Dana Periono as a Nixon girl

   Dana has a new book. She has charmed me a little withg her interview on NPR couple days ago where she let the world know she would shoot a bird under the lectern to members of the White House Press Corps if she thought they were preening too much.


     Changed font on her. Her book comes along about the same time I've had repeated views of Johnny Cash and June Carter, Joaquin and Resse in the masterpiece of a movie Inherent Vice. The first song in the credits may trump Wingin my Way of the Movie "W"; Josh Brolin stars in both. I imainge Dana has seen both.


     Reese is a Nixon girl in Inherent Vice. I can see a little of Dana in the Rese role. It's just a great movie.


    I knew a Nixon girl at Furman, Harry Dent's daughter, Dolly. She was prettier than Dana, On their best days, Dolly is the homecoming Queen and Dana the head cheerleader; thgouh as perky and tarty as Dana is, I imagine Dolly has more integrity. Although I have my Marshall Frady exceptions to Billy Graham, I do respect Dolly for naming her first son Graham for the evangelist.


   Dolly's sister Ginny tells a good story in her  tribute to their father Harry, who was Nixon's southern strategist. It's about the time she took the train up to D.C. from Columbia S.C. and met Pat Nixon in the hall of the White House on a saturday and in her jeans in the Nixon white house was terrified.


   So Republican grirls tell good stories; and Barbara Bsuh joke to the Columbia Rotary Club inlate 90s was one of the best I ever read about.


    And then George W came to Furman for commencement, my and Marshall Frady's alma mater, but that story doesn fit in this blog.


     Dana is a charm but a little too cute by half for the good of the country. She is a better person than Anne Coulter I have to imagine, then, who isn't.


     Dan knows all the Bush women are pro-choice. So I don't but all the dissembling she and Coulter do on that subject. At every event on her book tour Dana should be challenged with the Christine Stansell examination of the politics of abortion which makes compelling case it is chock full of "mendacity"; just like thte fundamentalist takeovero fhte Southern Baptist Convention without whcih there most likely was no Bush 43 as Presidnet of the Unisted States and no national platform for Ms Perino.


  So own it Dana; you got ther by "mendacity"; not a family value.  See Robert Wuthnow's Rough Country and the Thomas Powers nybooks.com Oct 9 print issue review.

The Mohler Bonhoeffer Interview

  Recently Al Mohler interviewed Charles Marsh regarding the Marsh biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Fascinating interview by a seminary President who benifitted from the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention at the expense of the author's father, a former pastor of 2nd Ponce DeLeon BC in Atlanta, and the author's uncle Fisher Humphreys, a Baptist theologian.
    In my view Mohler is a lot like Doug Hudgins, a man Charles Marsh wrote about in his provocative piece on Civil Rights, God's Long Summer. And Marsh's father, Robert, testified to his diaconate at 2nd Ponce on the devil's work done by fundamentalists in the SBC which Mohler now champions.
    Bob Marsh piece is an easy google for don't blow smoke on my blue skies.
    I cannot reconcile Mohler's career in the SBC with Bonhoeffer's views on the politics of stupidity Marsh highlights on page 341 of the biography.
     The two of them have made covenant to talk again, the next venue possible at University of Virginia. In the interim I hope both of them have mastered a conversational knowledge of Robert Wuthnow's Rough Country, framed in Bonhoeffer's thoughts on the politics of stupidity.
   Stay tuned.