GOP Pundit Kathleen Parker Tells Boys Club To Lay Off Women | Cardinal Dolan Embraces GOP Anti-Woman Platform

Pauline Van Der Cruysse, Zhu Lin | Michelle du Xuan | L’Officiel China September 2012

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Frank Rich on Nora Ephron

‘When Harry Met Sally’ writer Nora Ephron stunned the culture world by up and dying — without saying a word to her closest friends.

Frank Rich writes an in-depth profile on Ephron for New York Magazine, saying:

At Alice Tully, it was Meryl Streep who directly addressed the unspoken truth that “we’ve all been ambushed” by her death. “She didn’t like surprises, except happy ones,” Streep said of Nora while fighting back tears. “And she didn’t want ever to be caught unawares. But she really did catch us napping. She pulled a fast one on all of us. And it’s really stupid to be mad at somebody who died, but somehow I have managed it.” Finding that she had been on Nora’s “Exit” list of speakers, Streep said, left her feeling “so privileged and so pissed off and so honored and so inept all at the same time that I can’t help thinking that this is exactly what she intended.”

Kathleen Parker to GOP: Lay Off American Women

Illustration by Dress Code. Source Photos: John Giustina / Getty images (shirt & tie); Rubberball / Getty Images (Blonde Hair); Fotosearch / Getty Images (Suit); Emmanuel Dunand, AFP / Getty Images (Romney); John Adkisson / Getty Images (Ryan) via The Daily BeastRepublican conservative Kathleen Parker asks the question out loud that many Americans are quietly pondering: “What the *#@% is wrong with Republicans?!”

It’s always best when a family member delivers the chiding remarks, rather than the opposition. Parker speaks for the majority of Americans, based on every poll that we know about, when she slams Missouri congressman and Senate candidate Todd Akin, who spent all last week in the hot seat for his stupendously stupid remarks that the female reproductive system shuts down in cases of “legitimate rape”, preventing a woman from getting pregnant.

“Taken in isolation, his comments might have been only a blip in the news cycle”, writes Parker. “But his timing was, shall we say, immaculate, coinciding with GOP platform committee meetings and Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate. The platform includes one of Ryan’s signature issues—a human life amendment to the Constitution that could preclude abortion even for rape or incest. And Ryan, in addition to being the party’s budget genie, happens to have coauthored with Akin legislation seeking to redefine rape as “forcible” (as opposed to statutory) as a way of limiting public spending on abortion.”

Cardinal Dolan Sides With Republican Boys Club

In case one had any doubt that the top priority of America’s Catholic church is to take full control of women’s bodies, note that Cardinal Dolan is scheduled to deliver the closing prayer at the Republican convention in Tampa.

True, someone has to do it — but at this moment in America’s battle over women’s bodies, there is no more divisive symbol of patriarchal power than Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

Writer David Gibson, representing the Religion News Service published a piece citing Michael O’Loughlin’s views expressed on America magazine, a Jesuit weekly.

“Cardinal Dolan’s appearance in Tampa will damage the church’s ability to be a moral and legitimate voice for voiceless, as those who view the Catholic Church as being a shill for the GOP have just a bit more evidence to prove their case,” O’Loughlin concluded.

Gibson finds only one precedent in which a member of the Catholic hierarchy flew to a political convention out of his district. In 1972 Philadelphia Cardinal John Krol attended the Republican convention that nominated Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Traditionally, the bishop of a host convention city does deliver a prayer at some point in the event.

Pro-life columnist Kathryn Lopez writes a contrary view that Cardinal Dolan is merely responding to a higher calling than politics, in backing Romney. She reminds us that Cardinal Dolan recently invited President Obama to the annual Al Smith dinner as an act of civility in the midst of his lawsuit against the Obama administration over abortion rights and access to contraception.

Related at America magazine: In Praise of Radical Feminists by Kevin McCardle