Mark Shield's mind is stuck in 1960's Boston.

[RandySF]

Friday night on PBS, liberal columnist mark Shields classified the Obama Administration's decision to require Catholic hospitals and universities as "cataclysmic" because some bishops spoke out in anger. These, of course, are the same bishops who have been speaking out against Democrats for decades. The 75-year old Shields thinks this is Boston in the 1960's when congregants listened to everything their leaders said and, probably, refrained from using contraception. Obama will survive the controversy. There's a reason Catholic churches become more empty every year. It's because mark's generation is fading away.

[Schema Thing]

1. agree. Plus, it's got Romney talking about Obama encroaching on religious peculiarity.

You probably didn't want to go there, Romney, oh baptizer of the dead and shunner of the wayward.

[Dawson Leery]

2. The dwindling of their congregations will only continue with such an attitude.

[Bonobo]

3. He should try 1976 Boston

[hfojvt]

4. Well why not?

The Celtics won 9 NBA championships in that decade! It was a very good decade for Boston.

[BlueCaliDem]

5. Mark Shields is a Liberal?!

Every time I hear him speak, it's as if I'm listening to a moderate Republican! Now, with his appearance on PBS, he's solidified it for me.

Any Democrat who speaks negatively about President Obama this year without mentioning the hard work he's put in as president to help this country forward is secretly hoping for a Romney win, because that'll be the result. Wayward Republicans and indecisive Independents who aren't convinced Romney is it will have another reason to either not to vote for Obama or abstain from voting.

The last thing we need to do is pile on more petty arguments on Obama since people have the tendency not to give him any credit for the immense work he's already done for us.

[RandySF]

6. He's old.

Shields was born and raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts in an Irish Catholic family.[1] He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1959. He served as an enlisted man in the United States Marine Corps before coming to Washington in 1965, where he became an aide to Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire. In 1968, Shields went to work for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. He later held leadership positions in the presidential campaigns of Edmund Muskie and Morris Udall, and was political director for Sargent Shriver when he ran for vice president on the Democratic ticket in 1972. Over more than a decade, he helped manage state and local campaigns in some 38 states, including incumbent Boston, Massachusetts Mayor Kevin White's successful re-election campaign in 1975.

In 1979, Shields became an editorial writer for The Washington Post. He began writing a column the same year that is now distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. He’s covered the last 11 presidential campaigns and attended 17 national party conventions.

Shields has taught American politics and the press at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Public Policy, and he was a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy Institute of Politics.

He’s the author of On the Campaign Trail, about the 1984 presidential campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shields

[BlueCaliDem]

7. Thanks for this info, RandySF.

I was going by what I've seen of Mark Shields when he's on teevee. I hope he hasn't gone to the dark side.

[elias7]

8. Your comment is ageist

Just because you disagree with someone's opinion or perceptions, it doesn't follow that it's fair to trash them and to declare them obsolete based on an irrelevancy like age.

you make 3 references to age in your criticism, i guess you must be young and hip and more culturally knowledgable than mark shields. I hope when your generation is fading away in a few short years or decades, your children or descendants will be more kind than to hold your age and generation in contempt for being out of touch with their perceived reality.