The Opinion Manufacturing Division squeezes one more piece out of the Michael Jackson Farewell Tour: columnist Tim Rutten's rumination on celebrity. He contrasted Jackson's recent treatment with that of Sarah Palin (Jacko and "Caribou Barbie" in a single piece: double columnist gold!), arguing that the alleged sins of the former were washed away even as the latter was overwhelmed by the scrutiny. My own sense is that Jackson's death actually led to two competing lines of commentary about the man: he was a genius (the sentimental meme), and he was a pedophile (the "you can't libel the dead" meme), as famously enunciated by Rep. Peter King). That's not washing away sins, it more like carving them into his grave marker -- albeit underneath the "King of Pop" banner and the silhouette of Jackson hovering on his toes.

Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, columnist Doyle McManus says don't hold your breath for another economic stimulus package. And economists Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale fret about the fiscal problems that are likely to be caused by the growing federal budget deficits:

The deficits projected over the next 10 years will accelerate our arrival at a debt-to-GDP ratio that for most countries would signal impending fiscal collapse. Indeed, Britain, with a debt-to-GDP ratio not appreciably worse than ours, was just warned by Standard & Poor's that its creditworthiness might be downgraded. The United States has traditionally enjoyed a favored status in this regard, as the supplier of the dollar, the world's reserve currency, and as a perceived haven in times of financial stress. But for how long?

In the editorial stack, the board expresses chagrin about the recent return to prominence of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, whose corrupt dominance of Mexican politics in the 20th century were so damaging to that country. (And by the way, how can you be both "institutional" and "revolutionary"? By advocating change so gradual, no one notices?) It urges the new General Motors, which may emerge from bankruptcy this week, to take lessons in openness and innovation from the computer industry. And it suggests a simple solution to the funding problem at the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center in Watts, which has run afoul of a new House Appropriations Committee dictum against grants for projects named after sitting members of Congress (in this case, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles): the center should drop Waters from its name.

A name change would involve some cost and inconvenience, but the investment would qualify the jobs center for funding now and in the future, while preserving a congressional rule that sets reasonable limits on pork. When Waters retires from public office, the program can honor her permanently.

Credit: Patrick O'Connor / Special to The Times

As confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor near, my inbox runneth over  with commentary on the nomination from special-interest groups. the latest is a release from the conservative group Committee for Justice (not to be confused with the Committee for Public Safety). Here's the leadoff:

"In a letter released today and attached below, more than two dozen leaders of the Second Amendment community from across the nation urged senators 'not to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next associate justice of the United States Supreme Court,' citing their 'grave concern' over her Second Amendment record."

This irked me for a reason that has nothing do with the merits of Sotomayor's nomination. I'm not surprised that the gun lobby has "grave concern" about the judge (someday I'd love to receive a press release expressing "mild concern"). It's the use of the term "Second Amendment community," the latest in a long line of psuedo-communities.

I still find the term "intelligence community" bizarre, maybe because it conjures up the image of a suburban cul-de-sac where every father playing basketball with his kids is a spy. But there's also the "gay community," the "disability community" and, of special interest to Angelenos, the "entertainment community." 

This perversion of the word "community" has insinuated itself into dictionaries. Webster's online version offers eight definitions of "community." Fittingly, the first is: "A group of people living in a particular local area." But No. 4, with a bullet, is: "The body of people in a learned occupation." (I suppose firing a gun is a learned occupation if you're a sniper.)

"Community" bothers me not just because it's a cliche; the use of the term in political contexts is freighted with the dubious assumption that "communities" are monolithic. What is the "black community,"  invoked so facilely by activists and politicians? Or the "Latino community"? As the liberal-conservative schism over the policies of the current pope demonstrates, a cohesive "Catholic community" is also an illusion.

Our current president was a community organizer, but the ones the young Barack Obama organized were real communities, not constructs. Maybe Obama's experience will rehabilitate the original connotation of the term -- including in the journalistic community.

Photo: Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

Knowing I'm a papal proclamation buff, a friend referred me to the headline of a story about Pope Benedict XVI's just-released encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" (Love in Truth).The headline read: "In Encyclical, Pope Proposes New Financial Order."

"Apparently he thinks the SEC really should regulate derivatives and he worries about mission creep over at the Fed," my friend quipped. "The pope also thinks that Sallie Mae should be regulated as a bank."

Not quite, but Benedict does argue in the encyclical, released on the even of the G-8 summit, for what conservatives will see as a form of international economic regulation, if not world government.

In typically turgid Vaticanese, the pope writes: "In our own day, the state finds itself having to address the limitations to its sovereignty imposed by the new context of international trade and finance, which is characterized by increasing mobility both of financial capital and means of production, material and immaterial. This new context has altered the political power of states." And the solution? "Once the role of public authorities has been more clearly defined, one could foresee an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally . . ."

Benedict is in a long tradition of popes who offered prescriptions for enlightened economy policy. In my Catholic high school, required reading included "Rerum Novarum," the 1891 encyclical in which Pope Leo XIII offered a defense of union organizing that could have been ghostwritten  by a labor activist. Leo said that "some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. . . . "

Capitalism-friendly Catholics  have always had trouble with the Vatican’s leftish line on economics and have wrestled with the problem of how they can be loyal to the pope  and opt out of this part of the program. Their discomfort must tempt liberals in the church to hurl the conservatives' favorite gibe back at them: "cafeteria Catholics."

Photo by L'Osservatore Romano Vatican Pool via Getty Images

Break out the fireworks, strike up the band and throw on a wig -- the Dodgers' hitting machine, Manny Ramirez, is back.  Tonight Manny will play in his first Major League game since his 50-game suspension for using banned substances.  Unfortunately for Manny fans in LA, unless you're willing to travel to San Diego, New York or Milwaukee (is any player worth going to Milwaukee for?), you'll have to wait until after the All-Star break to see him play in person.

I've never asked Dodger fans for a favor before, but I have one request now:  When that first home game comes on July 16, for one night, one at-bat or at least one swing, boo Manny. I'm not asking you to burn your coveted Man-wig, hide the name on the back of your No. 99 T-shirt under duct tape or torture yourself by watching Angels games. All I ask is that if you attend Manny's first home game, you boo. Once, at least.

I'm asking you to set aside the fact that the Dodgers will need Manny to win anything beyond the division crown in the pathetic NL West, and to forget that with a Manny-free lineup, your Dodgers have been scoring runs less frequently than your daughter's t-ball team (eight measly runs in five games).

In an op-ed Thursday, Greg Burk wrote: "Fans will have their chance to transfix the black sheep with stares of disapproval. And they will. We love to pretend our team is shiner and holier than others."

I hope he's right, but I think he, like Dodgers hitters, is off base. It's hard to believe that Dodger fans who wore "Free Manny" shirts after the suspension was announced and continue to wear his jerseys will show any ire. But they should.

Dodgers fans should boo Manny for one at-bat to make sure he knows his actions were unacceptable. The obvious reasons are often floated about when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs: it might spurn younger kids to use steroids, it's selfish, and it is disrespectful to the game.

Those arguments and their counters are uttered almost daily. The main reason Dodger fans should boo, however, is to let Manny know they will not be had with a few home runs and a smile. They need to say to Manny, "We're the ones who pay to watch you, and we demand better."  What does it say about fans if out of the gate they embrace a blatant cheater?  Doesn't it tell him, "Hey, you have free rein to do whatever you want, as long as you put runs on the board"?

Steroids is not something that will easily be uprooted from baseball. Their use was a pandemic, one that (unfortunate as it might be) probably saved the league as it was tumbling in popularity -- or at least fueled its resurgence. But as James Earl Jones reminded us, the one constant in America has always been baseball. It will move beyond this troubled era.

Fans are tired of steroids, but they cannot eradicate their presence if they pick and choose what rule-breakers they back based on the name emblazoned across their chests.  If Dodger fans boo Barry Bonds, A-rod, Sammy Sosa and the like for their transgressions, they should also boo Manny.

I'm not asking Dodger fans to hate him for the rest of his career. All I'm asking is that, for the good of the game and team, for one night Dodger fans should "Think Boo."

Photo: AP Photo / Gus Ruelas, File

As the California State Assembly adjourned around 11 a.m. today (that's, what, a 3 hour workday?) with no apparent progress made in crafting a budget the Governor would sign by the Tuesday deadline, Assemblymen Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland) and Mike Davis (D-L.A.) suggested it was time to buckle down and figure this out.

Er, no, wait. They stood to honor Michael Jackson as the King of Pop that he truly was, and Farrah Fawcett as every man's favorite pin-up girl, before taking the rest of the day off:

It's all well and good to honor notable Californians who have passed away. Still, I would have preferred to hear such tributes at the end of a normal business day -- or, in the case of this group of legislators, an extraordinary day -- in which some movement were made toward enacting a new budget. Especially considering that the alternative is California issuing IOUs for the next fiscal year.

Photo: Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chair of the budget conference committee, left, consoles State Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, chair of the Senate budget committee after the Senate fell short of the necessary two-thirds vote to approve a package of budget related bills at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, June 25, 2009. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

So it turns out that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was not, in fact, hunting wolverines in Alaska with at 12-gauge. Amid swirling rumors about his unexplained absence after he returned to the U.S., having spent Father's Day weekend in Buenos Aires, he admitted today to having an affair with a woman in Argentina. According to The State's Gina Smith, who broke the original story, the governor's whereabouts were unknown to his aids, who previously said they thought he was hiking in the Appalachian mountains. His wife, Jenny, told CNN Tuesday she didn't know where he was either: "I am being a mom today. I have not heard from my husband. I am taking care of my children."  

With his admission, Sanford followed Nevada senator John Ensign, pied-piper style, off the politically relevant cliff. Democrats are already taking swipes and calling for Sanford's resignation. 

Sanford left last Thursday without leaving so much as a post-it note telling his aids where he went.  While he denies intentionally deceiving his staff, he also described his own actions as "shrouding." 

Wait, wait, since when was "shrouding" not the same as deceiving? Also, since when did trans-hemispheric e-mail conversations start leading to politically damaging physical relationships?  It is one thing to need some vacation time -- don't we all -- but it is another to leave without telling anyone. As a governor, Sanford has given up the luxury to travel wherever he pleases without anyone knowing. 

Photo credit: Davis Turner / Getty Images

Comments continue to cascade in response to  Catherine Lyons' thoughtful post on the president of France's broadside against burqas. I thought I'd add my 2 cents' worth, even they're pennies I spent in 2004 when I was writing for another newspaper. In a column headlined "Scarves and Smugness," I suggested that Americans ought to refrain from judging the French too harshly for their ban on the wearing of headscarves -- and other religious garments and adornments -- in state schools.

That policy had drawn criticism from the Bush administration, criticism  echoed by President Obama in his June 4 speech in Cairo. Freedom in America, he said, " is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it."

In my column (full text here) I wrote:

"Official tolerance for religious diversity in this country is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn't until 1987, in response to an adverse Supreme Court decision, that Congress allowed Jewish military officers to wear yarmulkes with their uniforms. Only recently have Christmas pageants in public schools been repackaged as ecumenical 'holiday celebrations' that also make note of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. . . .

"It is tempting to recommend to the French that they copy the U.S. First Amendment, which the Bush administrations seems to think offers simple answers to the question of religious expression in state schools. But that amendment itself pulls in two directions: prohibiting governmental 'establishment of religion' but guaranteeing the 'free exercise' of religion. Into which category should we place an exception in a school dress code for religious apparel?
 
"The sort of 'multicultural' pluralism the Bush administration recommends to France took time to develop in this country and in England, where until the 19th century Roman Catholics and other 'Nonconformists' were second-class citizens. Earlier than that, in Elizabethan times, Catholics were presumed to be traitors because they answered to a pope who had excommunicated England's Protestant queen. The line between religion and politics in those days was a blurred and bloody one. So it is, some would argue, in contemporary France with its large Muslim minority."

"Some would argue" was a hedge on my part, and I'm still torn about whether France should bolster its wall of separation between church and state. I do think that the burqa controversy raises the question of whether Americans should equate the particulars of our democracy or civil society with universal imperatives like representative government, separation of church and state and fair trials. Take the question of an independent judiciary, which appears on the checklists of most definers of democracy. In this country, an independent judiciary includes the right of the Supreme Court to nullify unconstitutional statutes. Britain historically has not gone that far, not surprisingly given its lack of a written Constitution. But British justice, though sometimes flawed (as is American justice), has a deserved reputation for political independence. And while the British have an encouragingly expansive understanding of freedom of religion, they also have an Established Church.

Banning women from wearing the burqa anywhere strikes me as a violation of the basic principle of religious freedom. Banning headscarves and crucifixes from state schools, not so much.  France is more of a stickler for secularism than the is United States, because of its history and culture and not just out of concern about unassimilated Muslims. I'm not quite willing to say  "Vive la différence," but neither will I excommunicate France from the free world.

A would-be Republican challenger is trying to capitalize on Sen. Barbara Boxer's now infamous reprimand of a general for addressing her at a hearing as "Ma'am" instead of "Senator." According to Chuck DeVore, Boxer's dressing down of Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh of the Army Corps of Engineers reflected liberal contempt toward the armed forces and was just what you'd expect from a Vietnam War protester.

But you don't have to be a Republican to be appalled by Boxer's display of pique, which has become must-gag TV on YouTube. "Do me a favor," Boxer told Walsh at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Could you say 'Senator' instead of 'Ma'am?' It's just a thing; I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it." To his credit, Walsh didn't reply: "Yeah, you did raise a lot of campaign contributions, Senator." Later, a Boxer aide said she and the general were pals.

Maybe, but Boxer had better forget about a campaign contribution from Miss Manners. As bloggers have pointed out, "Ma'am" is a term of respect comparable to "Sir," which is the way military officers address the president. It's also a contraction of "Madam," as in "Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton." (Walsh began his testimony by addressing Boxer as "Madam Chair.")  If "Ma'am" is good enough for the Queen of England, it ought to be good enough for Boxer. Yet it was the senator, not the monarch, who was not amused.

What's really galling about Boxer's snit is her refusal to give the general the benefit of the doubt. My mother taught her children that if someone knocks you over on a bus, assume it's an accident even if you suspect otherwise. There's no evidence that Walsh was deliberately belittling Boxer, but she flamed him anyway -- before TV cameras. That would be gauche even if Walsh were in the habit of referring to male senators by their proper title but not female senators. But Boxer didn't make that accusation.

Correcting the way someone addresses you almost always makes the other person uncomfortable. Reporters covering the Supreme Court cringed when the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist would correct a nervous lawyer who addressed him as just plain "Justice Rehnquist." Pointing out an error can be awkward even when you're demoting yourself -- which is why I no longer object to being called "Professor" by students who don't realize I'm a lowly adjunct instructor. Cardinal Newman (or maybe it was my mother) said that a gentleman never offends. Neither does a lady senator.

* Photo of Sen. Barbara Boxer by Rich Pedroncelli / AP

As graduation season cranks into high gear for local schools, so does another, much less revered activity: senior pranks. One bit of mischief-making in northern Ohio has student bloggers buzzing: The Shaker Heights High School senior chosen to create the yearbook cover integrated the F-bomb into his design. Granted, you have to turn the book upside down and peer into the squirming artistry to get the "[expletive] All Yall" message. Perhaps he was just testing his classmates on their Dan Brown code-breaking skills?  

The student has since apologized for the transgression. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Michael McIntyre, the student body not only shrugged off the insult, it gave him "the loudest, most sustained applause of any fellow student as he accepted his diploma."  It's good to see that high school students are still forgiving, even in this economy.  A local television report  shows students chuckling over the incident and even some saying they wanted to keep the original as humorous memento. The school's administrative staff didn't find the hidden message quite so funny, however. It halted sales of the book and began blacking out the offensive word.

Is this the sort of incident that might spur future, and perhaps more flagrant pranks? Is it just me, or does this remind you of the obscene watermark episode of "The Office"? Should the student have been punished more severely for his actions?  Or, like his fellow classmates, do you think this is all just a laughing matter?

Earlier this week, Times Senior Editorial Writer Michael McGough attributed the casual use of the "R" word after the Sonia Sotomayor nomination to confusion over what exactly constitutes racism. In the case of Sen. Jeff Sessions, however, the Republican senator from Alabama is using that confusion to scrub his own, dare I say, 100% verifiable history of conducting race-based prosecutions.

After meeting with Supreme Court justice nominee, Sessions said he could identify with Sotomayor's frustration over false accusations of racism because he, too, faced such embarrassment 23 years ago. That's when his nomination (by President Reagan) to be a U.S. District Court judge was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee -- the panel where he now serves as the top-ranking Republican:

Here's CNN's recap:

In 1986, Sessions was a 39-year-old U.S. attorney in Alabama. His nomination to be a U.S. District Court judge was troubled from the start because of controversy surrounding his prosecution of civil rights activists for voting fraud.

Sessions' fate was sealed after Democrats called several witnesses who accused him of a pattern of racial insensitivity -- including calling a black lawyer "boy" and civil rights groups such as the NAACP "un-American."

Sessions still gets visibly upset when he hears those charges.

"That was not fair. That was not accurate. Those were false charges and distortions of anything that I did, and it really was not. I never had those kinds of views, and I was caricatured in a way that was not me," Sessions said.

Puh-leaze. "Irony" and "distortions" would be an apt assessment if, say, a few off-color remarks and Sessions' opposition to affirmative action were misused by his opponents to tar him a racist. But the behavior that led people to accuse Sessions of racism was far more revolting: He harnessed his powers as a federal prosecutor to make it difficult for African Americans to vote. In 2002, the New Republic -- which has a record of examining accusations of racism leveled against rising-star pols -- re-hashed the senator's troubled history of prosecuting civil rights workers in his days as a U.S. attorney in Alabama:

The year before his nomination to federal court, he had unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers--including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr.--on a tenuous case of voter fraud. The three had been working in the "Black Belt" counties of Alabama, which, after years of voting white, had begun to swing toward black candidates as voter registration drives brought in more black voters. Sessions' focus on these counties to the exclusion of others caused an uproar among civil rights leaders, especially after hours of interrogating black absentee voters produced only 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of more than 1.7 million cast in the state in the 1984 election. The activists, known as the Marion Three, were acquitted in four hours and became a cause celebre. Civil rights groups charged that Sessions had been looking for voter fraud in the black community and overlooking the same violations among whites at least partly to help reelect his friend Senator [Jeremiah] Denton.

I don't think "irony" is the right word.

Photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images