God Swill 40 Days Later

I first pointed out Sarah Palin’s “Pentecostal problem” forty days and forty nights ago in “God Swill.” (August 31.)

According to recent prayers, she won’t be bothering Palin

Nice biblical number, that.

And now mighty TIME Magazine has noticed, a mere 39 days later. So, I guess it really WAS a story after all.

Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem?

By Amy Sullivan Thursday, Oct. 09, 2008

If conservative columnist William Kristol is to be believed, Sarah Palin is surprised that her own campaign hasn’t made a bigger deal out of the controversial remarks of Barack Obama’s former pastor. The relationship between Obama and Jeremiah Wright is, according to Palin, fair game in the presidential campaign because it speaks to the question of the Democratic candidate’s character. “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more,” Kristol, writing in the New York Times, quoted Palin as telling him.

John McCain’s campaign aides could probably answer that question for Palin. The ink on Kristol’s column had barely dried before they were on the phone to political reporters declaring that the GOP nominee had long believed it would be inappropriate to raise the Wright issue. But McCain’s current sensitivity is much more related to his running mate’s own pastor problems than to any newfound campaign honor code.

Palin’s religious background must initially have been seen as a positive to McCain campaign vetters, who assumed that her faith would appeal to the conservative base of the party that has always been suspicious of McCain. But ever since she joined the ticket in late August, the Alaska governor’s various religious affiliations have caused headaches.  First came reports that her pastor at the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church was connected to Jews for Jesus, an organization that seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. Prominent Jewish leaders, including the co-chair of McCain’s Jewish outreach effort, have since demanded to know whether Palin also believes that Jews must be converted. The Bible Church became an issue again when Katie Couric asked Palin about the church’s promotion of a program to help gays “overcome” their homosexuality.

And finally, a videotape surfaced of a 2005 service at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, the Pentecostal church that Palin attended for most of her life… [MORE]

Hey! They’re getting faster.

My May 1980 HUSTLER cover article on Herpes was followed with TIME’s cover story, written by John Leo and Maureen Dowd* “HERPES — Today’s Scarlet Letter,” on August 2, 1982. It was their best selling issue of that year. And I understand the gap. Dowd was, after all, always a bit of a prude. Still. TWO YEARS?

[* Yeah, THAT Maureen Dowd, presently a New York Times columnist.]

August 2, 1982

Of course, MY horrible article for that horrible magazine relied on some of the first interviews with CDC and Harvard Medical School on herpes and was “responsible” in a Public Health sense by carefully NOT inducing panic. The worst epidemiological crisis, public health professionals will tell you, is when you induce a panic element into the proceedings, as happened when the anthrax scare showed up, and there was a run on the antibiotics to take human anthrax out … (a drug whose name escapes me at the moment, cephalexin? Something like that.)

May 1980

TIME decided to take the “mature” approach:

The New Scarlet Letter (Behavior / Cover Story)
Herpes, an incurable virus, threatens to undo the sexual revolution

by John Leo
August 2, 1982

After chastity slouched off into exile in the ’60s, the sexual revolution encountered little resistance. Indeed, in the age of the Pill, Penthouse Pets and porn-movie cassettes, the revolution looked so sturdily permanent that sex seemed to subside into a simple consumer item. Now, suddenly, the old fears and doubts are edging back. So is the fire and brimstone rhetoric of the Age of Guilt. The reason for all this dolor: herpes, an ancient viral infection that can be transmitted during sex, recurs fitfully and cannot be cured. Also known as the scourge, the new Scarlet Letter, the VD of the Ivy League and Jerry Falwell’s revenge, herpes has emerged from relative obscurity and exploded into a full-fledged epidemic.

Spurred on by two decades of sexual permissiveness, the disease has cut swiftly through the ranks of the sexually active. “The truth about life in the United States in the 1980s,” says Dr. Kevin Murphy of Dallas, one of the nation’s leading herpes researchers, “is that if you are going to have sex, you are going to have to take the risk of getting herpes.” An estimated 20 million Americans now have genital herpes, with as many as half a million new cases expected this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. [... MORE]

and at the end:

Reported by Maureen Dowd/New York with other bureaus

AND

With reporting by Maureen Dowd

I always thought that TIME was irresponsible as hell in running that story in that configuration. But it WAS their best-selling magazine issue that year, after all. 480 letters. (Most probably in crayon.)

So, I suggest you compare “God Swill” with “Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem?” and see if one approach isn’t aimed at helping you understand what’s going on, and one approach isn’t cheapjack sensationalist and superficial. Gee, I wonder which is which?

Some things never change, I guess.

So, from more than two years behind me to mere a month and a fortnight behind is a definite improvement for those crack journalists at TIME. At this rate, they should be even with me sometime around 2024.

Don’t hold your breath.

Courage.