Peggy Noonan mostly praised Obama’s speech, and largely seemed to understand it, which puts her in a minority of conservative commentators. But she criticizes him, near the end of her article, for . . . wait for it . . . not understanding America. Yes, snotty Reaganite lickspittles who made a profession of courting racists and religious bigots with coded signals, demonizing “welfare queens”, glorifying death squads and Nazi war dead, excusing incompetence and ignorance at every turn, and obsessing over wayward blowjobs, now presume to tell candidates of the working-class party what the real America is all about.
March 21st, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Economics, Culture, News & Current Events, Fiasco, Torture |
9 comments
I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the “Obama’s Pastor” controversy, because it’s the product of three forms of conservative stupidity that I am glad to be immune to. The first is their deliberate, calculated, and organized distortion of political campaigns with red herring issues and machine-gun assaults of irrelevant attacks whipped up by their noise machine to drown out a substantive discussion of issues on which they cannot compete. The second is their inability to think for themselves and its corollary, their assumption that nobody else is capable of thinking for themselves - hence the bizarre “controversy” over whether Obama was present in the room when somebody else said something that makes white conservatives uncomfortable. (It’s true: a major portion of the noisemaking over individual sentences spoken by Jeremiah Wright and taken out of context by Obama’s critics is the question not whether Obama agrees with them, but whether he was present when they were spoken. Somebody should ask these clowns if they are so weak-minded that they are incapable of hearing anything and not believing it - and if not, why they assume that black people must be.) The third is the inherent inability even to acknowledge race and racial history as an issue in America - the drooling stupidity that allows conservative whites to imagine that the Confederate flag is not a symbol of race hatred, but that black anger over discrimination is. Like so much of conservative discourse, this nonsensical “controversy” simply fails to rise to the level that would deserve to be taken seriously; as with conservatism in general, giving it no credence is the safest and most efficient way to deal with the mess it presents.
But the speech that Obama planned on the subject was interesting to me - interesting as a phenomenon. It occurs to me that this election has now seen two “Kennedy moments” - defining speeches in which a candidate has been forced, by others’ bigotry, to confront their own outsider status and challenge America to expand its notion of community membership and our range of shared values. Kennedy did it with panache over the question of Catholicism, and this year Romney did a decent job in the same vein regarding Mormonism. Obama faces a larger challenge on the question of race. Race and sex are the fundamental lines of discrimination written into the Constitution itself; race especially was the ground of the most vicious and tenacious divisions of American society, the one that defined and shaped the country as no other, and laid the groundwork on which the lives of all Americans are lived today.
Americans have always been able to make themselves feel good about themselves by invoking both religiosity and religious freedom, but they have invested to an even greater degree in defining and maintaining racial divisions. In some ways, Kennedy and Romney were fighting a downhill battle; it required little more for either of them than to express teary-eyed religious fervor and promise not to go overboard with it. Obama is unquestionably struggling uphill; he cannot claim community with other groups by invoking his devotion to his own, as Kennedy and Romney could, and he cannot erase their bigotry by any degree of non-threatening rhetoric or promises not to challenge their complacency (which is just as well, because that’s not what he’s about). Even so, a speech on race is an opportunity to bring race to the forefront of the discussion in a serious way, and potentially to cut through the winking code-words and denials and evasions that invariably smothered any approach to the subject heretofore. It was an unique enough opportunity, also, that it just might have had a chance to make whites shut up and listen for a change, and maybe shift the grounds of discussion just a bit. I was interested to see what Obama would do with it.
(More after the break)
March 18th, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Read Your Bible, Race |
23 comments
I’ve been ambivalent as between Hillary and Obama - each has great strengths and also some flaws or weaknesses. But Obama impresses me more and more as a man whose principles are more than window-dressing, and sorely needed. Today, he proved it beyond question:
An Open Letter to LGBT Americans
I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
Equality is a moral imperative. That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage. Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.
The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception. We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.
We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma – too often tied to homophobia– that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day. But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones – and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention. I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign – from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.
Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.
Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.
Barack Obama
It rankles a little that he still finds it necessary to equivocate on this “civil union” nonsense, but it’s important to remember that that was the progressive position on gay rights just a few years ago. No one in high office, in the history of this nation, has made so forthright and so morally upright a statement in favor of full and uncompromising equality - certainly none with the Presidency in their grasp, still less on the very issue that the haters and bigots had used to put one of their own into the Presidency at the very time it was said. He didn’t have to say it - he could have coasted into office while keeping this issue on the back burner - but he chose to stand up in a way that was so badly needed, and will cause such a vicious backlash, and that he could have so easily avoided.
Aside from simply being right on an important issue, Obama today showed remarkable moral depth. It was inspiring - in a way that has nothing to do with rhetoric or visionary exhortation, but with true moral courage and the dedication to govern his life and work by his ideals. It is impossible not to admire this.
February 28th, 2008
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, News & Current Events |
72 comments
Last night, I watched a great NOVA episode, entitled Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial. It’s an excellent program chronicling the six week federal trial concerning the Dover, PA school board’s attempt to interject intelligent design into the science curriculum. I was prepared to blog about this, and to recommend it (which I still do), when I learned that I’d be a little late with this. You see, I live in Memphis, and our PBS station was one of two in the country (Louisville, KY being the other) to refuse to broadcast the program when it originally aired back in November of 2007. According to the local paper, WKNO (our PBS affiliate) was “concerned about the controversial nature of the program.”
It continues to boggle my mind that I live in a country so backward and ignorant that a large percentage of the population refuses to believe something as basic as evolution. And worse, I live in a part of that nation that’s apparently even more backward and ignorant, if our PBS station views a documentary about a well-known trial to be “too controversial.” Remind me again why this is supposed to be the greatest nation on earth.
January 23rd, 2008
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Church & State, Religion, Science |
31 comments
Mitt Romney is on record defending his membership in an (until recently) officially racist religion by citing his family’s personal experience in combatting racism:
These American values, this great moral heritage, is shared and lived in my religion as it is in yours. I was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor. I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.
Except that David Bernstein, in The Boston Phoenix, documents the impossibility of that claim.
December 20th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Race |
2 comments
Huckabee just can’t win for losing. In addition to the understandable criticism of his insane right-wing politics and values, he’s getting tagged for the smarmy dog-whistle content of his ads. In particular, his recent Christmas ad, informing our 1/4 non-Christian nation that “at this time of year . . . what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ”, has been criticized for including a huge glowing white cross hovering over Huckabee’s shoulder and slowly gliding behind his head (!) as he speaks.
The strangest thing is that his campaign seems to be lying about how it got there, pedaling peddling [oy!] a story to USA Today (repeated without the slightest critical inquiry by the credulous Byron York at NRO) that the whole thing was an unplanned coincidence resulting from a national-campaign ad shoot so casual there wasn’t even a script. Not only is the story absurd on its face, it’s actually physically impossible.
December 19th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
17 comments
Mike Huckabee is catching more-than-deserved flak for his history of Medieval remarks about gays, women, AIDS, and the usual range of winger obsessions. Today, his oppo research director - Lean Left protege Joe Carter, of Evangelical Outpost - tried to “clarify” Huckabee’s position on . . . (wait for it) . . . homosexuality and necrophilia. Because, when you’re Mike Huckabee, you need a position on homosexuality and necrophilia. And when you’re Joe Carter, you’re ready to provide one.
Wingery aside, Joe is a great blogger. But running a campaign for the Presidency is a whole different ballgame - and, as usual, Huckabee’s simply not warmed up. Joe and Huckabee are both discovering that the world outside their evangelical echo chamber is populated by people who expect you to have reasons for the things you say, and who tend to notice when you’re crazy. The results weren’t pretty.
December 18th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, Media, News & Current Events |
5 comments
George W. Bush has demolished all Presidential records for stupidity, vapidity, contempt for facts, and sheer lack of intellectual engagement with the world. He has also scaled new heights in preening religious posturing, religious sectarianism, and scarily delusional religious triumphalism in an official capacity. It’s hard not to think those two phenomena are related (as they are overtly in such specific instances as Bush’s denial of global warming, embrace of creationism, opposition to stem cell research and abortion, and the like).
Mike Huckabee is giving Bush a run for the title on the religious front, claiming his religion “defines” both him himself and his approach to his official duties, touting his status as an ordained minister as part of his qualifications for the Presidency, declaring categorically that no Muslim would be appointed to his Cabinet [that was Romney; my apologies], and boasting (falsely) in a Republican candidates’ debate that he holds a degree in theology. (He does not, but it’s striking that he would bring it up as part of his qualification for office.)
This is bad enough, but it’s also becoming apparent that Huckabee is somewhat strikingly . . . um . . . fact-challenged, too.
December 16th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Education, Media, News & Current Events |
20 comments
Fred has a very interesting post up today:
Those of us Christians who do not believe that this newest testament is holy scripture thus find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: We’re asked, out of respect for our Mormon friends, to overlook this difference and to dismiss everything in that book as adiaphora and inconsequential trivia.
I have a hard time viewing such a dismissal as respectful of their faith. I want to say, instead, that the content of their holy book matters — that it shapes their faith and doctrine and identity in a meaningful way. If the Book of Mormon is meaningful, then it also seems reasonable to say that the teachings of this text distinguish Mormons from non-Mormons. And the category of non-Mormons here includes all of those Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Coptic and other believers traditionally referred to by the descriptive term “Christians.”
The comments are just as interesting. But I cannot help but wonder why this matters. Fred is right that to dismiss the differences between Mormon and Protestant and Catholic Christianity would be doing a disservice to those who take their Mormonism seriously. Fred is also right that telling people “I don’t care what you say, you aren’t a real Christian” is more than a bit on the arrogant side. But the fact that we have people so intent on claiming for themselves membership in some broadly defined Christian group is a little disturbing. If there was no discrimination based on not belonging to that group or if there was no concrete benefit to belonging to that gorup, then it would not matter if Protestants didn’t think Mormons were Real True Christians. It would be a point for friendly debate between neighbors and theologians. It would not, in any sense, matter to the public life of the country.
The candidacy of Mitt Romney, though, and to a lessor extent that of Huckabee, has shown us that it does matter. Romney has been trying for the entire campaign to prove that Mormons really are Christians, just like the evangelical and fundamentalist voters he so despertaly wishes to impress. Huckabee has benefited, to some extent, by the fact that he is manifestly one of that group. In the end, and depressingly, whether or not Mormons are Christians matters becasue a significant portion of our country cares more about what you are than what you do.
And that is a disturbing thing in a country as diverse as ours.
December 11th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Culture |
34 comments
It seems Mike Huckabee is upset that he’s being asked about his beliefs:
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher who has surged in Iowa with evangelical Christian support, bristled Tuesday when asked if creationism should be taught in public schools.
Huckabee — who raised his hand at a debate last May when asked which candidates disbelieved the theory of evolution — asked this time why there is such a fascination with his beliefs.
“I believe God created the heavens and the Earth,” he said at a news conference with Iowa pastors who murmured, “Amen.”
“I wasn’t there when he did it, so how he did it, I don’t know,” Huckabee said.
But he expressed frustration that he is asked about it so often, arguing with the questioner that it ultimately doesn’t matter what his personal views are.
“That’s an irrelevant question to ask me — I’m happy to answer what I believe, but what I believe is not what’s going to be taught in 50 different states,” Huckabee said. “Education is a state function. The more state it is, and the less federal it is, the better off we are.”
Sorry, Governor, but you got the support you have now primarily by pandering to evangelicals. Trying to run away from that now won’t wash, either with the public, or with them. If you’re going to run as an evangelical, then own that. But evangelicals have long had a clear political agenda with respect to education (among other things), so it’s a fair question. Either own your ties to evangelicals, or shut up about them. Your choice.
December 4th, 2007
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Politics, Church & State, Religion |
11 comments
Has any candidate seen their stock fall so far so fast in recent times? I don’t mean their ability to win a contest, I mean their entire image. Obama promised a new beginning, a politics of hope and reconciliation. But in the last week, he has thrown all of that away with two really bone-headed decisions, the first of which was the deliberate choice to involve a horrible bigot in his gospel tour.
McClurkin is a hateful person, a man who is convinced that gays are trying to “kill our children”, and that homosexuality is a “curse” brought about by abuse and molestation. Those are not the words of a man genuinely concerned with the lives or souls of homosexuals; those are the words of a man who is so filled with loathing for something he dislikes that he is willing to to tell any lie or indulge in any smear to hurt those he hates. And this was the man the campaign chose to headline the event. And, of course, he took the opportunity to attack homosexuals on Obama’s time:
The whole controversy might have been forgotten in the swell of gospel sound except Mr. McClurkin turned the final half hour of the three-hour concert into a revival meeting about the lightning rod he has become for the Obama campaign.
He approached the subject gingerly at first. Then, just when the concert had seemed to reach its pitch and about to end, Mr. McClurkin returned to it with a full-blown plea: “Don’t call me a bigot or anti-gay when I have suffered the same feelings,” he cried.
“God delivered me from homosexuality,” he added. He then told the audience to believe the Bible over the blogs: “God is the only way.” The crowd sang and clapped along in full support….
Mr. McClurkin’s support for Mr. Obama could signal to some black evangelical voters that race and religion are more important than Mr. Obama’s support for gay rights.
This decision was bad enough, but then came the response:
Part of the reason that we have had a faith outreach in our campaigns is precisely because I don’t think the LGBT community or the Democratic Party is served by being hermetically sealed from the faith community and not in dialogue with a substantial portion of the electorate, even though we may disagree with them.
So progressives are “hermetically sealed” from the religious in this country? Really? Tell that, Mr. Senator, to these people, or these people, or, heck, even to me and the millions and millions like me:
For far too long, the right wing has gulled the media and the country into thinking that its religion was the only acceptable face of Christianity. It has used the respect for all religions on the left as evidence of the left’s irreligiosity. That has never been the case. The teachings of Jesus Christ are at the core of how millions define their support for liberal causes, myself included. John Kerry, with one small statement, has reminded the nation of that fact. Millions of us are liberal because of our religion. Millions of us are not represented by Opus Dei, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, or any of the other right wing talking heads the media turns to when it wants to “discuss” religion in this country. Antonin Scalia does not speak for all Catholics.
… The language of religion has always been spoken comfortably on the left, even if the principle of tolerance has caused it to occasionally be spoken too quietly. John Kerry is not speaking quietly now. Whatever George W. Bush may desire, whatever the editors of the Washington Post and New York Times may decree, Christianity and faith are not the property of the right wing. I have a faith, too, as does John Kerry and millions of others. It is strong, and sincere, and, as Kerry has reminded us, powerful. And in the face of provocation and distortion, it has no reason to be silent.
It is bad enough that you stupidly try to pander to a sense of bigotry among some segment of the South Carolina voting population. But to use the same, tired right wing smears against progressives as a justification for your pandering? Disgusting is perhaps the nicest thing that I can say about that decision. This is the worst kind of pandering. It has nothing to do with trying to tread the distance between where many of his supporters are on this issue and where Obama would like to lead them. Obama took one of the most hateful anti-gay bigots, a man who thinks gays are trying to “kill our children” and making him the face of the Obama campaign for the duration of this Gospel event. It is the explicit and deliberate decision to appeal to the basest nature of South Carolina voters in the desperate hope that those voters can deliver him an essential win. It is the worst kind of politics as usual.
And then Obama compounded this with another stupid mistake: an attack on Social Security:
A new Obama ad in Iowa shows the candidate talking to a small group of people are Social Security, and calling for an honest discussion about the problems that the program face
There is no Social Security crisis. Even with the GOP spending money as it grows on trees, the program is set through 2047. And the events of 2005 showed, people like the program just fine the way it is. Having spent all that time and effort beating back the privatization monster, it is incredibly depressing to hear a Democrat open the door for its return. But Obama needs an issue to attack Clinton on, and attacking Social Security is an issue that the media Village just adores and so is sure to pick up and treat favorably, especially since it fits into their notion of what a “serious” Democrat should be. A “serious” Democrat, of course, is one who is more than willing to attack the underpinnings of the New Deal and any other Democratic program that is popular with the general public but not with the Villagers.
There are plenty of other issues out there Obama could have chosen to differentiate himself from Clinton: the coming war with Iran, universal health care, fair trade, the war on drugs, the GOP’s war on the Constitution, etc, etc,etc. The problem, though, is that the Village disapproves of the progressive side on all of those matters, so taking on Clinton over any of them would have been meant with Village scorn. And that would have meant that it would have been harder to generate positive press and to force Clinton onto the defensive. That would have taken courage, something Obama does not seem to poses in any noticeable measure these days.
I had hopes for Obama. He came out of Chicago’s politics, so I knew that he knew how to brawl, but his rhetoric had given me hope that he would use those skills to advance a genuinely inclusive, progressive vision. Apparently, that is not to be. Twice in less than a week, Obama has chosen to take the low road, the easy way through the political landscape. Twice in a week, Obama has chosen to pander to the basest of motives of voters and the self-important nitwits that run our national press. Instead of actually being bold, instead of actually trying to build a new politics built on the Audacity of Hope, Obama and his campaign chose to take the basest route to the White House. They have embraced politics as usual — and as dirty as can be — with the speed of a drunk embracing a free case of beer. In the process, they have shown Obama to be a hollow candidate, a smiling face for the same old politics of division and sycophancy.
October 30th, 2007
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Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Torture |
14 comments
The right-wing hyena mob is working itself up again, this time over some long-overdue common sense that, predictably, offends their smug, religious sense of entitlement.
Apparently the National Cemetery Administration - the group that administers all the national public cemeteries - has a group of volunteer vets, affiliated with the VA, who attend funerals for military veterans and do some sort of flag-folding ceremony. At some point somebody wrote some kind of treacly religious pap about the “significance of the folds in the flag” (there isn’t any - they’re just folds), and the group has been reciting it at the funerals while they fold the flag. It’s filled with pseudo-symbolism (”the sixth fold is for where our hearts lie” - WTF?) and repeated religious references, explicitly Christian or Judeo-Christian. Nobody asked them to do this, and it isn’t a part of the planned services at people’s funerals - they just start doing it during the service without warning, and apparently most people let them get on with it because they’re, you know, sincere and all.
Finally, and obviously, someone complained that they didn’t want someone else’s religious maunderings injected into their family member’s funeral, and the NCA made the obvious decision that their staff - being government workers (volunteer or otherwise) - should not be in the business of doing so. So they issued the long-overdue directive that the flag folders should just fold the flag and keep their Vogon poetry to themselves. They made it explicitly clear that anyone who actually wanted to hear this thing at their family member’s funeral could have it, by requesting it ahead of time - the government is just not in the business of making unilateral religious declarations to a captive audience.
Naturally the wingers are beside themselves, blaming the person who complained (”one person prevents everyone in the country from hearing this heartwarming recitation”), complaining about “kicking God out of the public square”, and whatnot. Not one of the articles I’ve seen notes that the directive does not prevent a family from hearing anything they want at any point in the funeral. Naturally, not one even raises the question whether people acting on behalf of the government should unilaterally preach explicitly partisan religious credos without invitation at other families’ funeral. They’re just certain that some sort of high moral principle has been violated because a bunch of (literally) preachy vets don’t get to give their own religious speeches at other people’s memorial ceremonies without regard to the deceased’s actual wishes or beliefs. A California American Legion officer has apparently ordered that any AL members who volunteer for these funerals are to ignore the regulations and read the thing anyway, without asking permission. Because it’s their feelings that count . . .
October 27th, 2007
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General, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
12 comments
J.K. Rowling has a wonderful gift for pushing the religious wingnuts’ “insane gibber” button, seemingly without trying. Her Harry Potter series consistently ranks among the books most frequently targeted for banning by the winger legions, and now she’s got them in a sex panic over what must be the most sex-free coming-of-age stories on record. I like her more and more.
October 21st, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, Media, Books, Evidence of Harm, News & Current Events |
21 comments
David Horowitz, the right-wing provocateur, along with Michelle Malkin and similar bottom-feeders, is promoting “Islamofascism Awareness Week” this month on college campuses, in conjunction with college conservative groups. It’s another exercise in putting a smugly self-righteous face on their own bigotry.
October 17th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Iraq, Terrorism, News & Current Events, Iran |
25 comments
The right-wing freakshow that is Ann Coulter is back in the news today for offensive remarks about . . . oh, lots of things, including Jews. What no one seems to have noticed is that, this time, Coulter didn’t make up her latest outrage - she was just saying in public what right-wing evangelicals have been saying among themselves, quite explicitly, for decades.
October 11th, 2007
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General, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
78 comments
I’m kind of digging the Republican primary race. My take on it is that it should go on for as long as possible, and the fringe candidates are only helping. Normally, the standard GOP murderers’ row of whackos scares me, but this year I think it’s all to the good. I’m shamelessly rooting for an internecine religious war, and they’re going out of their way to provide one. My reason, of course, is that the crazier they look the better the chance the public will finally wake up to what the Republican party stands for, and the longer they claw at each other the more money they spend and the more damage they do to the eventual front-runner. Even if that turns out to be Giuliani (as it likely will), letting the religious nuts work themselves into a frenzy, only to be disappointed when none of their candidates gets the nod, will have the effect of keeping them from the polls in disgust in the general election. And if one of the nutsos does get the nomination (very unlikely), the others will have spent so much time fracturing themselves along denominational lines that the same thing will happen to a large degree. Either way: a Democratic victory, a GOP schism, and the harsh light of publicity on how crazy, how dangerous, and how vicious the religious right is.
From that hopeful perspective, the current campaign has been surprisingly rewarding, and the Iowa straw poll was almost a gift.
August 12th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
8 comments
The Washington Post published a chart of House members ranked by percentage of time the voted with their party. It shows a remarkable level of cohesion: overall, members voted with their party’s position almost 90% of the time on average. What’s really interesting is the party divide - just the opposite of what you might think. Democrats as a group vote much more consistently with their party (93% of the time) than Republicans (84%). With one anomalous exception (the most partisan member ever was a Republican with a 100% party-line voting record - but he died in office after casting fewer than 10 votes), it’s Democrats all the way down for almost the first 200 names. And there are only 2 members of the House with party-loyalty records of less than 75%. Interestingly, both are Republicans, one of them (Christopher Smith) known for his far-right views. (The fourth name from the bottom - at 75.3% party loyalty - is Ron Paul, currently kind of running for the Republican Presidential nomination.)
July 30th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
12 comments
The press reports that Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, best known as Tammy Faye Bakker, died in hospice two days ago after years of treatment for cancer. She had become a national joke for her outré makeup and hyperemotional manner, displayed in TV interviews after her sleazeball rapist embezzler televangelist husband Jim Bakker was exposed in what was then described as a “sex scandal” involving “infidelity” (he raped his secretary and then paid her hush money not to report it). That led to the discovery that he had stolen over $150 million of his sheeple’s tax-free religious contributions from his own ministry, and he went to jail for 8 years. But there was much more, and much better, to her than that.
Tammy Faye was not guilty of Jim Bakker’s crimes, but she was hardly innocent - she could not have been in the dark as to how they could afford their infamously indulgent lifestyle on a minister’s salary, and she went to lengths to contribute to the circus of protest and anguish that both Bakkers relied on to try to save their media empire. Both blamed their troubles on others, claiming rival televangelists were plotting against them (true) and that the secretary had “seduced” Jim (unforgivable). But she achieved a kind of redemption after divorcing Bakker while he was in prison.
In fact, despite her somewhat off-putting flamboyance, she behaved with a dignity and forthrightness that was only recognized in retrospect. She wore lots of makeup, she said, because it made her feel pretty and sparked her husband’s sexual interest - which, I would think, would be the right reasons to do so. She knew she was made fun of for her non-fashion-model appearance, and went ahead and did her thing anyway - which implies a lot more class than was displayed by her taunters (me among them, at one time, I’m sorry to say). Late in life she actually appeared at drag queen events and personally judged “Tammy Faye Baker Lookalike” contests with good humor. Most important of all, she was an almost-unheard-of example of a decent, genuinely warm, non-hateful Christian televangelist.
Always remaining an outspoken evangelical Christian, she went on to become a figurehead for a kind of welcoming Christianity not predicated on division or prejudice; she never again stooped as low as during the Bakker/Swaggart/Falwell/Oral Roberts crapfest. In particular, she developed a friendly alliance with the gay community. Even during her televangelist years, she had made a point of offering tolerance to gays; she claims that the Bakkers’ show “The PTL Club” was the only televangelist show that explicitly embraced gays. Later, two gay friends made a campy biographical film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, in which she appeared and which became a huge hit in the gay community. She spent years thereafter making celebrity appearances at Pride festivals and cross-dressing shows. (Oddly, she also became friends with porn mega-star Ron Jeremy, after they met on a reality TV show.)
She once told Larry King:
When I went — when we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that.
That empathy ran both ways:
So many things have happened to the gay people — they’ve been made fun of, they’ve been put down, they’ve been misunderstood. A couple of the gay guys told me, “We put [Eyes of Tammy Faye] on every time we get discouraged.”
As part of the sex/embezzlement/payoffs/tax evasion/etc. scandals, the top-tier televangelist vultures fought over control of the Bakker empire. Jimmy Swaggart kicked the whole thing off by threatening to expose Bakker’s “affair” seven years after the fact, in an attempt to have Bakker disrobed by the Assemblies of God church, which would have triggered a clause in his Heritage USA charter granting ownership to AoG. To evade that clause, Bakker signed it over to Jerry Falwell on a handshake agreement that Falwell would give it back when Bakker was ready; Falwell later double-crossed his fellow man of God and kept the property for himself. The Bakkers’ first TV show, “The 700 Club”, wound up as Pat Robertson’s personal fraudulent cash cow. [Robertson owned the show from the beginning, and merely took over the Bakkers’ talk show after they left the station. My mistake.] And through it all - after her many trials, failures, and excesses, and her long association with the cream of the evangelical sleaze - Tammy Faye emerged as an ebulliently loving, accepting, joyous and flamboyant person. Among them all - Bakker, Swaggart, Falwell, Robertson (and throw in Oral Roberts, too, who was pulling his “give me $8 million or God will kill me” stunt [god, what a lost opportunity that was!] just as the Bakker scandal broke) - she was the only one who never stooped to homophobia, and never used hatred as a justification for her own bad behavior, or a reason for others to behave likewise.
Not only was she not like the other televangelists, she rose far above their level, transcending her teaching and background to embrace and celebrate - and receive the same in return from - those whom her entire life and culture would otherwise have been dedicated to destroying.
Well done, Tammy Faye.
UPDATE: Corrected reference to Pat Robertson & “The 700 Club”.
July 22nd, 2007
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General, Church & State, Religion, Culture, News & Current Events |
8 comments
David Opderbeck:
These are pictures I took of the statue of Charlemagne outside Notre Dame Cathedral in France, and of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. You may recall that Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Romanorum by Pope Leo III in 799, marking the rise of “Christendom” — the notion of a revitalized Roman Empire united under the leadership of the Church, with the Church legitimating the state. This unhealthly [sic] synthesis of church and state often led to terrible oppression, violence and wars carried out in Jesus’ name. I think the point of view in my Charlemagne statute photo illustrates this well — the armed charger bearing the Emperor jumping out in front of the church.
The Cologne Cathedral, started in 1248, is so enormous, and so ornate, so Gothic, that it generates a tangible feeling of heaviness. It’s a beautiful building, but beautiful in a “terrible” way. At some level, the terror of that beauty can serve as a reminder, I think, of what power can do when mixed with faith. In the presence of the Cologne Cathedral, there is no doubt that this was intended as an assertion of the Church’s authority over every sphere of life. It’s interesting that the Cathedral was unfinished in the middle ages, and was only finished by Prussian romantic nationalists in the 1800’s. The Prussians knew that this masive [sic] edifice could serve as a symbol of power and pride. That Prussian pride, and the desire for power it produced, was one of the streams that fed the grisly death mills of the two world wars.
We who call ourselves “the Church” would do well today, I believe, to remember what happens when we try to assert political power in Jesus’ name.
As they say, read the whole thing.
June 28th, 2007
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Politics, Church & State, Religion |
47 comments
In this response to my ruminations on Mitt Romney and criticisms of his faith, KTK says this:
Attacks on Romney for being Mormon are out of line and should be condemned.
Why, exactly, is this, anyway?
If attacking someone for “being an X” (where “X” is “member of some certain religion”) is understood simply to mean saying that they hold certain beliefs (characteristic of X) and those beliefs should be condemned, why would it possibly not be legitimate to attack them in that way? What else could we judge a person on - especially in the political arena - but their beliefs and how they act on them? We certainly have no hesitation in making such attacks for all beliefs other than religious ones - but are somehow pulled up short as soon as those beliefs are called “religious”.
This is wrong. First, and perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my original post, but I never meant to imply that beliefs someone acts upon, even religious beliefs, can ever be off limits. Indeed, right before the quote KTK highlights I said this:
Similarly, Romney’s placing his faith at the center of his campaign opens him up to questions about what, exactly, does that mean. When a political candidates says, essentially, that his faith guides his decisions, then people are entitled to know what his faith instucts its members to do. And those instructions are just as open to discussion, debate, attack, and rejection as any other set of policy positions or guiding principles. Again, if Romney did not want the tenets of his faith to be campaign fodder then he should be careful to not give the impression that his faith will guide his decisions.
I think its clear that attacking someone on their expressed or actual actions based on a given set of beliefs is perfectly fone. But that is not the situation we are discussing here.
Part of the problem is that “being an X” is never understood as “saying that they hold certain beliefs (characteristic of X) and those beliefs should be condemned”. When someone is attacked for “being an X” what the person doing the attacking is invariably doing is saying that since a person is a member of X then they will blindly and mindlessly follow a set of beliefs. Usually those beliefs are presented in the most stark, black and white, an unsubtle way possible. John Kennedy was attacked for being Catholics because every Protestant knew that Catholics took their orders directly from the Pope. That is an extreme case, but it is only a difference of kind. When you attack someone for being a member of a religion, and just for being a member of a religion, then you are saying, in essence, that the person is not a person but a mindless automaton, incapable of overriding the programing of his religion in any form or fashion. That is attacking someone for what she is, not for what she does.
John Kennedy did not take his orders form the Pope. Ted Kennedy does not push anti-abortion or anti-stem cell legislation. John Kerry would not have appointed anti-choices judges to the bench. In KTK’s formulation, it seems to me, it is perfectly fine to attack them for being Catholic, to disqualify them because the current Church leadership chooses to represent only the conservative side of Catholicism at the present. People are complex and contradictory and it is best to judge them as such.
June 27th, 2007
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Church & State, Religion |
6 comments
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