From Esquire: The Exorcist and the Libraries: Your VP Contender

Charles Pierce, ladies and gents, on Mitt Romney’s pal:

It appears that Governor “Bobby” Jindal of Louisiana is one of the finalists to hold Willard Romney’s coat from fairly-close-to-now until election day. “Bobby,” as we know, has two other jobs, one as An American Success Story and the other as an Exorcist For Hire, which should take care of the competition, I must say. Although if he can get Chris Christie to levitate, I might vote for him.

(The conservatives already have a pre-emptive defense for the whole “exorcism business,” as they call it. The joke about D.C. needing an exorcism is not bad, but it could backfire on the NRO masthead very badly. But where they got this notion that “every Catholic baptism contains an exorcism” is beyond me, at least as I understand what Jindal claims he did. What is called an “exorcism” in the ritual is not a casting out of demons but, rather, the forgiveness of Original Sin. And there are the baptismal vows, by which every catechumen voluntarily renounces Satan and all his works and his pomps — except, perhaps, for the pompatus of love, but maybe not — and which are taken on behalf of an infant by its godparents. Fans of The Godfather will recall that it also the time when we Papists tend to settle all family business. Anyway, in no sense are either of these an “exorcism.” The Rite of Exorcism stands alone in the Roman Ritual. It is something of an medieval embarrassment to many of the faithful.)

Anyway, in recent weeks, “Bobby” has worked hard to exorcise the evil spirit of Ben Franklin from the cities and towns of Louisiana….

Read it all, here.