| | Gee, Brendan, a zero for analysis? I do recall writing: "It could be that Anschutz, like Charles Keating before him, was stung by the exposure of his pull-peddling swindles, and was buying himself a newly moral image among both Christians and Libertarians." In America this is a persistent phenomenon - see "BESIEGED CEO'S TURN TO PUBLIC PIETY, RELIGIOSITY FOR REDEMPTION" .
You can justifiably fault me for forgetting to explain, to the young and to the non-American, who Charles H. Keating was. In the words of the article cited above: "It is all reminiscent of Charles Keating, a tycoon caught up in the midst of the old savings and loan (S&L) scandal, who poured millions of dollars into anti-pornography groups including his Citizens for Decency Through Law. While pointing the accusing finger at porn peddlers, though, Keating companies like Lincoln Savings & Loan and American Continental Corporation were busy bilking investors -- many of them elderly -- out of their last dollars... (Keating used his political pull so that) taxpayers covered the losses to the tune of $3.4 billion dollars. Keating was convicted in federal and state courts of numerous counts, and served five years of a twelve-and-a-half year sentence."
Keating's pull-peddling swindles, like the more recent ones carried out by Anschutz, depended on presenting a personal image as a paradigm of Christian morality. Keating served on the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in 1970 - a political swindle in his usual style, aimed at instituting wide-ranging "moral" censorship of expression in the United States.
Charles Keating's "moral image building" included contributing to and publicizing Mother Theresa, a "model of Christian virtue" whose innovations included making thousands of sick people, first in India and then all over the world, depend on her institutions for medical care. This medical care, including terminal care for expiring AIDS patients, was provided - to effectively confined patients - without anaesthetics. Mother Theresa believed that "suffering is a gift from God, who gives it to the sick to lead them in imitation of Christ," and that therefore it would be contrary to Christian morality and virtue to reduce this "gift." Mother Theresa returned Charles Keating's favor by writing letters on his behalf to judges sentencing him for his swindles, vouching for his high moral character. "She even wrote to the judge in the Keating case, (Judge Lance Ito, before his O.J. Simpson trial fame) pleading for the defendant, on the basis of his financial generosity to her Order. The book "The Missionary Position", by Christopher Hitchens, includes several documents, not only including this letter, but also a letter to her by Keating prosecutor Paul Turley, asking her to return the money, and follow the character of Christ, who would never have kept the fruits of a crime. The nun apparently never replied or responded to this request, and the money was never returned."
Which brings me to Anschutz's own Mother Theresa connection. One of Anschutz's moral image burnishing exercises is his "Foundation for a Better Life", which has been putting up "moral" images of supposed Christian virtues on about 10,000 billboards, signs and posters nationwide, includes a billboard of Mother Theresa as the exemplar of the virtue(?) of selfless service.
Why "Atlas Shrugged?" My guess is that Anschutz has been reading the polls, and noticed the rise in the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion from about 10% of the population to about 20% over the last decade. So this is his way of marketing himself as a "moral" man, and Christianity as a "moral" faith, to "convertible" infidels, libertarians, and even, obscenely, "Objectivists."
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