The Periscope Post

The best opinion writing from Sunday’s papers, all in one place. Brought to you by Caroline Crampton.

Barbara Ellen in the Observer finds a depressingly “samey” response to the publication of Peter Mandelson’s memoirs this week, saying, “from what I’ve seen of the extracts, the only ones being betrayed are those who buy the book. We’ve heard this stuff so many times that it has all the anecdotal allure of a pre-sucked boiled sweet.” However, she feels he deserves praise for suffering “barely disguised gay bashing throughout his political career”, and thinks it’s time he got some recognition for it.

India Knight in the Sunday Times looks back at the media storm surrounding the manhunt for murderer Raoul Moat, and finds that the issue of his domestic violence has been overlooked, in a way that it wouldn’t “if Moat had raped an old woman, or tortured a child, or gone on a random-seeming rampage like Derrick Bird in Cumbria.”

Andrew Gilligan in the Sunday Telegraph examines the mistakes and subsequent apologies of education minister Michael Gove, but believes that the incident is more important for the spotlight it throws upon the attitudes of civil servants towards the Coalition. “Whitehall sincerely thinks that it is one of the best things about Britain,” Gilligan writes. However, “this country’s unique level of centralisation is one of the reasons why our public services are less well-run than those of our northern European counterparts”.

Maureen Dowd in the New York Times takes on the Vatican over its release of “a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women”. However, there has been no “moral awakening” over the child abuse scandal. She argues that accepting women into the clergy could actually help the Catholic church, saying “If men prove that all-male hierarchies can get shamefully warped, why can’t they embrace the normality of equality?”

David S. Broker in the Washington Post returns to the issue that consumes many Democrats at the moment: can they keep the House in November? The “underlying ferment” on the Hill that followed press secretary Robert Gibbs’ unguarded omission that the danger is very real must be addressed by President Obama with a psychological turn-around, Broder argues. However, recent polling suggests that “all the Republicans have to do is to reject the Bush label and bring Reagan back for an encore.”

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