Florida, America’s Wang, has been the most shameless corner of the vast right-wing conspiracy for years now. A phenomenon recently lampooned by Tom Tomorrow, policy makers in Florida pick the most ridiculous fights to stoke the flames of their supporters’ torch-and-pitchfork ensembles, even if the fights are completely contradictory to their own rhetoric.

Now comes the latest, a judge has ruled that a 13-year-old girl cannot decide for herself to have an abortion. Judge Ronald Alvarez ruled that the girl is too young and immature to make the momentous decision to have an abortion by herself, plus, he claims he is concerned about the potential effect of an abortion on her physical and emotional health. Now, first of all, a full-term pregnancy and labor is a lot riskier for a little girl than a first-trimester abortion, and, secondly, if the girl is too immature to choose an abortion, how in the hell could she be considered mature enough for motherhood? But, most galling is the fact that under the law in Florida, which does not have a “parental consent” requirement for minors seeking abortions, the choice is the girl’s, and hers alone. Judge Alvarez is, in fact, engaging in judicial activism!

What’s really going on here is that Jeb Bush is pandering to the same “culture of life” crowd that made Terri Schiavo’s last days such a media circus. Under his orders, the Department of Children and Families, sought the initial restraining order preventing the girl, a runaway who is under DCF foster care, from getting an abortion. The DCF cites a contradictory law that prohibits the department from consenting to an abortion for a minor in state care (so, kids who live with their families can choose for themselves, but kids under state care need state permission?!). The injunction is temporary, pending psychological exams that the department requested and the judge has granted. The girl, who is 14 weeks pregnant, is in a race against the clock before state law tells her she is too far along to get an abortion. Bush and the DCF intend to run down the clock.

Ironically, as the Terri Schiavo circus was going on, I remarked to some friends that those of us on the civil rights side of the culture war need to be as cut-throat and calculated as the right, and named this very scenario, a young girl being prevented by the state from having an abortion in time, threatening to force her to have a child that she could not possibly care for when she herself is a child, as the kind that we could champion in the same manner as the right exploited Schiavo. Zany Florida just made this scenario real. It’s time for some wacky protester hijinks from our side.

The blue-line proofs of the new issue of “The Torch” came back from the printer today. Perhaps it was the contact high from the weird blue ink they use, but I’m really excited with the way it turned out.

The Torch is the Journal of the Young People’s Socialist League. It’s my first issue as editor in five years. I am a little long in the tooth for any kind of young people’s league, but, after nine years in the organization (including a four-year stint as National Secretary and a three-year stint as Torch editor), I can’t just up and leave. I’ve basically been playing a supportive, back-seat role until I turn 30 and have to be sent to Sanctuary.

That was until a handful of comrades, including Mary Loritz (known to my friends, for a time, as “that girl on the couch”), asked me to get The Torch going again after the last editor gave up. I couldn’t resist a project like that, especially given my current state of redundancy. I’ll likely only publish a handful of issues before handing over the reins to an actual youth.

The new issue features an excellent cover story by Jonathan Mertzig about the “Post-Graduation Blues.” It’s in a similar vein as those Village Voice articles about “Generation Debt,” except Jonathan, being a working class kid who went to a state school, is a lot more sympathetic than some NYU art school graduate on food stamps. My friend Sarah Stefanko wrote about moving to Canada in order to live with her girlfriend. Mary (“of the couch”) wrote a really terrific piece about SEIU’s childcare workers organizing drive, which she worked on as an intern. Sam Morales, my comrade here in the Socialist Party of New York City wrote about the IWW’s effort to organize Starbucks workers. There are a couple more shorter articles and some wonderful illustrations by Aimee Ingles, as well as news, editorials and an advice column from my mysterious roommate, pinkocommiebastard.

I’ll post links to article excerpts as they go online. Eventually, there will be a full PDF of issue #42 posted. First, we’re going to mail the issue to YPSL members and use the issue’s exclusivity to entice new members. I’ll probably be carrying a handful of copies wherever I go, as soon as they come back from the printer (later this week), so ask for one when you see me. Otherwise you can e-mail YPSL for a copy and a membership application.

A new-to-me website called Wal-Mart Watch is countering Wal-Mart’s “Made in America” rhetoric with details on Wal-Mart’s sweatshop factories in China. More good ammo as you take on Wal-Mart.

They ask people with websites to link to them using the word Wal-Mart. See, Google and other search engines base their result, at least partly, on how many instances a certain term is linked to a certain URL. Websites that expose the true costs of Wal-Mart’s cheap underwear should rank highly when people search the web for Wal-Mart.

Say it with me. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart.

Try it at home. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart.

For that matter, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart.

It’s become pretty obvious that I am in desperate need of a new friend; the kind whose friendship and loyalty are entirely dependent on my paying for dinner and providing a place to spend the night, the kind who’ll tear up my papers, scratch my furniture and get hair everywhere. Enough pulling dying cats out of the gutter, it’s time to adopt a pet.

I’ve been thinking for awhile about getting a cat. They seemed like low maintenance. When I’m working, I can be out of the apartment for 12-14 hours a day, and, being an apartment, there’s no backyard here. But I just don’t understand cats. They bite and scratch when they’re playing. They’re finicky. Plus, I don’t have anyone in the neighborhood to take care of them when I leave town for school or work.

Dogs, I know. I’ve had dogs for about as long as I’ve been alive. I miss having a dog. I still drop food on my kitchen floor, expecting a mongrel to hungrily scarf it up. I miss catch. I miss walks. I miss seeing a long nose poking out my window when I return home. Plus, I can drop off a dog at my folks’ place when I leave town; Alfred could use a friend, too.

So, I started looking for a dog today. I went to the North Shore Animal League. I need an older dog, at least six months but preferably older. I think I need a big, lazy dog. My friend Greg says that big dogs get along well in apartments because “all they do is sit around and fart anyway.” I’d prefer a female. They tend to be calmer and gentler, but mainly I’m not fond of the dangling boy bits. The important qualities are calm, gentle and friendly.

North Shore Animal League’s website is impressively up-to-date. I saw almost all of these dogs at the shelter. I spent an hour with Thelma. She was very shy and scared, much like Alfred was when we got him from the shelter. However, after an hour, she still seemed indifferent to me and wanted nothing more than to return to her cage. A dog like that would likely become fiercely loyal after the first night (and meal) spent at my apartment. I got cold feet because I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon, which would only take about three hours, but I would want to spend the first few days at home with a dog like that and get her acclimated.

Plus, adopting a dog is like buying a home or a car in that you don’t want to just snatch up the first one you see.

I didn’t spend time with Samson, but, in his cage, his demeanor reminded me of the quiet nobility of K.C., the dog my grandparents had while I was growing up. Same black and white coloring, to boot.

So, the search continues. There’s a pet adoption event in Astoria next Saturday that I’ll probably go to, and I’ll likely return to North Shore the following weekend.

I know that I have about 30 loyal readers by now, all of them friends, so I expect your help. Leave a comment or e-mail me.

Finally, I want to say a few good words about the North Shore Animal League. My family has adopted two dogs from the shelter, each an integral and long-standing member of the family. The first was Sophie, a sweet, energetic Corgie-mix that my parents adopted when I was still in diapers. I grew up with Sophie, who was my oldest and best friend when she died 17 years later. Below, at top-left, is a picture of a visit upstate, when we were both pups. My grandparents had a working farm at the time, which included a small herd of goats. Still a nipper, Sophie immediately herded them into a circle, but she had no clue what to do with them once in the circle. Natural instinct is an amazing thing. Top-right, is a pic of the two of us when she was much older.

Me and Sophie, both pups.	My oldest best friend.
Alfred, pretty much as he looks today (I’m not quite as baby-faced).	Alfred, as a high-flying puppy.

A year or two after Sophie passed away, we got Alfie from the same shelter. He is the sweetest, most gentle dog I have ever known, even if he is a bit of a cry-baby weenie. (Above, top-right, is Alfie before he was fully grown, still possessing the energy of a puppy. Top-left is, more of less, what he looks like today.)

North Shore rescued Alfie from a shelter down south that was preparing to euthanize him. North Shore is a no-kill shelter. The staff and volunteers are gentle, caring and knowledgeable. It’s a shelter that deserves your support.

The Writers Guild of America, East, has been without a contract with the major networks since the first of April. The networks are demanding concessions in wages and work rules. The union will be staging a lunchtime rally in front of the CBS Broadcast Center (located at 524 West 57th Street) next Wednesday, the 27th of April, from 1:00 until 2:00.

If you are free, you should go, not only because you support union workers but because you demand quality television. You do realize that this whole “reality” television craze is just a union-busting strategy, don’t you? Not only are there no writers (hence, no writers union), but the editors are not covered by that union’s contract and most of the on-location crews are non-union, too!

Go to the rally as “concerned viewers for quality television.” Bring
signs: “Sick of Survivor!” “No More ‘Reality’ Give Us Fantasy!”

It turns out I have at least two things in common with Warren Buffett, the shrewd billionaire. We’ve both disliked Bush for some time, and now it seems that we’ve both been investing in beer in this lousy economy. Of course, my investment has been a pint at a time, while Buffett “has become a significant shareholder” in Anheuser-Busch.

In my role as a trustee for the American Socialist Foundation, I’ve recently been focusing a lot of attention on some of the inherent weaknesses in the US economy. In our quest to responsibly invest a $100,000 bequest, ASF Chair Barbara Garson and I have been meeting with economists and investment advisors to pick the safest strategy. The outlook is bleak. Bush’s huge deficits, these stupid wars, the declining dollar and oil uncertainty all point to an economic crash. It could be tomorrow, it could be five years from now. We’re doing what Warren Buffett’s been doing. We’re holding cash. (Actually, Barbara wants to convert her personal savings to Euros and keep them in a safe deposit box; the ASF is probably going to buy short-term Treasury bonds, US and foreign.)

In last year’s annual report to his stockholders in Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett stated that he declined to make many large investments due to uncertainty in the economy, and instead had billions of dollars sitting in the bank (ordinarily, a cardinal sin in the investment world). The announcement that he has begun investing in US companies again has been taken as a sign that the economy may be in for a rebound, and has sent Anheuser-Busch’s stock soaring. What it really looks like is that Buffett is digging in for a prolonged freeze. People are always gonna buy beer, and if the economy crashes, we’ll probably drink a lot more.

The phone rang this afternoon. A man in a high-pitched youngish voice asked for Mr. Richman and said that he had a few questions about the health of New York City and wouldn’t take more than 45 seconds. He sounded like a rushed telemarketer, reading a standard script. I let him ask his question, on the off-chance it was some kind of political poll.

“Do you approve of the job that Mayor Mike Bloomberg is doing?,” he asked me. “Um…,” I hesitated, before finally emphatically declaring, “No.” (The truth is that I don’t think Bloomberg’s doing an awful job, especially after the bad Giuliani days, but, still, I’d rather get a Republican out of office.)

“Okay, sir, I understand,” the young man said nervously, before launching a frantic and fast-paced rap that I wish I could have recorded in order to properly transcribe. It went something like this: “Keeping in mind that Mayor Bloomberg has enacted a jobs program that created over 50,000 jobs, enabling everyone who wants a job to find one, would you now say that you approve of the job Mayor Bloomberg is doing?”

“Still no,” I said through the laughter, quickly adding, “What organization are you calling from?” The young man replied, “I can’t tell you the name of my organization because then you might wanna come down here and throw a brick through our window.” I found it hard to believe that he didn’t have to reveal the name of his organization. “Well, are you calling from Bloomberg’s re-election committee?” I asked him.

“Yes, we are working for Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign,” came the cryptic response. In the brief silence, I could hear the voices of other young men in the background asking the same scripted questions, in the same rushed and unpolished manner. “Okay, sir, can I ask you one more question?” he continued. I consented, and he asked, “What do you think should be the top priority of the Mayor? “Housing,” I declared without missing a beat. “Thank you, sir, for providing your time and input,” he finished, “and have a nice day.”

“Good luck,” I sarcastically replied. They’re gonna need it.

The Socialist Party USA has a unique opportunity to reach a consensus on electoral activity that can be translated into a coordinated agenda. Much of the debate in the party right now focuses on extraneous arguments about supporting Democrats (which few in the party actually do) or working within the Green Party. But these are pointless arguments if they do not come in the context of our larger strategy.

The truth is that the Socialist Party is not really a political party. Although we do have a legally recognized “Socialist National Committee” that makes us a party in the federal government’s eyes, we lack ballot lines at any state level. We have fielded only a handful of token candidates across the country each year ever since the Socialist Party of Oregon lost its ballot line in 1998. (The story of the SPO’s temporary, but acrimonious, split belies our lack of clearly defined goals: they had out-sized ambition for our little party, but we didn’t clearly define why we run for office and anyway we lacked the money to support them).

Of course many will point to the draconian election laws in many states which require thousands and thousands of signatures to place a candidate on the ballot for Congress, state assembly or even city council. While these may not be insurmountable obstacles in all cases, often it would come at the cost of sapping a Socialist Party local of all remaining energy and hamper educational and direct action work. Since most members place a higher premium on our activism and educational work, electoral campaigning often takes a back seat.

Since the vast majority of members face a ballot every November that is devoid of Socialist candidates, to establish a litmus test for any comrade’s perceived “support” of Democratic or “other party” candidates is merely a ruse to attack an “ideological enemy.” Worse, it would require that we be political monks at election time. Just why in the heck did we become political activists anyway?

The party’s position of record was adapted 20 years ago, so it hardly qualifies as a consensus agenda. The party’s position is that we seek and will support the creation of a broad, labor-backed, populist social democratic party. Quoted, in relevant part:

The Socialist Party seeks to cooperate with other democratic left organizations in taking practical steps toward independent political action, whether at the local, state or national levels. Such action should involve a clear break with the Democrats, and aspire towards building a movement-based party which is feminist, anti-racist, anti-war, and pro-labor, at a minimum. While the Socialist Party will avoid making a socialistic platform a precondition for participation, it will continue to advocate the adoption of public ownership of the major means of production, distribution, and finance — that is, of big business.

I’m sure many of the comrades who consider themselves hard left revolutionaries (and many such comrades have joined the party in recent years) will initially balk at this position, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

In other words, we don’t want to water down the Socialist Party’s politics to become a mass social democratic party. Even if we wanted it, that ship has sailed. It is not 1913, which was the last year when it seemed that the Socialist Party’s vote count would continue to climb and we would win more and more seats until one day we would displace the Democrats as the “other party” and maybe sweep to power around the middle of the century, like the European parties in the Second International eventually did.

No, it didn’t happen here. We were smashed by the state during the first World War. The Democrats watered down our platform during the New Deal (“They carried it out on a stretcher,” as Norman Thomas bitterly complained). The came another Red Scare and the Cold War, meanwhile the standard of living in the U.S. rose dramatically for millions, effectively obfuscating class politics for the majority. It will be a long time before masses of Americans are ready for revolutionary socialism. We need a strategy for now, and for the next 20 years.

America could really use a period of social democratic politics. Our European comrades have a much sweeter situation than us. Sure, most of them oppose, either internally or in a separate party, the social democratic parties that are the main “left” parties, but they do so in a context where the whole political spectrum and public debate is much farther to the left than ours. They do it in countries where workers have greater freedoms, rights and social support, as well as greater class consciousness fostered by those old relic parties.

We need a broad, inclusive party that encompasses the politics of red, green, black, pink and blue; a party with women and people of color at the forefront, that will struggle for queer liberation, where the major labor unions will have an institutional role. We need a real second party that will flank and surpass the Democrats and smash the far right, take on the banks, reign in the corporations and guarantee food, housing and health for all.

Those of us who are farther left and want to take the revolution farther will maintain our separate identity as the Socialist Party (and other formations) and can become loyal opposition, or even outright opposition.

Now building such a party is going to be long and hard and take lots of difficult coalition- and trust-building. What the Socialist Party can do to advance this agenda is two-fold.

First, we need to build our own party. We need to aggressively raise money for our Socialist National Committee to fund and aid our local campaigns, and we need to run more local campaigns where we can. We need our cadre activists to learn how to run campaigns, handle media relations, petition and handle other legal matters and most importantly, to learn how to effectively communicate the Socialist platform to voters. Such experience will make our party more credible, and our calls for a coalition party more impressive. The more skilled our activists are, the more important role that Socialists will play in the infrastructure and message of any mass coalition party.

Second, we need to continually make coalitions with all allies on the left. That means we don’t make enemies on the left; we don’t issue statements denouncing other organizations or banning dual membership. We seek areas of agreement and work together. Here, the comrades who focus more on direct action and education can make, and already have made, tremendous progress making the Socialist Party a respected and welcome ally.

Now, this agenda is national in scope, and while the Socialist Party USA National Convention and National Committee will have a role in establishing the agenda, as well as raising and disbursing SNC funds for efforts its supports and wants to aid, it will largely fall to our state affiliates to translate how this agenda will work on their local level.

For example, in California, the Socialist Party was instrumental in forming a coalition party in 1968, Peace and Freedom, and remains active in it. Peace and Freedom just may become a key building block of the kind of nation-wide coalition party we wish to see, and the comrades in California continue to work within it. Any Socialist Party candidates for public office will run on the Peace and Freedom line. Now, in New Jersey, there is currently less opportunity for coalition campaigns, so the SPNJ runs candidates in its own name. These have, regrettably, tended to be token campaigns (it does only take about 200 signatures to get on the ballot for a legislative seat). In New York, we recently supported the Green Party’s Senate campaign of our own David McReynolds. The initiative was theirs; they asked Cde. McReynolds to run on an anti-war platform as the Green Party candidate. We worked on the campaign and reaped the benefits of some recognition for our party, as well as closer working relationships with the Green Party and its activists.

All three of these strategies have received criticisms from outside their states (most of the criticism came from Massachusetts, in particular), but, again, it is up to the people on the ground to tailor our agenda to their particular laws and politics. Of course, no state party or local can endorse or “fuse” with the institutional capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans. No state party or local has. However, individuals may make strategic decisions to support left or insurgent candidates in the Democratic party. These decisions are personal, but if they are made for the sake of building better relationships with the activists who support such candidates and might later support us, then the party is the better for it. Those who criticize such personal decisions of comrades should have the question put to them: what are the party’s goals and how are you advancing them?

This May First, hundreds of thousands of activists will march through the streets of New York. This won’t be a traditional May Day parade, not even a watered down “Workers Memorial Day”. No, if anything, this “May Day” is more in the nautical vein of “Save us!” On that Sunday, United for Peace and Justice and Abolition 2000 will lead a march down First Avenue, past the United Nations, down 42nd Street and back up to Central Park for a massive rally against the war in Iraq and in favor of complete nuclear disarmament.

It was two years ago, on May 1, 2003, that George Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, thrust his stuffed crotch in the general direction of a salivating press corp and declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. Of course, the war has just gotten bloodier and more hopeless in the ensuing time.

Meanwhile, the United Nations will debate whether to renew the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May. This global agreement, signed long ago, was meant not only to stop the spread of nuclear arms to new countries, but committed the declared nuclear states (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China) to dismantling their own nuclear arsenals. Of course, the U.S. has flagrantly violated this treaty, keeping over 5,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, while the Bush administration publicly contemplates a first use policy against “rogue states” like North Korea and Iran.

The Bush crew alleges that those last two angles of the “Axis of Evil” have nuclear ambitions. Well, why shouldn’t they? The world’s only remaining superpower has true weapons of mass destruction pointed directly at them, just waiting for Bush to press the button. Moreover, the United States’ disrespect for the Non-Proliferation Treaty has inspired Israel to build a huge nuclear arsenal that is the worst kept secret in the world and sworn enemies India and Pakistan to loudly test their own nukes. Russia refuses to decommission its own nuclear weapons until the United States does likewise, leaving the world’s terrorists a handy stockpile of poorly guarded nuclear material.

There is no question that Bill Clinton should have taken advantage of the end of the Cold War and his Democratic majorities in the House and Senate to push the U.S. to finally live up to its treaty obligations and save the world from the nuclear threat. He failed us, and Bush has aggressively made matters worse. There’s a real risk that the nations of the world may abandon even this thin tissue of an agreement to spare the world from our own destruction. This could lead to a real nuclear free-for-all. This is why UFPJ has chosen now to demand a complete abolition of nuclear weapons.

One final point, and that’s that the amount of money that the United States spends every year to service its existing nuclear stockpile (something on the order of $10 billion) is enough money to feed, clothe and house every single person on the planet. Where are our priorities?

That last statistic can be found in a power point presentation, and in other literature, that UFPJ will shortly make available on their website. Please bookmark it, and continue to visit. While you’re there, be sure to donate money to the organization. It takes slightly less than $10 billion to fund an anti-war movement, but you can be sure that they need every penny you can afford to give.

Urban life for the straight guy is apparently quite the minefield these days. With all these homosexuals and metrosexuals running around, pinching bottoms and getting pedicures, a regular guy has to be ever-vigilant, lest an innocent dinner with another regular guy friend end in a mutual suck-fest. Thank goodness for those arbiters of social interactions at the NY Times Style section, who this week shine a light on an act that most adult men have been engaging in for as long as we can remember, but, well, might be a little gay: The Man Date.

Although the term was admittedly coined for the article, it already comes with a lengthy set of definitions and rules:

Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie “Friday Night Lights” is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.

The author if this article, the absurdly named Jennifer 8. Lee, is clearly seeking the cultural cachet of coining a cutesy buzzword that will spread virally until it winds up in your grandparents’ vocabulary and Webster’s dictionary. And for this inauspicious goal she trots out tired old gay panic tropes? The Times deserves to get some letters about this.

Our brothers on the left have been throwing pies at unsavory capitalists and right-wing politicians at least since the days of Abbie Hoffman, but the frequency of such incidents has been trending upwards in the last decade. Perhaps it’s frustration at having our message so thoroughly locked out of the mainstream media, or maybe we’re becoming a bunch of sweet and tender hooligans. Last week was a busy one for the freedom food fighters. The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol got hit in the smacker with an ice cream sandwich at Earlham College on Tuesday, and two days later, Pat Buchanan got a face full of Ceasar dressing at Western Michigan University. The dressing came courtesy of a comrade in the Socialist Party, Sam Mesick.

Perhaps I’m just indulging my general bias against salad dressing (I mean, if I can’t stand having my greens drenched in the crap, I can only imagine how odious it would be to have my person drenched in it; this really is a Golden Rule issue for me), but I don’t think that this was the most effective means of furthering the cause.

Nevermind the fact that the vast right-wing conspiracy is already targeting academia as the last bastion of leftist thought in Bush’s America, and that incidents such as this will just be used to argue that the kids have been brainwashed by those ivory tower commies and they’re all running amuck! No, that’s to be expected. What’s worse is that these incidents make us on the left look like a bunch of incoherent brutes who are trying to shut down speech that we disagree with, without really offering our own alternative. Now, I’ve never met Cde. Mesick, and I’m sure he meant well, but if he managed to actually get on the stage with Buchanan, why couldn’t he have done a banner drop, or heckled or loudly rebutted the speaker. Anything that was more verbal would have gotten a message across better than “Viva La Cause.” What cause? Socialism? Fascism? Paul Newman’s salad dressing? What message was the audience supposed to come away with from that?

This incident reminds me of a visit that George Bush the Elder made to the campus of the University of Hartford in 1999. Two other comrades from the party, Jeff Rabinovici and Scott Jarzombek, took the opportunity to challenge the former President on his decision to invade Iraq and continue the economic sanctions during a Q&A session. Of course, their mic was cut and they got roughed up by the Secret Service for their trouble, but at least there was no mistaking their message, which was articulated clearly and loudly for all to hear.

I wish my brother Sam Mesick a long life on the left and many more opportunities to speak truth to power. I just hope he takes those future opportunities to verbalize his opposition.

As the round-the-clock Pope Deathwatch coverage on the cable news channels shifted from Friday night to early Saturday morning, and the Pontiff stubbornly lived a little longer, I am a little surprised that CNN didn’t change their news banner from “Pope Nears Death” to “Pope: Not Dead Yet” or “Pope: Any Minute Now.”

However, as soon as he passed on (a day after April Fools, alas), the news channels and websites immediately rolled out their long-in-the-can obituaries, and sidebars on pomp and ceremony and Papal bookmaking.

The best so far?

The London Guardian’s obituary notes that the original author of the obit died long before Karol Wojtyla, in 1994 to be precise.

Fox News inevitably credits John Paul II with bringing down Communism. It’s amazing how many people it took to “single-handedly” defeat the Red Menace. Actually, Lech Walesa only gives him half the credit:

“Fifty percent of the collapse of communism is his doing,” Walesa told The Associated Press on Friday. “More than one year after he [visited Poland], we were able to organize 10 million people for strikes, protests and negotiations. Earlier we tried, I tried, and we couldn’t do it. These are facts. Of course, communism would have fallen, but much later and in a bloody way. He was a gift from the heavens to us.”

The Washington Post, in the most incisive and even handed analysis of the promises, disappointments and contradictions of John Paul’s papacy that I have read so far notes:

But over the years, it became less clear if his popularity translated into moral authority. Communism in Poland was an easy, familiar target and his victory was clean. But later in his pontificate, John Paul began to focus on more difficult targets such as capitalism. And here, the will of the people was not always on his side…Ultimately, he was hard to categorize in the American context. The terms liberal and conservative “just don’t apply to him,” said Mary Anne Glendon, the philosopher. He opposed abortion and the death penalty; he was equally passionate about the role of the male priesthood as he was about workers’ rights. Conservatives accepted his teachings on morality but played down his emphasis on social justice and the limits of the free market. Liberals did the opposite. “But you can’t pick and choose,” Glendon said.