In an economic wasteland, zealots still make a living

Hearne Watch, Week 1

Last week, Sprint hung up on 8,000 workers, Union Station tied a bunch of its employees to the tracks and the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department warned that we’d be a Gotham without a Batman if cops got laid off.

But in late January, Peter Rugg broke the story that laid-off Kansas City Star gossip columnist Hearne Christopher Jr. planned to hang his shingle at Sun Publications (Plog: “Hearne’s back,” January 23). “I think he’s cool,” Sun publisher and fellow indefatigable blowhard Steve Rose told Rugg. “I think he’s one of the best writers in Kansas City.” You heard the man, Kansas City. Kick off your job-search shoes, sit back with a bottle of $8 muscat, and join us in awaiting the arrival of Hearne 2.0.

Pope-a-Dope

Pope Benedict XVI‘s recent decision to de-excommunicate four priests has a connection to Kansas City, David Martin notes in his January 26 Plog, “Pope embraces schism with Platte City address.” The priests belong to the Society of Pius X, which has its U.S. headquarters in Platte City.

A French archbishop named Marcel Lefebvre founded the society in 1970 as a response to reforms adopted during the Second Vatican Council. Against Rome’s orders, Lefebvre offered Mass in Latin. In 1988, he consecrated four priests as bishops, which led to his and their excommunication.

A defiant Lefebvre, who died in 1991, said the Vatican was filled with anti-Christs who were “in the process of destroying the church.” Lefebvre and his followers were especially critical of the church’s efforts to find common ground with the other religions, believing they lent credibility to “false” worship.

The society maintained contact with Rome, however. And the relationship improved when John Paul II was replaced with a traditionalist.

Benedict’s decision has stirred controversy in no small part because one of the prelates is a Holocaust denier.

In a recent interview, Richard Williamson stated his belief that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps and that there “were no gas chambers.” (Williamson cites the “work” of execution device maker Fred Leuchter, the pathetic man featured in Errol Morris‘ 2000 documentary, Mr. Death.) Williamson is also a 9/11 “truther” who believes that demolition charges destroyed the World Trade Center.

The Anti-Defamation League expressed “disappointment” that Benedict had chosen to rehabilitate Williamson, who is reportedly a loner within the society.

The Society of Pius X is unquestionably conservative. A year ago, St. Mary’s Academy, a society-affiliated school outside Topeka, made news when it objected to a woman officiating at a basketball game.

In Kansas City, the Society of Pius X operates a school, St. Vincent de Paul Academy, off East 31st Street and a publishing house, Angelus Press, near Troost Park.

POTUS Meets Fetus

In a January 26 Plog, Justin Kendall asks: “Guess what Phill Kline blogs about?“

You know the answer. But the opportunism and lunacy are still breathtaking.

For his first blog entry posted on the campaign fundraising site Stand With Truth, the recently minted professor at Jerry Falwell‘s Liberty University weighs in on President Barack Obama.

Kline recognizes the historic moment by writing how fitting it was that Obama was sworn in with the same Bible used to inaugurate Abraham Lincoln. Why? Because, Kline writes, abortion is like slavery, and Obama is the Franklin Pierce of his time, a president blind to the greatest of all moral outrages.

“On abortion, politician Obama has survived through political calculation, deception and with gratitude to a self-indulgent culture full of distraction and willful ignorance,” Kline writes. “And his first actions have been aggressively opposed to this significant civil rights issue. Yet, President Obama will not escape the judgment of history.”

According to messianic-embarrassment Kline, history won’t judge the success of Obama’s presidency on the economy or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but on “whether he leads us to the fullness of the dream — that every human being will be valued in this nation with just and righteous laws that protect the right to live.”

At least in his new job, Kline no longer has to pretend that he cares about anything but abortion.

Oh and hey, women having abortions — Lance Kinzer wants to show you something.

The self-proclaimed “principled conservative leader” is watching out for your uterus. Last week, the state rep from Olathe introduced his “Bill to Ensure a Woman’s Right to Know and See,” insisting that women seeking abortions first listen to the fetus’s heartbeat and look at a sonogram.

Last year, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a similar bill, even after Kinzer put his ear to the paper and yelled, Wait! It’s alive and it’s human, I tell you!

Tripp Takes a Fall

Richard G. Tripp‘s face is familiar to hundreds of Kansas Citians.

He’s a cab driver who used to be homeless but now runs an organization called Care of Poor People (find it online at coppinc.com). A couple of times a year, around Thanksgiving and Easter, Tripp organizes a huge potluck and clothing giveaway. Radio stations help out, as do churches and other folks who volunteer or make donations. Sometimes a band plays.

To hang out with Tripp on one of these days is to see people enjoy a few hours’ relief from hard lives. Since he started putting on these events, organizations in other cities have followed his model.

Now imagine his face swollen, with a black eye, from concussion-causing blows (Pitch editor C.J. Janovy’s January 28 Plog, “They shouldn’t have messed with Tripp”).

Two weeks ago, Tripp picked up a couple of fares at Harrah’s Casino. He drove them to 30th Street and Montgall. There, he says, “They tried to kill me.”

“I’m in the middle of the street, and I put the cab in park,” Tripp recalls. “They say, ‘How much?’ and I say $20.10, which was on the meter. I started to turn around, and they hit me with something.”

Still conscious, he kept his head down until he heard the passenger door open. “About that time, the driver’s window broke, and they were trying to come in the driver’s side. I grabbed the gear shift and was lucky enough to pull it down. I hit the gas and got out of there.”

Tripp has been robbed before. In fact, his harrowing story of life on the streets — bad decisions, near death and redemption, and finally committing himself to helping those less fortunate — is chronicled in Please Underestimate Me, his self-published autobiography.

“It’s one thing when it’s a robbery, another thing when they come inside the car — they either want to kill you or hijack the car. I knew what they were trying to do,” he says. “I saw that look in one’s eyes. The cops told me how lucky I was.”

He says it cost him a hundred bucks to get his window repaired, but he’s driving again.

“This black eye pisses me off — that I let somebody get that close. I always thought all these years of preparation taught me.”

Now, though, he has a warning for his fellow cab drivers — and, hell, all of us: “The way things are getting now, you can’t slip up. You have to be on top of your game or you’ll end up in the morgue.”

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