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Times Watch for January 7, 2004

WTC Site Dangers: Shopping, Patriotism

     Tuesday's paper offers another slippery, art-school criticism of building plans at the World Trade Center site by its resident architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, a writer with a pretentious style and radical bent who sees danger to American culture if commerce is contracted or patriotism displayed in the resulting WTC structures: "Politicians often believe that they are entitled to public trust without troubling to earn it. So long as they are in charge, the plans will remain a classic study in the rage for self-deception: the defining cultural characteristic of the post-cold-war era. We won! We're the big winners. We can put shopping malls into graveyards, make office buildings dress up for the Fourth of July. Come see a culture implode."

For the rest of Muschamp's hard-to-follow argument, click here.

• Arts | Herbert Muschamp | World Trade Center

Jesus Christ, Big-Government Liberal

     Nicholas Kristof takes Dick Cheney, Howard Dean and George Bush to task for abuse and ignorance of religion in his Wednesday column "The God Gulf." Kristof has this to say about Dean's recent gaffe over the Book of Job: "Dr. Dean bragged to reporters that he knows much about the Bible--and proceeded to say that his favorite New Testament book is Job. Anyone who cites Job as a New Testament book should be scolded not just for religious phoniness but also for appalling ignorance of Western civilization--on a par with Mr. Bush's calling Greeks 'Grecians.'"

     (Actually, the snobby Kristof might be on the hook for appalling ignorance of the Bible as well. "Grecians" is an archaic but perfectly legitimate term to describe people from Greece, and pops up in the King James Version (where admitted Bible-reader Bush may have seen it). As "Doctor Weevil" points out, there are no less than four Biblical references to "Grecians," three in Acts and one in Joel.)

     Later, Kristof approaches Christians the way a broad-minded but wary explorer might investigate a remote Kalahari tribe: "After talking to Mr. Bush's longtime acquaintances, I'm convinced that his religious convictions are deeply felt and fairly typical in the U.S."

     He continues: "Mr. Bush says the jury is still out on evolution, but he has also said that he doesn't take every word in the Bible as literally true. To me, nonetheless, it seems hypocritical of Mr. Bush to claim (as he did in the last campaign) that Jesus is his favorite philosopher and then to finance tax breaks for the rich by cutting services for the poor. If Dr. Dean should read up on Job, Mr. Bush should take a look at the Sermon on the Mount."

     Speaking of hypocrisy--how is that liberal columnists can complain about abuse of religion in politics and then cite Jesus to argue against tax cuts?

For the rest of Kristof's column, click here.

• Bible | George W. Bush | Columnists | Howard Dean | Nicholas Kristof | Religion

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org