An Obituary for the Culture Wars
By Richard John Neuhaus
Friday, June 1, 2007

I returned last Tuesday from a week in Rome, which is always an instructive, and frequently an edifying, experience. From numerous conversations over leisurely meals with Vatican officials, one gets the impression of quiet satisfaction with the pontificate of Benedict XVI after the first two years. The reference is regularly to the first two years, reflecting an operative assumption that this may yet be a long pontificate, although he turned eighty last month. There is regular reference to Leo XIII, who died at ninety-three. But I will reserve further impressions from the trip for “The Public Square” in the next issue of First Things.

Jet lag is getting no easier with the passing years. I was feeling quite discombobulated Tuesday evening and so pulled out a DVD that was recommended to me with the promise that it would make no intellectual demands. A Face in the Crowd is a 1957 film directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg, starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal. Griffith is Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a no-good lay-about with singing and comedic talents who is catapulted to national fame and influence. Drunk with power, and with drink, he joins in the evil machinations of right-wing capitalists to elect their ambitious tool, a Senator Fuller, as president of the United States. the rest