Providence Journal columnist M. Charles Bakst has gone out on a limb--by which I mean he wrote an eminently sensible and correct column about the latest local erosion of our democratic values, which is more or less the same thing nowadays. Perhaps the damage done is not particularly bad in this instance, but (insert apt metaphors: slippery slopes, stalactites and stalagmites, the Grand Canyon, etc.).

This time, it's the Governor's wife, with the chisel, at the Wall of Church and State.

Sue Carcieri held a pleasant prayer service for the forced-birth contingent. It's not so seemingly earth-shattering in itself, prayer services being wildly popular in that demographic, to which she also belongs, and to which she has every right to belong if she so chooses. The problem is that this was a prayer service with a political agenda attached that was held in the State House.

Bakst quotes attendee Joanne McOsker, president of Catholics for Life, as saying that the purpose of this "Rosary for Life" service was "to end abortion and to establish the teachings of Christ in our government." Jesus Christ Almighty, indeed!

To paraphrase Emeril Lagasse, there ain't no First Amendment police comin' after you when you do this. ('Tis a crying shame.) But, bless his heart, he was offended. Yes, offended! Like any real American patriot should be when our democratic and Constitutional values are threatened on scales large or small.

You've got to give a shit about something to be offended by it, and for fuck's sake, it's a damn fine thing to see someone give a shit about the separation of church and state and strongly say so in print. It's been absent for too long, while we've lost so much, while so few were noticing. Theocracy sucks; ask an Afghani.

Of course, the media should have been engaged in the Giving of the Rat's Ass on this all a-fucking-long, but have been sanitized and pansified by brickbats and browbeatings from the corporate types and the evangelical screechers. The profession that should be taking its cues from All the President's Men instead cowers before the vitrolic verbiage of knownothings and nutbags. The people's government watchdog watches not, but assumes the Lewinsky position before the greedheads whose greenbacks buy the fucking government. 

Pansified? Pansy-ified? Well, you know what I mean. Anyway: Get a spine, you lily-livered douchebags! Take some cues from Mr. M. here. He's a moderate. He's so freaking moderate, it's boring. Cutting-edge controversy doesn't seem to be his thing. The smart money in Vegas says that something M. Charles says probably ain't gonna be radical.

In addition, he doesn't look like the kind of guy I'd want at my back in a gang brawl behind a Dumpster in an alley (no offense, Chuck, and no, that doesn't happen all that often, sheesh...). Yet he's got more cojones than the whole staff of Fox News. And Fox News fucking offends me, the tools.

Take that! And that!

Offense: It's Not Just for Wingnuts Anymore. We the people can use it too.

Randomly offending Sean Hannity (the tool): http://intellectualize.org/images/hannity-book15.jpg
http://www.hereinreality.com/hannity/douchebag.jpg
http://www.image-hosting.net/images/messageboard/makincopies/hannity.jpg
http://www.peteykins.com/images/FarkDec03/Hannity.jpg

Cuz nuthin's more fun than a snark attack.