What's Tony Thinking

At Week’s End, 12/6/24

Ezra Klein had a great interview with Rahm Emmanuel this week. He was Obama’s chief-of-staff, but before that the architect of bringing the Democrats back after their 2004 thumping. Klein asked Emmanuel if had the same job again in the wake of the 2024 defeat — that of recruiting candidates to run for Congress in 2026 — what kind of person he would be looking for. “Independent” was his answer.

By which he meant candidates who aren’t afraid to challenge the group think of the Democratic Party. Then look for people in the mold of our Washington Congressional member, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who commented about the Biden pardon in our next item.

MGP on the Biden Pardon. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who just won a close reelection to her seat in Washington state wrote, “President Biden’s pardon of his son confirms a common belief I hear in Southwest Washington: that well-connected people are often gifted special treatment by a two-tier justice system,” she said. “The President made the wrong decision. No family should be above the law.”

Help us improve: please complete this review. Good piece on the maddening, never-ending requests for reviews, feedback, “give us your opinion,” etc. 

Writes Eric Taub, “Whether you’ve bought detergent or just had a colonoscopy, every store, website, health care provider, airline, credit card company, hotel and car dealership wants to know if you’re satisfied, how they could improve and whether you’ll recommend them.

“Fueled by the ease of responding online, our inboxes are now clogged with multiple requests per day for five-star ratings and glowing reviews. And today no transaction, however mundane, comes without a plea for feedback. Drivers who retrieve their cars from the valet at the Residence Inn in Berkeley, Calif., immediately receive a text message asking, ‘How was your valet parking experience?’ The simple act of delivering a parked car now becomes an ‘experience’ that needs to be rated.”

Meanwhile over at the Mockingbird site in a piece titled “Notes from the (Crumbling) Ivory Tower,” Todd Brewer shares some telling observations from his participation at this year’s joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical Literature, i.e. the academics who study religion in all its forms along with those who specialize in Biblical texts.

While noting how slimmed down this big event has become over the years since he first went in 2008, Brewer also notes how much of contemporary “scholarship” is driven by social-political agendas and the need to appear relevant to the same. Here’s Brewer:

“Walking around the many book stalls that demanded I care about the urgency of the present moment, I couldn’t help but wonder about the current state of theological academia. I wondered if anyone is actually buying these books, and will those who do have their minds changed? I doubt it.

“Perhaps it was inevitable that scholars chase clicks like the rest of the media world, but groundbreaking research with lasting impact takes years, if not decades to produce. I noted the irony that we who have been trained in elite institutions to analyze ancient texts seem ill-equipped to meet the ethical challenges of today with anything more than the wisdom of past news cycles. But most of all, I wondered whether we scholars have traded our birthright for a bowl of porridge, exchanging the pursuit of the truth for a relevance that might itself expedite the decline.”

In important respects the job of the church, and the scholars who serve it, is to challenge what contemporary society has determined to be “relevant.”

Should people shoot CEO’s? Of course not. But the frustration that leads to murderous feelings is hardly beyond comprehension. Several years ago I was getting every claim denied by Delta Dental and was on the phone trying to understand why. I happened to look up what the CEO of that company was being paid. Somewhere north of $20 million annually, as I recall.

CEO’s didn’t always feel entitled to princely sums. Recently I read a story (can’t recall where) about Newton, Iowa, once home of Maytag washing machines. Fred Maytag Jr., the CEO made a low six figure salary and lived in a home in Newton not markedly different from the people in the plant who made a good middle class living. Then the plant closed and the jobs went to Mexico. And Newton, Iowa became a ghost town.

We get to spend the weekend with three of our grandchildren, Levi, Lila and Olive. Should be fun. Hope you have a good weekend and a blessed Second Sunday of Advent with Advent’s featured attraction, John the Baptist, who comes proclaiming the good news of repentance. There is a new possibility because God makes it so in the coming One, the Light who shines in the darkness.