more on the ground

[James Knight, MLIS]

 From an Eric Boehlert interview with former Sen. Max Cleland...*

"And now we've got an absolute disaster on our hands. And now the
president's numbers are falling and they don't know what to do about it. So
the _ground truth_ has overtaken the political B.S. and now the real truth
of the war, the cost of the war, is coming out."

[my emphasis]

* http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/21/cleland/index2.html

-jk

At 01:01 PM 11/26/03, you wrote:
>At 10:58 AM -0600 11/26/03, Albert E. Krahn wrote:
>>Doyle McManus
>>LA Times
>>Wash Week in Rev
>>21 Nov 03
>>"This was a bad week on the ground."
>>
>>. . . sort of meaning "among the events of the week"
>>or "considering what happened" this week.
>
>and in today's N. Y. Times, there was an op-ed piece by Nicholas
>Kristof that had one use of "on the ground" and another of a variant
>on the expression--"at ground level".  I find the opposition between
>the priests and nuns operating "on the ground" (or "at ground level")
>and the pope and bishops with their noses in the air (or in heaven?)
>especially effective.
>
>larry
>=====================
>[emphasis added]
>
>The New York Times
>November 26, 2003, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
>
>  SECTION: Section A; Page 25; Column 5; Editorial Desk
>
>  HEADLINE: Don't Tell the Pope
>
>  BYLINE:  By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF; E-mail: nicholas at nytimes.com
>
>  DATELINE: SONSONATE, El Salvador
>
>...
>
>  The Vatican has consistently opposed condoms and safe-sex education,
>even claiming falsely that condoms don't protect against AIDS. That's
>on par with the church under Pope Urban VIII putting Galileo under
>house arrest -- except that this will have more deadly results.
>
>  Yet I take my hat off to the much broader Catholic Church that is
>toiling in the barrios of Latin America and the slums of Africa and
>Asia. Catholic Relief Services, one of the most vigorous aid
>organizations in the third world, is an example of humanitarianism at
>its noblest.
>
>*At ground level*, priests apply doctrine with a flexibility that
>must drive the pope wild. In the desperately poor Salvadoran hillside
>village of Chucita, where campesinos live in shacks without water or
>electricity, a teacher explained how his fifth-grade class learns
>about dealing with AIDS.
>
>  "A social worker comes in with a banana and puts a condom on it,"
>said the teacher, Eduardo Antonio Ascencio Mata. The priests, he
>says, have no objection.
>
>...
>The Vatican has appointed hard-line bishops to eviscerate liberation
>theology and bring parishes back into line. Still, the French and
>German bishops' conferences have urged that condoms be permitted to
>fight AIDS, and Bishop Kevin Dowling of South Africa is pushing hard
>for the church to change policy to save lives.
>
>  Just this month, Catholics for a Free Choice and 20 other Catholic
>organizations called on bishops to accept condoms as a way to fight
>AIDS. The irony is that no organization does more to help AIDS
>victims and their orphans than the Catholic Church. Some 25 percent
>of AIDS care worldwide is provided by church-related groups. Yet the
>Vatican blindly opposes condoms, even within a marriage when a
>husband or wife is infected with H.I.V. A member of the Kenyan
>Parliament has called the church "the greatest impediment in the
>fight against H.I.V./AIDS."
>
>  Let's hope the Vatican will learn from its priests and nuns *on the
>ground*, who do so much heroic work fighting the disease. In
>Coatepeque, I spoke with Father Mario Adolfo Dominguez, who sighed as
>I grilled him on the theology of condoms.
>
>  "We don't recommend the use of condoms, but we're not opposed to
>their use because we know they prevent AIDS," he said, looking
>nervous as I wrote down his words. "There is no
>  contradiction between Christianity and a piece of rubber."