Ramesh Ponnuru has another outstanding rebuke to Hitchens’s veiled anti-Catholicism. Best line:

Hitchens’s piece is only seven paragraphs long, yet somehow feels padded. And padded with the most mindless dreck I’ve ever read from Hitchens, whose coverage of religious issues has been getting lazier by the month. The Ten Commandments, he informs us, do not condemn genocide. (I guess Hitchens is a very strict constructionist.)

Oh, it gets meaner . . .

I know, you need your fix:

I know I keep saying the same thing, but there’s no shame in losing a guy to Angelina Jolie. The deck is stacked against you, and that’s okay sometimes. It would be like if an army of monkeys took on the regular army. No matter what cute tricks the monkey army can do, like riding a skateboard and clapping, the regular army can do that too. Plus they have enormous guns. And looking cute in a suit and fedora isn’t gonna make you any less likely to explode when the bullets hit you. So Jennifer Aniston is exactly like an army of monkeys.

On the heels of the dismantlement of Checkpoint Charlie, a few senators in Berlin now want to bring back to the city a 60-foot statue of Vladimir Lenin. Do I see a pattern here?

The statue, recently seen in the wonderful movie Good Bye Lenin!, is currently resting in pieces in a nearby park outside the capital. Reuters quotes one tourism official as saying, “The Communist period is the most asked-after period by tourists in Berlin.”

Just great.

Not so great in Slate is Chris Hitchens’s piece Catholic Justice. Says Galley Friend C.L.:

If I’m not mistaken, Hitch is subtly calling for the institution of a “No Catholics Need Apply” policy for Supreme Court nominees with this piece. Funniest bit: He calls Kennedy–ANTHONY KENNEDY–“strong in the faith.”

And what then to make of his vote on Casey, Hitch? Kinda shitcans your entire premise, no?

Yes, yes, everyone in the world is barking about Jack Shafer’s bludgeoning of Richard Posner this morning, but don’t miss the fine print at the bottom of the article where Shafer refers to Posner as “the prolific bastard.” Yow!

All sorts of undeserving writers go on to greatness (you know about whom I’m talking), but when will someone give Seth Stevenson the ample rewards he deserves? Stevenson does Slate‘s ad report card, consistently the magazine’s best feature. Today he has a piece on the new Dove campaign. Sample genius:

The [Dove web]site also has a link where you can donate money to Dove’s “self-esteem fund” for young girls.

If the women in these ads lacked self-esteem, they wouldn’t be up on a billboard in their skivvies. Hey, good for them. I even have a favorite Dove chick: Stacy (the student). She’s the one who poses with her backside to the camera, showing off her ample bottom. I see Stacy every day—she’s on the bus stop shelter next to my house. “Check out this fiiiiiiiine bedonkadonk,” she seems to say to me, grinning slyly over her shoulder. I think I may have a crush on her. But I’ve said too much already. . . .

The interesting thing here is the risky bet Dove is making. Beauty-product marketing has almost always been aspirational: I wish I could look like her … perhaps if I buy this lip gloss, I will! But Dove takes a wildly different approach: That chick in the ad sort of looks like me, and yet she seems really happy and confident … perhaps if I buy this Dove Firming Cream, I’ll stop hating myself! . . .

But there’s a dirty little secret here. Because, in the end, you simply can’t sell a beauty product without somehow playing on women’s insecurities. If women thought they looked perfect—just the way they are—why would they buy anything?

Out of the park.

Rafael Palmeiro, it turns out, is dirty. The best piece I’ve seen about Palmeiro’s steroid use comes from Tom Boswell:

Palmeiro has been caught, suspended and has actually admitted to using steroids this season. Palmeiro simply claims that he has no idea how they got in his body.

Abducted by aliens? Sat too close to Canseco at the hearing? Got a package in the mail that was intended for Jason Giambi?

Add Palmeiro to the list of those who did not “knowingly” cheat. Just 17 days ago, he was being celebrated for his 3,000th hit. Now, in one day, he’s the tag line to every cynical wisecrack. The quip circulating among writers who vote on the Hall of Fame is that, someday, Palmeiro may be left out of Cooperstown, but not “knowingly,” just by collective accident. . . .

Palmeiro and his agent, as well as the Orioles, repeated many times that they could not go into details about Palmeiro’s steroid blunder because of some “confidentiality” issues. “I would love to tell what happened to me so that everyone would understand,” said Palmeiro, “but under this confidentiality agreement, I cannot get specific.”

Unfortunately, what we may have here is a Stupidity Test. As in: How stupid are we? Whose “confidentiality” is being protected? Palmeiro’s, of course. If he wanted to explain more, who could stop him from defending his good name? The union and baseball have a confidentiality agreement that prevents them from releasing information. But that doesn’t put masking tape over the player’s mouth. If Palmeiro had a compelling story, who could force him to stay silent? . . .

For two years our sports culture, right up to Congress, has been building a huge Steroid Trap, just waiting for a famous star to get caught inside. Somebody was going to get nailed, become the symbol and carry the weight. All the more fitting if the culprit was a shocker, perhaps somebody who shook his finger in the face of Congress and demanded his right to the benefit of the doubt. Too bad it turned out to be Rafael Palmeiro. It could have been so many bigger rats.

Boswell takes a very nice line between total indignation and sympathy, not an easy course to chart.

What has surprised me most during the steroid hunt is the ease and facility with which many players lie. Sure, Barry Bonds has never been particularly convincing, but if you go back and look at the tape of Jason Giambi and Palmeiro’s denials, they are accomplished, forceful liars. I might argue that this gift for lying about a big and important issue is more worrisome than the weakness of having used steroids.

I don’t have many illusions about professional athletes. We all know that many of them are jerks. But I would have liked to believe, at least, that they were big, proud, manly jerks.

Using steroids makes a ballplayer a cheater. Lying like a common politician makes him small and contemptible.

I’m embarrassed to have posted my silly thoughts on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when there is Janet Batchler. I mean, really, why bother?

All Batchler has done is assemble the three most thoughtful posts on Harry Potter that you’re likely to read between now and book 7. This stuff is good.

First, Batchler takes on the question of who dies next. Then she tackles the matter of Draco’s attempt to kill Dumbledore. And finally, there’s her tour de force on Snape.

Batchler’s analysis is careful and very, very smart. And can only add to the fun of waiting for the final installment.

Galley Friend R.S. (who pointed me to Batchler) also has an interesting theory about Snape: That he was bound to Dumbledore by an Unbreakable Vow, perhaps a vow to protect Harry at all costs.

Throw that one on the fire.