Eureka, wrote the Timesman

Just because I like it when Fr. Richard John Neuhaus approaches his computer keyboard in a droll mood:

"Our parish newspaper, the New York Times, goes back and forth between portraying evangelicals as the Snopes family of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, on the one hand, and as Machiavellian theocratic crusaders, on the other. In the Times Magazine this week, the cover story is about the Machiavellians—meaning mainly Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and James Dobson of Focus on the Family—and how they are losing their grip with the no longer easily led evangelical hordes. The story is titled “The Evangelical Crackup.”

The story is written by David D. Kirkpatrick. He is a decent fellow who was assigned by the Times some years ago to cover “the conservative beat.” It seems the word somehow managed to penetrate the ideological bubble in which the editors live that, out there in America, there are a lot of people who think of themselves as conservatives. They even have organizations such as think tanks and political action committees, and some of them are very effective at communicating what appear to be ideas. So the editors sent out Mr. Kirkpatrick as their scout to discover why the natives are so restless."