“The short answer is ‘no’, David is not our ‘token’ conservative.  Our policy at the Times is to hire the best writers and the best thinkers out there.  David is certainly one of the best columnists writing today.  And besides, David is not really that conservative. For gosh sakes, he was at one time even excited about Barack Obama becoming President, even if it was only for a very brief time.  I will admit to a kind of tokenism of a different sort. Before we hired David, the editors and myself had decided that to add some diversity to our panel of columnists, we should try to find at least one writer who was not pompous, condescending, and altogether full of himself, just to counterbalance to some degree all the other writers at the Times.  Luckily we found David who fit the bill on all accounts.”

©Obamabeans 04/05/2013

In a major editorial today in The New York Times, the editors congratulated Pope Francis on his election and urged him to quickly take steps to modernize the Church and to begin to make the Church once again relevant in modern society.  Specifically they asked the new Pope to implement the following actions:

• Abandon celibacy as a requirement for the priesthood, while limiting sexual partners to no more than three a day.
• Actively promote abortion as a lifestyle decision.
• Promote the use of contraceptives.
• Embrace homosexuality, except for existing priests who may have been in the closet for years. These priests should be defrocked.
• Formally state that marriage can be between any number of people, any sex, any age, and any species.
• Rename Christmas Kwanzaa.
• Commit to making the next Pope a woman; immediately raise the number of woman priests, bishops, and archbishops to over 50% of the total, even if it means ordaining non-Christian women.
• Accept Islam as equal or superior to Christianity.
• Apologize to all people, living or dead, who may not have liked the Catholic Church, including Maureen Dowd.
• Embrace any other items on the Democratic Party Platform not previously mentioned.

Recognizing the power of tradition which has been present for centuries in the Catholic Church, The Times’ editors stated that the clergy could keep their robes and funny hats but wear them only on holidays.

If the new Pope is willing to make these changes, The Times then recommends he immediately take the following actions to modernize the image of the Church:

• Deliver Mass wearing sandals and a t-shirt.
• Make numerous appearances on Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, and The View.
• Schedule numerous photo ops with the Pope skiing in the Alps and windsurfing in the Caribbean.
• Take up skeet shooting as a hobby and occasionally golf with Tiger Woods.
• Vacation at George Clooney’s villa in the south of Italy.
• Date a supermodel and give her free run of the Vatican.
• Make sure the supermodel presents the award for Best Picture at the Oscars.
• Excommunicate Paul Ryan.
• Nominate President Obama for sainthood.

To encourage the new Pope to quickly take these actions, Maureen Dowd, columnist for The Times, has agreed to quit sending hate mails to the Pope and stop circulating anonymous emails containing a picture of a well known porn star with the Pope’s face superimposed.

The Times editors noted that some critics might say that, if these changes were implemented, the Catholic Church would be no different than the Episcopalians; the editors then iterated that the priests get to keep their robes and funny hats.

©Obamabeans 03/14/2013