And Now, Another Good Word for Christians

Jonah Goldberg, a nice Jewish boy, is also not afraid of Christians. As his linked column about a recent 'Law and Order' episode says, "All right, enough already. The Christians aren't coming to get you."

Jonah knows, as all sane people know, that Christians may be a pain in the ass (as far as you are concerned) but they are not dangerous. They won't be storming your house to kill you or force you to convert. Unless you're a weenie liberal, you know this is true. And if you are a weenie liberal, you left your reason and intelligence behind a long time ago.

The complexity of what conservative Christians really believe is lost on the writers of "Law & Order" - not surprising for a Hollywood show about New York that blends both coastal sensibilities perfectly. The fact that more and more headlines are being ripped from "red" America creates challenges for writers - like having to plausibly depict midtown Manhattan as a hotbed of evangelical, anti-abortion fervor (as they have more than once). But such challenges are minor compared to the dilemma of making their paranoia seem real.

I grew up in New York City, I know New York City, and I have this to tell my fellow New Yorkers: You are perfectly safe from the Christians hordes. None of the stuff supposedly "happening in America right now" is actually affecting Dowd or Krugman or the "L&O" writing teams. Pharmacies in New York and L.A. are still filling prescriptions for the "morning after" pill, schools are still teaching evolution, abortion clinics are humming along. And don't e-mail me in a tizzy about gay marriage bans. Gay marriage didn't exist under Bill Clinton either.

But that's how the "paranoid style" works: Abstract or distant offenses are seen as personal threats. And the megalomania of the paranoiacs cannot process the possibility that important things might be happening that do not affect them. Your Darwin fish are safe, my friends.