Bernie Ward, Lion of the Leftards

Bernie Ward is an ardent liberal and talk show host of KGO Radio in San Francisco. He likes to call himself "the Lion of the Left." A former priest, he is still a practicing Catholic. This past week he was indicted on Federal charges of possessing and distributing kiddie porn on the internet. Apparently Ward downloaded kiddie porn and emailed it to others and then bragged about it in a chat room where he was being monitored. That was pretty asinine. Maybe he should change his moniker to "the Jackass of the Left." Ah, how pride doth go before a fall.

I never listen to Bernie's radio show, figuring I could learn more listening to the squirrels chattering outside my window, but I have not possessed any great malice for the man. He's just another dopey liberal, seriously reality-impaired and full of enough hot air to resurrect the Hindenburg, the ancient blimp he is often accused of resembling. Such folks are a dime a dozen in California, the home of fruits and nuts. If you got upset over all of them you'd spend your days in a psycho ward begging for your next dose of thorazine.

I once heard Bernie Ward speak at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, where my son was attending high school. Bellarmine is a 150 year old Catholic high school that turns away two out of three who apply, due to its rigorous academic standards and demanding entrance exam. Bernie spoke there in 1998, talking about ethics and morality. I took a picture of him from the audience, which is posted on the right. I had to scour my portable hard drive for the digital photo and it took me an hour to find it, but I knew it was there.

The picture was taken on an early digital camera and is therefore small, but if you zoom in on the white board you can make out "Moral = (unintelligible)" and "Amoral" below it. I remember feeling quite ambivalent about the speech at the time, in that I considered liberalism to be very amoral and therefore could give little crediblity to the speaker. This, in spite of my interest in the topic.

The laws on kiddie porn are pretty strict. You can have as many as three kiddie porn photos on your computer "by mistake," and when you find them you have to report them or immediately delete them from your computer. More than three, you are considered a felon and subject to arrest. Whether you distribute them or not is irrelevant, just possessing them is a felony. These rules strike me as rather draconian, since any idiot could email you 4 pictures of kiddie porn, which would them be stored in a cache if you didn't notice them or delete them. Then the sender could simply turn you in because you are guilty of a felony. The minimum penalty is five years per picture. Ridiculous.

Bernie isn't so innocent, however. He bragged about downloading the porn and was observed distributing it. He claims he was only doing research on a book about "hypocrisy in America." Seems to me he was actually engaged in performance art along the same theme.

Nevertheless, I hate to see any man have his career and life and reputation destroyed over magnetic patterns stored on a hard drive. God, Bernie, what were you thinking? I will ask the Man Upstairs to cut you a break and get you out of this. However, I suspect the Boss has his own reasons and seasons for doing things. Perhaps it will make you a better man in the long run. Let's hope so. Resolve now to salvage your life in spite of it all. It won't be easy but it can be done.