Misanthropes of a feather. . . .

Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.

Jane Craig: No. It's awful.

* * *

FOR SOME REASON, that Holly Hunter scene from Broadcast News came to mind when I was taking a look at Kathy Shaidle's Relapsed Catholic blog this morning:

I spent the first 20 years of my life trying to get away from losers like this...

Growing up in Hamilton, Ontario, they were unavoidable. They hated their factory jobs, never stopped bitching about how bad off they were, getting paid a zillion dollars a year plus extravagent benefits to hit something with a hammer for 7 hours a day.

Then when the company goes out of business they all whine -- but they hated their jobs anyway, so what are they bitching about? Get a new job, loser. You were so greedy for money you went to work at the factory rather than go to college. That's your problem, not the government's. Shouldn't have spent all your money on lottery tickets and Cheetos.

Thank God someone has the nerve to fisk them...

OF COURSE, the "someone" Kathy refers to is Rush Limbaugh, whose advice to the most pathetic hard cases invariably reads like a Dear Abby column . . . as interpreted in the classic John Prine song:

Unhappy, Unhappy, you have no complaint
You are what you are,
and you ain't what you ain't
So listen up Buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood

Laid off from your factory job after 25 years? Get a new one!

Retired on disability but then had your company go bust and a third of your pension disappear along with your health insurance? America is the greatest place on earth! Quit your whining and take care of your own damn self!

Rush just wishes that all these "losers," as Kathy so quaintly put it, would just go away. Would just stop bothering those who have already gotten theirs. Would just learn to shift for themselves . . . it's The American Way!

That's Limbaugh's laissez-faire conservatism in a nutshell: Leave me alone. Shift for yourself. Am I my brother's keeper?

It's as old as Abel and Cain. Yahweh saw through it then, and Jesus saw through it later. You would think someone who calls her blog Relapsed Catholic would see through it today. But at least Kathy's honest enough to be in the process of renaming her blog to take out the "Catholic" part.

Apparently, the Beatitudes and the parable of the Good Samaritan aren't the only problems she has with the Church.

OF COURSE, you have to admit that Limbaugh is a funny, bright and entertaining guy. He can be quite convincing, so long as you can ignore your brother -- and that small, still voice nagging at you in the back of your superego. The gospel, after all, is a stumbling block to clever bloggers and radio hosts, and pure foolishness to laissez-faire economic theorists.

That's why I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh . . . haven't in a long time. I want to get to Heaven when I croak, and seductive "I got mine; screw you" propaganda on the radio is a stumbling block on the road between Where I Was and Where I Want to Be.

And the sooner I realize that we're all "losers" -- liable to get just as much mercy as we give -- the quicker I can travel down that gospel highway.