A glaringly bright shiny object for the US press has been the phenomenal rise to the top of the Republican heap of presidential wannabes by Donald Trump, reality TV star and real estate mogul. All it took was an outpouring of easily fact-checked false claims by Trump of the predominance of "rapists and murderers and, I suppose, a few good people" among Mexican immigrants.
Trump, with his customary disregard for fact or convention, followed that with attacks on the intelligence and integrity of fellow Republican aspirants, even impugning the heroism that Senator John McCain had exhibited in five years of captivity by the North Koreans.
As if to prove that Trump's antics truly portrayed the racist leanings of many white older primary election voters, it was only the last - the attack on military hero McCain - that brought any protest from other Republicans, ensuring that Trump would still be the central focus of the 24-hour news cycle.
In the midst of this political flotsam comes the shining of light from the seemingly unlikely portals of the Vatican.
For a great change, Pope Francis had signalled his intent to turn the Catholic Church from the divisiveness of its unceasing and variously unsuccessful attacks on abortion and homosexuality. While making no doctrinal alteration, he would focus, instead, on problems that required co-operative effort in the real world, beginning with poverty and income inequality.
Having helped to broker a new relationship between the US and Cuba, Pope Francis has convened a conference of mayors of great cities to generate solutions to the existential crises of our time: man-made climate change and increasing inequality of the poor and the rich everywhere.
Unfortunately for some in New Zealand, the Pope's message of tolerance for divergent views has fallen on the ideological deaf ears.
In a letter to this newspaper, Ken Orr maligned the efforts of Family Planning with outrageous and unsupportable claims that Family Planning provides sex education in schools that promotes "promiscuity and sexual perversions", when the opposite is true. Family Planning promotes decision-making in sex as against peer pressure.
Orr's letter failed to identify him as an activist, heading an organisation, Right To Life, which opposes contraception and abortion. The group's legal case against the Abortion Advisory Council was found without merit by the New Zealand courts.
His letter contends that abstinence-only education reduces teenage pregnancy and STDs. Texas towns with abstinence-only education have twice the rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs compared with other school systems with conventional education on responsible sex, including contraception and safe sex.
That evidence indicts Orr's own group as one that enables irresponsible sex in teenagers.
My suggestion to Mr Orr and his friends is to stop distracting themselves and the rest of us with bright shiny objects. The pyrite you have found is fool's gold and, unlike the real thing, it is worthless.
Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
