LAND OF THE PILGRIM'S PRIDE:

‘Radical chic’ and the hip hustle (Suzanne Fields, 10/21/04, Jewish World Review)

The hottest of the hot buttons on the body politic of the New York liberal is George W.'s faith. Ron Suskind, writing in the New York Times Sunday magazine, leads with a quotation comparing the president's mainstream Methodist faith with that of the Islamist fundamentalists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. [...]

The skeptics who complain about the president's faith are people of faith, too - but usually faith in real estate, from the snazzy lofts in SoHo to the gentrified Upper West Side condos with monthly fees that could dent the federal deficit. But there's another New York made up of immigrants, especially Latinos and Asians, who exude energy and hustle (and often faith much like the president's).

When a young man I know bought a television set at 7 on Saturday night, he asked if it could be delivered immediately. He lived 10 blocks away, but up five floors in a building without an elevator. If he could pay cash, the clerk knew two enterprising Latinos who would pick up and deliver for $60. When the young man arrived at his apartment a half-hour later, the young men were waiting at the door with the TV set.

Two grocery stores on the street below are owned by Koreans, open around the clock, with fresh vegetables, flowers and nearly everything else. They're friendly and chatty as though they've taken a course at a reputable charm school. Indians across the street serve kosher and vegan, and don't see anything weird in faith, by a president or anyone else. What a city. What a country.

Ms Fields is a bit behind the times--the new argument of the Left is not that the President is too religious but that he isn't religious at all. The funniest bit in that article is the notion that because Jimmy Carter made personal witness to his foreign guests he was more of an evangelist than the President, whose every major speech is a sermon, whose policies are transfering government funds to churches, and whose foreign and domestic policies are the mandatum novum lived by the nation.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 21, 2004 8:46 AM