Mother Inferior

Obama attack ads are drawing attention to John McCain’s association with Mother Teresa crony Charles Keating – in retaliation for attacks on Obama’s relationship with a preacher and a former urban guerrilla of the Weatherman tendency.

In the 1980s, Keating, a devout Catholic, ran a savings and loans company, which attracted funds from thousands of working-class people impressed by his claim to be motivated not by greed but by religious zeal. Actually, Keating was a liar who specialised in fleecing the poor. He embezzled more than $250 million from the company. Many savers were left penniless after having worked all their lives.
Arizona senator McCain intervened repeatedly in the case, urging investigators not to press charges: Keating had been a contributor to his campaigns. Now, at a time of meltdown and malice, McCain’s lobbying for the con-man isn’t playing well with Middle America.
But McCain wasn’t as close to the fraudster as Teresa. Even after Keating was rumbled, she reckoned that his vigorous support for the “pro-life” movement outweighed all other factors. As well, Keating had deposited more than a million dollars of the loot in her account. When the LA district attorney’s office, trying to recover funds to make a pay-out to victims, asked for the stolen money back, she point-blank refused, quipping that the wad had now become “God’s money.”
After Keating’s conviction, Teresa wrote to Judge Ito (the chap from the first OJ trial), begging him to go easy on her benefactor. She later sent Keating a crucifix blessed by John Paul to hang in the cell where he was serving 10 years.
The Albanian wrinkly, who died in 1997, is already a Blessed, fast-tracked to the threshold of saintdom by her great admirer, John Paul II, on the basis of a reputed miracle – the recovery from a stomach tumour of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, after a locket with a picture of the nun had been rubbed on her body.
Monica’s doctor, Ranjan Kumar Mustafi, insists that the recovery was down to medicine. “She had a medium-sized tumour in her lower abdomen caused by tuberculosis. Anti-tubercular drugs eventually reduced the cystic mass and it disappeared after a year’s treatment. Talk of a miracle is just nonsense.”
But what would doctors know?
The pertinent point is this: given that higher standards are expected from saints than from US presidents, if association with Keating makes McCain unworthy of election, surely the same consideration should make Teresa a no-no as far as canonisation is concerned?
Catholics opposed to theft from the poor should speak out now.

Bono may be set to try to justify his role in campaigns on world hunger in a public debate.
The singer’s endorsement of Bush, Blair, Brown etc. has helped shield the global elite from responsibility for humanitarian crises. Now he has challenged US rock journalist Dave March to a debate on the matter.
Marsh, editor of the newsletter Rock And Rap Confidential, met Bono in the Merrion Hotel after a Springsteen RDS show in the summer. “Round the corner of the couch came a man dressed in a ginger suit with ginger hair, possibly the recent victim of some surgery but nonetheless recognizable as Bono Himself... He spewed out theories, analyses, opinions and attitudes... We were kind of dumbfounded that he was living out such a perfect caricature of himself.”
Asked what he was working on, Marsh replied, “Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about celebrity politics and how ineffective they are...’ Bono declared: ‘I think I know something about that. And you’re dead wrong... I think we should have a debate about this, Dave. A public debate.’”
It seems this wasn’t a casual remark but a serious proposition. “The next night, Bono told my wife, ‘Tell Dave not to forget about our debate.’”
Later, Marsh contacted U2’s New York office. “(They) took a couple weeks to get back and then said that the debate would happen after the band completed recording its new album.” The album’s release is now scheduled for January. The debate in February, then, or March?
I wonder could we persuade Sir Geldof also to take part? This would leave a slot open for a seconder on Marsh’s side. I am sure I could locate a willing volunteer.

Shortly before he passed away on October 11, Danny Cassidy emailed me: “America is a bad place to die if you’re poor.”
The college Danny lectured in went bankrupt in January as a result of ill-advised property deals. He lost his job, his pension and his insurance cover. Later the same month, he found he had incurable cancer.
Danny was a New Yorker living in San Francisco, a singer, musician, academic, socialist, union activist and much more. His passion in his last years was to win recognition of the influence of Irish on American street slang. His book, The Secret Language of the Crossroads: How the Irish Invented Slang, seemed to me to have established his unlikely thesis.
He was wonderful company, brimming with optimism, full of life to the end. The last time I saw him was the summer of 2007, when we rampaged around Derry for a rollicking day. We talked a couple of times a week by email, recommending books and records to one another, exchanging jokes, reporting on acquaintances, slagging off this one, hailing some other as a hero. I’d met him first at a music festival in San Francisco 15 or so years ago. In all, I suppose, we were only in company a dozen or so times. But he was one of my best and dearest friends. I will miss him more than I can say.
So long (Slán), Danny.