called ‘I’m An Indian Too’ (‘A Sioux!’) Though she’s 10 years older than me, I wonder whether this ear-worm also stuck in the consciousness of the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, whose claim of Native American descent has recently been rubbished by both a DNA test which revealed her to be around 1/1024th of this persuasion (most of us are more unicorn than this, surely?) and the Cherokee Nation Secretary of State, Chuck Hoskin Jr, who accused Warren of ‘undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.

Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most fascinating is ‘who created woke capitalism?’ For those living in splendid isolation from the mass media: woke capitalism is a description of the ever growing number of corporations that take risky, high-profile stances on social issues. Woke capitalism is Nike’s Kaepernick  campaign. Woke capitalism is Diageo creating limited edition bottles of ‘Jane Walker’ for International Women’s Day. Woke capitalism is a Conde Nast publication coming out with approving features about Karl Marx. Woke Capitalism is a trend rather than a movement. It has heralds rather than theorists. It is akin to a fog, a gas or an atmosphere.

Cockburn still takes the Sunday edition of the New York Times. He has two cats, and all those extra sections make excellent liners for the litter tray. Perhaps this is what people mean when they say that you have to hold your nose when you read the Times. The Times may have closed the curtains on the question of Nikki Haley’s window dressings, but its writers still cannot be trusted. Is it from malice or ignorance? Or a cocktail of the two, in which the presumption of virtue overrides the responsibility to check the facts?

Modern tyrants have always looked to antiquity for models of how to exercise and display their power. For Joseph Stalin self-improvement did not mean listening to more audiobooks or enrolling in bi-weekly meditation classes. A lifelong bookworm who kept improbably long office hours, Stalin enjoyed reading about Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible. Yet the most heavily annotated work in his 20,000 volume library was an account of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire by his favourite historian, Robert Vipper. The terrible, godlike power of the Caesars was something he could relate to. Adolf Hitler, taking a more dilettantish route, looked to classical aesthetics in painting, sculpture and architecture to infuse German culture with his ideas about race.

The South African apartheid state runs down its final morbid years. Enter a young Elon Musk. Like Mozart, Musk was a child prodigy. Unlike Mozart — who was awarded the Order of the Golden Spur by Pope Clement XIV when he was a teenager — Musk had to go to school. Young Elon was not a social success. His mother Maye described him as the ‘youngest and smallest guy in his school’. He was an autodidact who enjoyed reading science-fiction 10 hours a day; a kid who it was almost too obvious to bully. The most traumatic moment came in his early teens. Musk, by this point a skilled enough programmer to make (and sell) video games, was hurled down the stairs by a group of bullies and beaten into unconsciousness.

The Catholic Church is confronting a series of interconnected scandals so shameful that its very survival is threatened. Pope Francis himself is accused of covering up the activities of one of the nastiest sexual predators ever to wear a cardinal’s hat: his close ally Theodore McCarrick, the retired Archbishop of Washington, DC. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI are also implicated; they did nothing, or almost nothing, while McCarrick was seducing every seminarian he could get his hands on. (‘Hide the pretty ones!’ they used to say when he visited seminaries.) Yet powerful cardinals kept quiet and are now suspected of lying their heads off after McCarrick’s crimes were recently made public. McCarrick is the world’s only ex-cardinal.

The Pussy Church of Modern Witchcraft (PCMW) in Maryland has just been afforded Tax Exempt Status by the IRS, which recognised it as a legitimate place of worship, or rather a ‘place of lesbian faith’. Serving a lesbian-feminist congregation, the PCMW is described on its website as, ‘a congregation of female-born, lesbian-led Women devoted to the liberation of Women and Girls from the oppression we face based on our sex.’Lesbian feminists, such as myself, are not usually known to attend a place of worship, unless you include the wine bar or a protest outside a strip club. But there are those that believe in some kind of God, or rather, in the case of the PCMW congregants, Goddess, so what’s the harm?

When Muslims make headlines, it’s invariably for the wrong reasons. The fuss over Boris Johnson’s burka joke is a case in point: he was making an argument in defence of Muslims, but was instead condemned for attacking us. Why the confusion? Because of how little our faith is understood. Let’s start with the burka. Islam makes various demands of its followers, but — despite what you might think from the headlines — covering our faces isn’t one of them. Based on the media’s fascination with these strange and oppressive garments, you might wonder why any modern woman would ever choose Islam. So here’s my answer. I’m a London-born doctor, raised in a Muslim family and now working in America.

It’s depressing to see the media – both Catholic and secular – shielding Pope Francis from the explosive allegation made by his own former nuncio to the United States, that he knowingly covered up for and revived the career of serial gay predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in testimony published on Saturday, says he personally told Francis in 2013 that McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, had ‘corrupted generations of seminarians and priests’. The Pope shrugged this off, says Viganò, and went on to lift canonical sanctions placed on McCarrick by Benedict XVI.

The allegation by a former senior Vatican diplomat that Pope Francis vigorously covered up sex abuse is looking more credible by the day. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, says he told Francis in 2013 that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, was a serial abuser of seminarians. The Pope ignored him, he claims – and lifted sanctions placed by Benedict XVI on McCarrick. Moreover, he fully rehabilitated the old man, who became one of his most trusted advisers. Viganò has called on Francis to resign.

Pope Francis stands accused this morning of covering up the crimes of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, one of the most senior and sinister sex abusers in the history of the Catholic Church. The allegation comes from the Vatican’s former apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who has called on the Pope to resign. In a devastating 11-page written testament, Viganò says Francis lifted severe sanctions imposed on McCarrick for sexual wrongdoing by Pope Benedict XVI, the existence of which has not been made public until now.

The Golden Arches are shining with even greater lustre than usual in Chicago these days. McDonald’s, the world’s biggest food chain, has just opened its flagship restaurant in the town it calls home – and what a marvel it is. More like an Apple Store than a fast food joint, the new outlet is described by designers Ross Barney Architects as an ‘oasis,’ a sleek glass cube the size of a city block with shared tables, ‘tapestries’ of living plants on the walls, an apple orchard and table service as well as automated ordering. The new look will form the basis of redesigns for the majority of the firm’s 14,000 restaurants across the country, at a cost of $6 billion, meaning an oasis could be coming to a McDonald’s near you very soon.

A Pennsylvania grand jury report released last night has revealed that the Catholic Church in six dioceses systematically and sneakily covered up sexual abuse by priests on a horrifying scale. The American Church has now been plunged into the worst crisis in its history. The 884-report comes less than a month after the revelation that ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington DC, was a compulsive predator. His serial molestation of seminarians was an open secret, and cannot possibly have come as a surprise to some of his friends in the American hierarchy.

A writer friend recently told my son about an exercise he was given in a high school composition class. The idea was to show how word choice affects the mood and emotional weather of your prose. He recalled an example from TIME magazine. (For younger readers: TIME used to be — long, long ago — an important news outlet; that TIME is not to be confused with the virtue-signaling enterprise of the same name that has taken its place). Consider the different rhetorical implications of these two sentences: Truman slunk from the back room to huddle with his cronies. vs. Eisenhower strode from the chamber to consult with his advisers. Would you rather “slink” or “stride”? Do you frequent “back rooms” or occupy “chambers”?

My friend recently met a man on a dating app and went out for dinner with him. When he arrived, the man announced that he didn’t drink. Nothing unusual about that: plenty of young men are abstemious these days. His next declaration was more surprising: he didn’t eat. Instead, he lived off something called ‘Huel’. Huel — an abbreviation of ‘human fuel’ — is a type of powdered food made of oats, peas, flax and rice. I’ve tried it and it is disgusting — gruel, essentially, in smart packaging. But it’s hugely popular: Huel is now one of the fastest growing companies in Britain. Huel is low in fat and high on principle. ‘We live in difficult times,’ says its evangelical marketing bumf.

President Trump has confirmed that tonight, at 9 pm EST, he will announce his choice of candidate for the Supreme Court following the departure of Justice Anthony Kennedy. And what, do you reckon, are the chances of his critics here being mollified if it turns out his candidate is in fact a woman, and a working parent? It would bring the Supreme Court almost into gender balance, with four women and five men. I mean, when President Obama added a further woman to make it a measly four women out of 113 Supreme Court judges who have served to date, that was seen as proof of his essential soundness. But if President Trump does so, well, that’s another matter.