The key moment of the Brendan Eich-out-at-Mozilla story comes in this interview with his long-time business partner Mitchell Baker. Upon learning that Eich gave $1,000 of his own money to the campaign for Proposition 8, Baker says:

“That was shocking to me, because I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” she said, noting that there was a long and public community process about what to do about it in which Eich, then CTO, participated. “But I overestimated that experience.”

Here’s why this is important: Baker is saying that she never saw Eich acting badly, or exhibiting uncharitable or uncivil behavior. So the problem isn’t with how he comported himself. It’s with what he thought.

Three things:

(1) This is a perfect illustration of the degree to which the same-sex marriage movement has succeeded in conflating the belief that the down-stream effects of same-sex marriage might be, net-net, problematic for society with hatred, bigotry, etc. toward gays.

Of course this is a selective conflation. If you’re Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama circa a few years back, you’re just misguided. But whatever.

(2) Now that we’re in the realm of thought-crime where Eich loses his job not because of how he behaved, but because he gave money to a cause which is deemed untouchable, let me ask you this: What if Eich hadn’t given $1,000 to support Proposition 8. What if, instead, the tech community simply found out he had voted for it?

By any reasonable chain of logic, voting for Prop. 8 is at least as bad–probably even worse–than merely giving money to support it. A vote for Prop. 8 is an affirmative action taken to directly advance the cause, rather than the indirect advancement of financial support. If Eich was a known Prop. 8 voter, would there have been a similar campaign against him? I can’t think of a reason why not.

(3) And once you get to the point where merely voting for candidate x or issue y makes you unemployable, Katie bar the door. I mean, if you’re a good progressive, what issue is more important to humanity—gay marriage or climate change? Because if you can mount campaigns against people skeptical of the harmlessness of gay marriage, then surely people who deny climate change–which threatens all 7 billion of us with actual death–are infinitely more dangerous. Who knows what you should do with them.

Proposed: John McTiernan is the most under-rated director of his generation, having helmed three instant classics (Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, The Thomas Crowne Affair), one of which is in the running for Most Influential Movie of the Decade. Even his middling work (Predator and Last Action Hero) is really, really good.

So why is his greatness over-looked? Two reasons:

(1) McTiernan eschewed any particular visual style and instead concentrated on economy of storytelling. There are truly great visuals in his movies (see the opening series of shots in Thomas Crowne where the camera zooms down on the Met from space; a shot which seems cliched now, but predates Google Earth by nearly ten years) but these visuals don’t have any particular signature to them. Instead, you can tell a McTiernan movie by how skillfully it moves the story, builds tension, and uses every knife it lays out on the coffee table.

(2) Because of his legal troubles, McTiernan’s late-career period went fallow. So when he should have been directing some of his best work, he was caught in the maw of the legal system. And it’s not unclear if he’ll ever work again and if he does, what will be left of his ability.

Discuss.

What with his ministering to the poor, committing economic illiteracy, and chiding his flock for being “obsessed” with the freedom of the Church he oversees, Francis the First has become the pontifical version of the cool priest the kids all loved in the 1970s. You know, the one who rode a bike and played guitar and didn’t get caught up in all that dogmatic Latin jazz, brother. Like the handsome, conflicted padre on Ballykissangel. I’m halfway convinced that when Harvey Weinstein makes his Oscar-bait biopic about Franics it’s going to be called Lightworker: Tambourines in Rome.

I’m all for evangelization, I suppose. But the spectacle of so many non-Catholics and even anti-Catholics rallying to the side of Francis does make you wonder who’s rubbing off on whom. (Which, by total coincidence, was the Church’s problem in the ’70s, t00.)

The latest data point comes from Doyle McManus in the LA Times, who uncharitably suggests that President Obama might learn something from this Holy Father:

But one year after his elevation, Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is riding high in the polls. In a Pew Research survey this month, 85% of American Catholics said they have a favorable view of the pontiff, well above the 74% who admired his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Church leaders talk of a “Francis effect” that’s bringing fallen-away Roman Catholics back to the fold. “He has rebranded Catholicism,” wrote the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit writer. “Business schools could use him as a case study.”

There’s been a “Francis effect” alright, but it has nothing to do with church attendance. (About which I have seen exactly zero data to suggest that any such thing exists.) The effect is to have exposed certain people, both inside and outside of the Church. Like Father Reese, for instance.

Goodness knows, what the Catholic Church needs–as much as social engagement and robust supply-chain verticals–is a good re-branding. People have so many choices for religious practice these days, what with technology. And Father Reese would know, he’s a Jesuit. They’re so scholarly. Which is why he talks about “rebranding” what is, at least by priestly lights, the single, eternal truth of creation. And he does so, of course, with the implicit suggestion that those who came before Francis–you know, those awful “hardliners”–need to be apologized for and swept out of theological and public consciousness. Coca-Cola, KFC, the Word made Flesh–product is product.

Last week the Galley Wife was at Mass in the city. During the homily the priest took to gushing about Francis, as they’re wont to do these days. Catholics now have, he said, “for the first time in generations,” “a pope who is truly humble” and “connected.” Those other guys? The one that stood in the face of totalitarians for his people? The one that finished the work of a saint, warned about the dangers of consumerism, and identified the threat relativism posed to the modern world? Well, father didn’t mention them by name or anything, but the inference was pretty clear. A bunch of stuck-up jerks.

I’m tempted to suggest that every generation of Catholics gets the Pope it deserves, but that doesn’t seem quite right. One of the charming things about Catholicism is that you can’t reasonably hold the sheep responsible for the shepherds.

No, the original formulation of that line comes from Joseph de Maistre, who once quipped that “Every nation has the government it deserves.” And I suspect that’s closer to the truth here: The Catholic Church has the Pope it deserves.

More than any other sport, surfing lends itself to insanely beautiful documentary-style filming and photography. Principally, the videos (and stills) are taken by guys with fins and water-proof cameras hanging out in the water. At big competitions, you might get a helicopter for arial shots.

Well drones are in the process of revolutionizing video production. They’re going to totally change what’s possible with tracking and arial photography, and at a pretty low price-point. And one of the first places you’ll see this is in surf footage. Like this:

Pipeline Winter 2013 from Eric Sterman on Vimeo.

That was all shot using a quadricopter. The combination of drone photography, with HD, with super-slo-mo is just mind-blowing for surfing. Check out the 1:00 mark.

Giggity.

Galley Friend J.S. points us to this intensely funny piece asking Ezra Klein about whatever happened to the Loose Nuke hunters who were going to be fired because of the Sequester, or debt ceiling, or whatever. (Here’s the Klein explainer where he worries that “The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs.”) Sample awesome:

Last year, Ezra Klein was among the first to break the news that if there were a ‘sequester’, the first item on the chopping block would be our unheralded crack squad of heroes who Track Down Loose Nukes. . . . [I]f the government budget is ever constrained in any way, you also gotta fire ‘em. Immediately. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, Ezra Klein doesn’t like it, President Obama doesn’t like it, but it’s the law.

Well now fast forward to 2014 and Ezra Klein is forming a new media whatchamacalit with Yggie, or Nate Silver or whoever the hell. Some 19 year olds. I know they all have close cropped brown hair and careful stubble and possibly thin hipster sideburns and glasses and they like Arcade Fire or The Arcade Fire (or is it An Arcade Fire). They are ‘wonks’ because they know how to make graphs on a spreadsheet, as so few people do. And they all, every last one of them, went to the Dalton school followed by Princeton. (Or Middlebury, whatever it’s called).

But I digress. Ezra’s media venture, or possibly app, which at press time I believe is going to be called “Vonk”, is going to explain the news to us. Because how often are you paying attention to the news and you’re reading or hearing the words and you’re like Yes yes, this is all very well and good, but where’s the part that explains what’s being said here? And that’s why there’s Vlok. Every piece of news, every event, will now be helpfully Explained to you, either by some kid who 2 years ago was getting up at 6:45 and grabbing his French horn case to catch the bus to that faraway magnet school, or by Ezra Klein who knows how to Explain what’s what because he apparently cultivated some friendships with and hangs out with some people who work in the White House.

It is to the latter then that I wish to direct our attention. Ezra Klein. He told us about the Loose Nuke Tracker-Downers. He warned us about the constitutional requirement to fire them immediately anytime a projected spent-dollar was eliminated from a budget. Again and again. And for this, we thank him. But we need him again. Because now it occurs to me: it’s been over a year since our Loose Nuke Tracker-Downers were almost fired. That means they’ve been on the job, 24/7, for more than a year. So here’s my question for Ezra Klein, and I sincerely hope he can discover, from his trendy fellow molecular-gastronomy aficionado White House contacts, and then tell to us, the answer to this question:

How many Loose Nukes have been Tracked Down in the past year? At least a ballpark figure please. And then what was done with them once they were Tracked Down?

Tonight’s the night for Veronica Mars. But before you fire it up (and remember, if you order it through the site–look at that attractive new Amazon box over on the right!) you might want to read this fictional Entertainment Weekly cover story about Bonnie Deville.

You see, the problem is I’m running out of wall space at the office.

But on the other hand: Khoa Ho.

If only I had another room to start hanging these in . . .

I just got my hands on George Weigel’s Roman Pilgrimage and boy, howdy, is it a looker. It’s filled with photos of Roman churches (taken by his son, Stephen) that are kind of mind-blowing. I suspect he used a medium-format camera to get so much detail, but I kept wondering how long he had to keep the shutter open to get enough exposure inside these dark places.

The Amazon preview doesn’t really do the book justice, but have a peek anyway.

And if you buy the ebook and load it onto your iPad, all the pictures are in color and full-res. Insanely amazing.

Hard to think of a better Lenten gift . . .