Did you know our President, Barack Obama, just hate-hate-hates the Catholics? No, you say? Well did you know the Catholics want to burn him alive at the stake for his love of dead fetuses and arugula? So you’re telling me they don’t want to? Then what in the wide wide world of Christardia was all that fuss over B-Rock’s apparently ‘fair-minded’, ‘life-affirming’, and ‘completely non-heretical’ commencement address at Notre Dame? What’s that, you say: The Pope didn’t explode?

We can understand that the media has a lot of time and space to kill and fill, what with all the missing white girls, killer viruses, and Janine Garofalos running around all willy-nilly; they can’t help themselves! However, here is the stupidest thing I’ve encountered thus far in the whole affair, coming from none other than an organization called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (which is briefly featured in the plot of “Angels & Demons”):

Nancy Dallavalle
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Religious Studies at Fairfield University

“Barack Obama did exactly the right thing yesterday, by saying nothing new. Instead, he demonstrated, by his patient, self-critical, and inclusive style, how fit he is to lead our nation forward. Obama does not intend to lead Catholic America, he intends to lead an America in which being Catholic can matter. He job today was not to lose, and to let someone else win.

That winner is Catholic America and yes, Notre Dame. In Fr. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s energetic, thoughtful President, engaged Catholics have seen in action what an honest and faith-filled Catholic leader can accomplish. His remarks served as the unblinking lighthouse at the crossroads laid by Obama, and it is probably significant that this leadership for Catholic America is found in the broad plains of the Midwest, not the parochial enclaves of Boston or Brooklyn or Baltimore.”

Where to even begin…

The first paragraph is okay, slightly below average for the rhetorical skills at the disposal of an Associate Professor & Chair (even if it is one of those abstinence-only freak farms), but the trouble begins with that last sentence: “He job today was not to lose, and to let someone else win.” The obvious typo aside, this is a truly baffling statement; how does one “not lose” while at the same time “let someone else win”? Is this a Catholic koan, a la ‘what is the sound of one lobe functioning‘?

And it gets worse from there, as the dreaded mixed metaphor rears its ugly head, calling into question Prof. Dallavalle’s ability to reason in an adult fashion. The trouble lies in her mismatch of nautical v. rail imagery. Where in the fuck do you encounter a lighthouse when you’re on a train? Vice versa? Is the train also a submarine powered by the tears of a nuclear papal eunuch? I have no clue.

Furthermore, doesn’t the term “unblinking lighthouse” imply that the normal oscillatory movement of the revolving light source has, in fact, (A) ceased? Does that not also imply (B) that she knowingly called the President of Notre Dame a broken lighthouse? Will she (C) be fired for this? Again, no clue.

Perhaps the best is saved for last. When Dallavalle assaults the