The Wright/Obama story and the Hagee/McCain story are imperfect parallels in several directions, but surely John McCain's successful efforts to court the endorsement of an anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish preacher who admires McCain's foreign policy as likely to bring about the apocalypse deserves more than no coverage whatsoever from the country's major newspapers.
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National Controversy
23 Mar 2008 02:12 pm
Comments (39)
1. We're used to crazy Southern conservative whites, so it just seems normal.
2. Crazy Southern conservative whites usually focus their hate on--I think the order rotates--blacks, gays, foreigners, and Catholics. So the potential for widespread harm is limited.
I agree Hagee's endorsement of McCain should have gotten a lot more press than it has.
But is it really correct to say he's anti-Jewish? From what I've heard, part of his brand of craziness has to do with his support for Israel.
I'm sort of hoping for the "McCain has fallen and he can't get up" sort of national controversy, as it will be a lot more damaging/entertaining.
Matt keeps (dishonestly?) contaminating his legitimate anti-Hagee arguments with ridiculous ones:
(1) Hagee's a loon? Check!
(2) Hagee's a fanatic anti-Catholic? Check!
(3) Hagee's fanatically anti-Muslim and pro-War? Check!
(4) Hagee's anti-Jewish? Huh???
His entire religious movement is fanatically pro-Israel/pro-Zionist and indeed appears to be the *creation* of a group of a bunch of really fanatic neocons, basically people like Podhoretz, Peretz, Krauthammer, and all their friends. There have been big stories about Hagee in the WSJ and other MSM publications. Now fanatic neocons can be criticized in lots of ways but being "anti-Jewish" is not one of them.
Claiming Hagee is "anti-Jewish" is a little like claiming Adolf Hitler was "anti-German" because he ended up following policies that got the Germans into a whole lot of trouble.
Maybe Matt will next start claiming that commenter "SLC" is anti-Jewish as well...
RKU: SLC has stated on quite numerous occasions that he's not too wild about Israeli Jews. In fact, one of the reasons he supports such rabidly hawkish Israeli policies is that he fears an Israeli collapse could lead to all those Jews coming here to the U.S.
Jake -- like forgetting the difference between Sunni and Shiites this week? Or more along the lines of Bob Dole falling off of the stage?
The difference is that the media treatment of Wright is based on out-of-context video clips that, if placed in context, would show that he is far from the lunatic he's made out to be. (Is that the best the right wing can do?) Hagee, on the other hand, is the genuine article.
It would also be nice for someone to note that McCain's solicitation of Hagee was explicitly political, while Obama's relationship with Wright was not. But, maybe that fact alone, carrying with it that someone who preaches the end of the world and God's destruction of Israel, carries a significant enough political following is what scares the media off, as not to seem "biased." Also, Hagee might eat them.
It is simply untrue that there has been "no coverage whatsoever" from the country's major newspapers.
Enter McCain Hagee in the NYTimes search and up come page after page of blog posts, news stories, comment, letters, etc. etc. and most of them include words like "bigot" in their opening lines.
Was this simply too difficult a task for your Sunday Matt? Or does it just not fit neatly with your ObaJeremiad?
It is the excretion of exactly this sort of "poor poor Obama" crap from his fans that largely determines my opposition to him.
It is so breathtaking in its dishonesty, so willing to overlook or excuse or lie about his problematics that it really does call into question the entire "progressive" project.
And no it is not enough to engage in the Bush-like chant "but HRC does it too!".
Jeez, grow a pair!
Obama has built his campaign on a few pillars: chiefly his rectitude, his judgement, and the virtues for the US of his "post racial" heritage.
Wright erodes, fatally in my opinion, the foundation of these Obama pillars as Hagee simply does not for McCain.
Wright erodes, fatally in my opinion, the foundation of these Obama pillars as Hagee simply does not for McCain.
Nobody fucking cares, Reb.
"Wright erodes, fatally in my opinion, the foundation of these Obama pillars as Hagee simply does not for McCain."
Yes, if you're dumb enough to believe that a ten-second segment sums up 30 years as a pastor.
Obama turned to Wright for religious guidance. Wright is supremely qualified to offer such help. So qualified that he was present at LBJ's surgery and received a personal thank-you letter from President Clinton for attending a luncheon. Are they also America/white people-hating racist bastards because they appreciated and acknowledged Wright's skills and vast knowledge?
Hagee is no more anti-Jew than Captain Kirk was anti-Red Uniform.
Much like there hasn't been much behind Wright being "anti-white" other than a general assumption that saying extreme comments about politics must mean extreme views on race, Hagee isn't really "anti-Jewish" in an obvious sense. He holds kooky views on the Jewish state that very well might be counterproductive to Israel's interest were he somehow by a bizarre series of events to be put in charge of the country's national security decisions, but in real terms all he's done is raise a bunch of cash for Jewish charities and I find it hard to label that as "anti-Jewish." Anti-catholic, of course, is another story.
You nutjobs trying to equate McCain’s 1 hour meeting with Hagee to Wright’s 20 year mentorship of Obama just don’t get it do you? Just can’t see the difference can you?
Let me give you a hint. McCain has a real pastor, and it’s not Hagee. Go knock yourselves out trying to pin something on him.
Better yet, given Barry O is a smart guy, ask him what the Rev Wright told him over 20 years, and why Barry wanted to expose his two daughters weekly to the stuff he said. Not a speech deflecting questions of Obama's judgment to "Ignore me and my issues, we need an open, honest national dialogue on race except when it is necessary to denounce and punish whites like Imus, Ferraro, my grandmother who step over the line...and when it is necessary to chide those lovable crazy black uncles like Rev Wright, Farrakan, OJ, who might be excessive...."
Then, to be fair, ask McCain to give a speech about Hagee about their 1 hour meeting and its "influence", where McCain did not choose Hagee as any sort of personal mentor - anymore than his 5-7 meetingswith Vietnamese about normalizing relations in the 90s likely swayed his beliefs.
******************
But is it really correct to say he's anti-Jewish? From what I've heard, part of his brand of craziness has to do with his support for Israel.
Posted by bigNowhere
Matt is a firm believer that only Lefty Jews like himself have the moral standing to describe Israel in any terms other than human perfection and a gift to all mankind, even those ungrateful "squatter Arabs".
Hagee is a millenial dispensalist, which is a variant of a Fundie. They believe in the wild stuff you may have heard about - Revelation, Rapture, Israel Rises, Chosen People gather, Christ comes to save all who become believers - Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists who don't Accept Christ do not physically rise to Heaven in the Rapture, but burn in damnation.
You cannot even call it hatred. Just a belief that those who do not follow Hagee's wierd sect are doomed. It no more hates Jews than it hates Islamoids, Hindus, Catholics, Australian pagans and so on..
To achieve this, Hagee is a ferverent Christian Zionist politically. No amount of aid or locking America into wasting it's blood and treasure fighting Israel's wars is too much for the Chosen People.. And the REAL Zionists, the smarter ones, have cultivated various ill-educated Southerners like Hagee. Hagee has been rewarded with dozens of VIP trips to Israel by the Israeli Gov't or wealthy Likudniks - for some full frontal "Americans most important Ally and Best Friend Ever" propaganda.
In terms of societal harm to America? It seems to me that a network of hundreds of "Hate White Amerikkka and blame them for your ills" preachers like Wright and Farrakan do far more damage than the End Of Days whackos. The former spreads hateful poison turning one American against the other on racial litmus tests. The latter has bizarre beliefs about the future in a Christian sect filled with nutty Rapture believers of all races.
"Claiming Hagee is "anti-Jewish" is a little like claiming Adolf Hitler was "anti-German" because he ended up following policies that got the Germans into a whole lot of trouble."
Hitler's policies, while ultimately harmful to Germany, weren't intended to be so. Hagee, on the other hand, advocates policies that he believes will bring about an apocalyptic war that destroys Israel. He views Israeli Jews as pawns that must be sacrificed in pursuit of his crazy ideology. That seems pretty anti-Jewish to me.
I agree that the coverage is far from equivalent, but to be charitable to the media, there's a big difference in novelty here. Wright is a flavor of crazy we're not used to seeing politicians associate with. He has a different crazy message, and a different crazy style. On the other hand, republicans sucking up to bigoted homophobe fundamentalists isn't exactly man bites dog, is it?
Re: You nutjobs trying to equate McCain’s 1 hour meeting with Hagee to Wright’s 20 year mentorship of Obama just don’t get it do you? Just can’t see the difference can you?
Of course there's a diference. The Obama-Wright relationship is personal, not political. The Hagee-McCain relationship is purely political. I am far more concerned about a candidate's political connections than his private ones.
I just don't see him being all that anti-Catholic either. He has apparently pointed out that the Roman Catholic church didn't do as much to oppose Hitler as it probable should have. But that's true from my readings of history. And there was one other statement that got people in a tissy but he said he was referring to the larger apostate church or something. I don't know what that means but it doesn't sound like he dislikes Catholics.
Now homos. Different ball game. Love the sinner, but they are sinners, in his opinion. There's a lot of preachers who believe that. And voters.
Hagee doesn't see Jews as sharing in Redemption, and he's using Jews to further his eschatolgical ends. (He's "immanentizing the eschaton". Remember that?
Also, I heard Obama gave a very good speech on the subject of Iraq -- which has been overshadowed by the whole Wright thing. Hmmm ... interesting, ain't it?
If they made me dictator for a day, I would force various news-programmers to simply resign in shame and make sure all news is provided by Harry Shearer who does a better job of it on Le Show than many others (well, I guess we could also keep Jon Stewart, the Onion and Keith Olberman).
Why are the commedians doing a better job than the so-called serious people?
C'mon people, Hagee's whole Israel support shtick is so transparently anti-jew that you really have to bend over backwards not to see it. It's the equivalent of seeing only a benevolent, and animal loving farmer as he feeds the geese.
Hagee's entire narrative revolves around propping up Israel in order to see it destroyed in the apocalypse and its people eternally damned.
I take it many of you haven't been reading Matt's posts on this in the past?
This is just further proof of how ignored the whole Hagee story was.
1. We're used to crazy Southern conservative whites, so it just seems normal.
--SCMTim
I think that's it in a nutshell.
It does bother me that "God attacked America because we have gays" gets a little what're-you-gonna-do head-shaking, while "Foreigners attacked America because of decades of foreign policy" gets people up into high dudgeon.
Um, isn't McCain's pastor Rod Parsley?
Isn't Parsley the one who was insisting that America was committing "genocide" against black people because of abortion? Um, isn't that a tad racist against black people?
If Parsley is McCain's "spiritual guide", then I'm much more worried about that than some dumb shtick Wright said.
Huh? What is racist about noticing that abortion is a weapon that is deployed disproportionately against Black people?
A Black baby is three times more likely to be the victim of abortion than a white baby. That seems like a good example of structural racism to me. If abortion had never been legalized, America today would have substantially more Black people than it does. They would have more demographic and electoral weight and be better placed to pressure the government to demand their rights.
Abortion has very certainly not been good for Black people. If it takes a man like Parsley to point this out, well even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
"A Black baby is three times more likely to be the victim of abortion than a white baby. That seems like a good example of structural racism to me. If abortion had never been legalized, America today would have substantially more Black people than it does. They would have more demographic and electoral weight and be better placed to pressure the government to demand their rights.
Abortion has very certainly not been good for Black people. If it takes a man like Parsley to point this out, well even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
Just need to point out here that abortions didn't start happening when they were legalized. They had been going on for many years and were disproportionately hurting people who couldn't afford doctors able to hush it up.
"A Black baby is three times more likely to be the victim of abortion than a white baby. That seems like a good example of structural racism to me. If abortion had never been legalized, America today would have substantially more Black people than it does. They would have more demographic and electoral weight and be better placed to pressure the government to demand their rights.
Abortion has very certainly not been good for Black people. If it takes a man like Parsley to point this out, well even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
Just need to point out here that abortions didn't start happening when they were legalized. They had been going on for many years and were disproportionately hurting people who couldn't afford doctors able to hush it up.
I was pretty anti-Wright and thought this was a big problem for Obama. Now I'm not so sure it will be a problem in the long run. Wright's "God da*n America" sermon is not quite the offense you may think it is if all you see is a 10 second snippet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw
Do we really want to defend slavery, intern camps and reservations as blessings on America? The 10 second takeaway is still a problem, but if enough people listen to the actual argument, the conversation could get interesting.
Hagee? He's a nutcase. His theology isn't too different from Pat Robertson.
Re Obama
Yet another outrage by Senator Obamas' former pastor, publishing an interview with a notorious Hamas terrorists in the pastoral newsletter, although to be fair, the interview was originally published in the Los Angeles Times to the everlasting discredit of that newspaper.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12732.htm
Re Chris Ford
Theoretically, Mr. Ford is correct that 20 years of Pastor Wright is more serious then 1 hour of Pastor Hagee. However, from a practical perspective, it doesn't make any difference whether the encounter with pastor Hagee was 20 years or 20 minutes. All a Democratic swift boat organization has to do is combine a Youtube video of McCain embracing Hagee and a Youtube video of a Hagee diatribe against the Catholic Church and play the combined tape in places like Ohio. Then McCain, for all practical purposes, will be in the same boat as Obama.
Hagee--not anti-Jewish? I suppose if you count a guy who says the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves and who only supports Israel as a Jewish state because of its ultimate role in the second coming, when all Jews who don't convert to Christianity will be cast into hell--then yeah, sure, he's not anti-Jewish. He just doesn't like Jews. The Jewish neo-cons embrace Hagee and nutcases like him to their detriment because Hagee is no friend to Israel as it now exists.
Does anybody here go to church for foreign policy knowledge? I'm a Hindu, and if I heard a priest in a temple shit-talking Pakistan, I'd ignore it. But I'd stay for his knowledge of Hinduism. I've never been in that situation, but I imagine Obama, he of superior intelligence and of higher knowledge WRT international affairs, did the same.
If I were a Democratic strategist, I'd want all the dirt on McCain to come out shortly before the election, like Bush's drunk driving arrest did in October 2000, which appears to have cost him about 6 points.
This was a good time for Obama for the inevitable Wright controversy to occur. It would have been better for the country to have it happen a year ago when it should have happened. But this was certainly excellent timing from Obama's standpoint.
Just read the NYT interview with Hagee - and was agape at how "soft" it was. Very little challenging to Hagee's backpedaling and qualifying of his remarks, and it didn't seem like the interviewer was all that prepared. I'm Christian (former evangelical, now trying to find my way) and I wish the interviewer had asked harder questions that were more difficult to squirm around. Hagee's just a few steps up from a cult leader, and a few steps below carnival barker.
A link to todays' Washington Post column by Robert Novak pointing out why Obama is a loser.
Anyone read the NJ section of Sunday's NY Times ("Glimmers of Progress: A Failing School in Newark Tests New Approaches"). The first paragraph may remind some of an old racist joke:
THIRD grade has always been a hard year for Rahmana Muhammad’s children, and therefore for her. All of a sudden, it seems to this mother of four, their textbooks have fewer pictures, their homework lasts for hours, and their test scores plummet.
The Occam's Razor conclusion one takes away from this article, where one of the "glimmers of progress" is Ms. Muhammad's daughter Dyshirah earning an average of 51% on her class math tests (up from 17% at the start of the marking period) is that these kids aren't very smart. To the extent that this is true in general of most inner-city blacks, it raises the question of how many of their obstacles in life are due to a plain lack of ability, rather than some conspiracy against them by whitey.
If Obama wants to start an honest discussion of race in America, let him talk about that.
John McCain didn't just get the endorsement of crazy preacher John Hagee, he said he was "very honored" to get it.
Juan - Right, because Occam's Razor is always correct. Or, maybe it has something to do with centuries of slavery and systematic oppression. Ruben Bolling had a great comic about this:
http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/12/29/
Frankly, I still don't see the need for the hysteria regarding Obama and Rev. Wright. This is one of the biggest non-news events and should've been treated like the McCain lobbyist story - a few jokes, a couple of appalled murmerings, outrage of the non-story, and then done. Logical recap without the hysterics:
We have some one-liners from a preacher's sermon showing up on the news and YouTube. These one-liners are taken out of context (has anyone actually read the entire sermons? Andrew Sullivan has one of them over at his blog). And seriously, so what if the guy said "god damn America?" Or "the chickens are coming home to roost?" He's a preacher. He tries to incite people to think about things in order to examine thier relationship with God. He's not advocating treason or whipping up his congregation to go murder all the white folks or stage an armed revolution. And he hasn't said these things every single Sunday for 20 years. He was too busy feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick, and taking care kids in the daycare.
So Obama went to the church for 20 years and had a relationship with the preacher who said these things in a couple of sermons. Once again, the supposed "hate rhetoric" is a couple of lines in a couple of sermons. Once again, has Fox news or any of the other news organizations put any of these sermons in context? No.
Finally, for all those who think that Obama, because he has a relationship with Wright, shares these beliefs and will go "Wright on us" when elected I ask you to think about the following:
-Is it possible to be friends with/have a mentoree that you disagree with on certain issues? Yes, it is possible.
-Has Obama done or said anything in the 20 years of knowing Wright (and Obama's been a public guy for a long time, he's made alot of speeches, talked to alot of groups, even wrote a couple of very personal books) that gives you any indication that he is a believer in hate rhetoric? No.
The beauty of Obama is that he embraces diversity of thought. He can actually have conversations with, listen to, and empathize with others who don't think exactly like him. People like Wright, people like McCain, people who are presidents of nations who don't agree with our foreign policy. People like you, people like me.
"Or, maybe it has something to do with centuries of slavery and systematic oppression."
Right, because Chinese, Korean and Jewish kids' ancestors never suffered slavery or oppression. If your grandmother was a "comfort woman" sex slave to the Japanese, or a slave laborer in a VW factory in Nazi Germany, does that you so stupid you struggle to get through third grade?
I don’t normally quote comedians but I think, regarding the disparity of the static received by McCain/Hagee and Obama/Wright, that Chris Rock said it best.
“It’s all right, because it’s all white”! The examples Rock used were “white men can make guns and there’s no problem, black rapper says ‘gun’ and there’s a Congressional hearing”. Or “imagine how illegal cigarettes would be if Philip Morris was owned by a bunch of jerri-curl blacks from Kentucky”.
Basically Rock’s point was that both black and white can succeed and prosper in America, but the black man must do so positively, with a smile on his face, or else sooner or lately he’ll catch hell. That’s a bit of an exaggeration of course, if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be humor but the core point is quite valid.
Obama has to denounce his pastor of 20 years in order to prove that he’s not a closet member of the New Black Panther Party. Yet McCain can accept endorsements from men like Falwell, Hageee and Parsley with little criticism whatsoever. At least he’s not being hounded with calls to denounce AND reject them.
The difference is just plain racism. A conservative white pastor can spew hatred his whole life, yet somehow it is still acceptable to the MSM for GOP candidates to fall all over themselves for his endorsement. But a black pastor, who dares to raise his voice, is a monster who should be shunned. (The fact that Rev. Wright was wearing a dashiki was just perfect; the au jus on the whole roast leg of crap!)
Never mind the fact that Wright said “God Damn America” in the context of saying “God damn America IF she thinks of herself as a holy nation, due to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc.” Even if he just plainly said “God damn America”, how is that any different than what Falwell, Robertson and his ilk said after 9/11? Yes, Falwell was called to the carpet over it but others, most notably Robertson, were not. And still in terms of his endorsing power in GOP circles, until the day he died, the bloom hadn’t come off Falwell’s rose all that much.
And that’s another point right there, Rev. Wright is a relative nobody outside of the black church community. Falwell, Robertson, Hagee and Parsley have/had television programs broadcast across the world; the first two are undeniably household names.
The argument that Obama’s Rev. Wright connection is worse because he was in the man’s church was 20 years is a weak one for any thinking person who attends religious services on a regular basis. I’m Catholic and attend church every Sunday. When I moved 6 years ago, I found my current parish and fell in love with it almost immediately. The priest seemed an orthodox, yet compassionate. He almost certainly is. But there have been a few occasions upon which his sermons caused me to despair. No, they weren’t as caustic as Rev. Wright, but they offended me all the same. But I really love the parish as a whole, I was married there and spend a lot of time there beyond just attending Mass. Just leaving and never going back is not that easy, I tried and I can’t. The fact that Mr. Obama can go to Rev. Wright’s church and not be affected by occasional sermons like the one we’ve all been hearing about, at least not be affected to the point where he leaves, it’s a sentiment that I can understand easily.
The clearest proof of this racial double standard is that Obama was called upon to denounce Louis Farrakhan. Why? Besides being black, the only thing the two men have in common is that they are both from the Chicago area; they are not even the same religion. Once again, “soft” racism rears its head. Sure, a black man might be fit enough to run this country. But he has to be vetted ten times as hard as any white man, just to make sure that he isn’t some secret troublemaker. He has to verbally crucify every outspoken black celebrity today, to one degree or another; Farrakhan, Bellefonte, Glover, etc. Now I have zero white guilt in my heart, my grandparents immigrated to America in the 1920’s, no one in my bloodline ever owned a slave. But what is the rest of white America afraid of here? As if Obama, should he actually have a trace of resentment from the way people who look like him have been treated in the US since they were made into 3/5 of a person and he should actually get into the WH, that the next day white men around America would wake up to black men on their doorsteps looking for their white wives and daughters.
Then again, when you think about it, why does the MSM find any preacher’s endorsement acceptable for candidates seeking the presidency? A huge number of Christian pastors/churches/believers think that all non-Christians will burn in hell for all eternity. How is that less hateful than anything Wright or McCain’s endorsers ever said regarding the US?
Comments closed April 06, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Well, to be fair, Obama's known Wright longer and more intimately. But it does scare me that McSame actively courted Hagee's endorsement.
Posted by Monster | March 23, 2008 2:33 PM