What do we talk about when we talk about John Ashcroft’s belief that calico cats are signs of the devil that must be removed from his path? In short, according to Terry Mattingly, ourselves, with a subtext explaining why we want to believe the rumor is true. Mattingly talks with a curator at Snopes.com, an urban-legends website, about why urban legends spread — because people believe rumors ought to be true about those they dislike — and what wanting calicophobia to be true says about how the left views Ashcroft’s and Bush’s faiths. It’s not exactly the blood libel, but we’ll grant that the left doesn’t care much for Ashcroft. However, we don’t follow the implied leap from calico rumors to “Christianophobia,” except as an example of the current thinking that criticism or satire of a public figure who trades on his religion is an attack on faith itself.