And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, Editor Emeritus

... that concomitant with the refrain that America’s poor continue to get poorer and the world’s poor poorer still comes word that the newest scary movie, Jurassic World, grossed $511 million over the first weekend of its showing.
I will wait, in vain, I fear, for the first citation of how many poor folks that amount of money could feed, as often happens when a corporation discloses its yearly earnings.
Why spend money on a film that is fantasy and appeals to those who still believe in the bogeyman? To escape, we are told.
This morning’s daily included an article on the sports page that a professional football team had agreed to pay a lineman $10 million a year for four years, and another player $7 million a year for five years. Amid the constant harping on the need for income redistribution, who is going to make the motion that that amount of money should be divided and shared with a thousand or so poor folks?
Equally often heard is the claim that people of color and foreigners without U.S. citizenship are discriminated against financially. But a professional basketball championship is being decided, and it is hard to find anyone who does not fit into those categories among the well-paid athletes on those teams. Shouldn’t they share?
Professional baseball is nearing its all-star break. Latino names dominate rosters, both foreign born and American citizens. Infielders who are batting .250 and pitchers who have records below .500 are earning millions. In other words, three-fourths or half the time they fail. Heart surgeons are well paid, but if only one operation in four was a success, would that income level be maintained?
Multi-millionaire Hollywood leftists are among those who loudly decry the high salaries of corporate executives. But if their latest movie flops, they just make another, and hope for better results. The CEO whose company goes bankrupt is probably gone.
It all depends on whose ox is being gored, doesn’t it?
Yesterday, June 14, was Flag Day. Today, June 15, is the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta. That’s the 1215 document which first put limits on the previously unlimited power of kings. And it provided the basis for the Bill of Rights at the founding of the United States. Since FDR and the depression, those precepts are increasingly disappearing. Maybe it is time to refresh the thoughts of our founding.
Timing in life, they say, is everything.
As the current pope was issuing his encyclical on climate change, I was finishing John Cornwell’s book, Hitler’s Pope, the Secret History of Pius XII, published by Viking in 1999. That pope was accused of conflating politics with pastoral affairs as Hitler came to power in Germany.