Palin's Reverend Wright Moments

So Dr. Blanchard wants to play the Reverend Wright card again. O.K.

I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions.
—Joe Vogler, founder, Alaskan Independence Party

I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party convention in the Golden Heart City, Fairbanks.
—Governor Sarah Palin, video address, 2008.03.24

The difference, my dear Dr. Blanchard, between Governor Palin's wacky friends and Senator Obama's erstwhile pastor Jeremiah Wright is that we have Senator Obama on record disavowing Rev. Wright's "damning" of America (although, as you'll recall from April, I'm not convinced Wright said anything that needed disavowing). Governor Palin, meanwhile, explicitly welcomes a party that disavows America and slaps America's institutions with the d-word. Governor Palin giggles at the b-word and worse insults on live radio, issues a half-hearted apology (after catching public heck) that misses the point, then essentially endorses the purveyors of that language by giving them a scoop interview the day Senator McCain picks her as his running mate. (Haven't seen Obama giving Wright any public interviews lately, have you?)

So, to review, by picking Palin, McCain has taken age, inexperience, foreign policy knowledge, fine oratory, and now Reverend Wright off the table as issues he can use against Obama. Bush and the Iraqi government have knocked the legs out from under McCain's argument that a timetable for troop withdrawal is a bad idea. History is killing McCain's argument that his Republican policies will be better for the economy than Obama's (a new analysis finds the economy consistently grows faster and more fairly under Democratic Presidents). Pretty soon all McCain-Palin will have left to run on is moose burgers and creationism. And at this point, nothing could be more ironic than a McCain campaign touting "intelligent design."

New campaign slogan: McCain-Palin: The Campaign to Nowhere.

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Update 08:22: ABC's Jake Tapper reports that Palin and her husband were members of the Alaskan Independence Party in 1994.

Update 12:00: Alaskan Independence Party Vice Chairman Dexter Clark confirms Palin's membership in the AIP and says she remains sympathetic to the party. Clark goes on to discuss the AIP's strategy of infiltrating major parties to achieve its secessionist goals. Hmm... calling for secession from the Union... how much does Palin love America?

[Sorry, long video download: comments on Palin at 6:00 -- at peril of losing context, I'll try to find a shorter version.]



Update 2008.09.04 14:37: Speaking of reverends, check out what Palin's former pastor Ed Kalnins preaches at Wasilla Assembly of God, where Palin got her theology for much of her adult life. Not that I'm criticizing the pastor... I wouldn't want to go to heck.

Conservative Media Give GOP Free Pass on Nutty Pastors

What happened to the liberal media bias? True media liberals Bill Moyers and Frank Rich both bang the drum on what looks like their industry's double standard in dealing with Democrats and Republicans and their associations with various religious figures.

First, Moyers discusses the difference between Rev. Jeremiah Wright's very personable, scholarly talk on Moyers's PBS program two Fridays ago and Wright's fiery public performance at the National Press Club last Monday. He then follows SDModerate and SDPolitics in discussing the strange relative quiet in the media about the repugnant beliefs of leading religious figures on the conservative side:

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions, or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong - white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren’t [Bill Moyers, closing commentary, Bill Moyers Journal, 2008.05.02].

Even I have thought Billy Graham is an all-right guy. Hmph -- I guess that means I'm an anti-Semite, too. So are the thousands of people who have attended Billy Graham Crusades since those comments to Nixon became public in 2002. So are the 1500 dignitaries, including three former presidents, who attended the dedication of the Graham Library last year. At least that's the logic folks are using against Obama on Wright: "How could he go to that church and not know what his pastor believes? Either he's a liar or he's incompetent."

Moyers sees racism in the double standard, as does Frank Rich. In Sunday's NY Times, Rich unloads on Rev. Hagee, who reaches 75 million homes with his tainted theology in his twice-daily appearances on Trinity Broadcasting, but whose sermons, as shocking in their own way as anything Wright has said, don't get nearly the media amplification that Wright's have. "A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man," says Rich.

Rich emphasizes that he is not citing McCain's free pass for associations with the radical Hagee and Robertson to make excuses for either Wright or Obama:

None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama’s long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama’s judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick [Frank Rich, "The All-White Elephant in the Room," New York Times, 2008.05.04].

The "best" excuse I've heard for Hagee's excesses and McCain's easy ride on religious nuts is Dr. Blanchard's contention that Rev. Hagee has shown "political virtue" by knowing "when to back off and disown himself." In other words, Hagee will say one thing to his congregation and another politically correct thing to the media to protect the powerful pols he endorses. Ah yes, virtue indeed.

What's really happening is an exposure of the true bias of the media. Do you really think a media machine run by the plutocracy is going to push the liberal agenda? Look whose pastors that rich-guy media talks about, and maybe that charge of "liberal media bias" will start sounding hollow.

How Do You Respond When Your Pastor Goes Off the Rails?

Looks like I'm not the only one who found much to praise in the Moyers-Wright interview last Friday, only to be left cold by Wright's National Press Club performance. Clarence Page saw the same "thoughtful scholar" I saw last Friday night, explaining where black liberation theology and black church history "in a way that's not scary to reasonable white folks":

"The God of the people who are riding on the decks of the slave ship," Wright said, "is not the God of the people who are riding underneath the decks as slaves in chains."

Better late than never, Moyers' program offers viewers a chance to see that, whether you agree with him or not, Wright is not a nut case or "wackadoodle," as some have portrayed him. You can also see why, as many have wondered, Obama was impressed enough with the man to answer Wright's call to Christ.

Unfortunately, the good that Wright did for himself on Moyers' show was largely undone by Wright's excessive showboating at his heavily covered news conference in the National Press Club in Washington Monday [Clarence Page, "Wright Does Obama Wrong," Real Clear Politics, 2008.04.30].

A question for my faithful readers: How do you respond when your pastor gets it right on Friday, then muffs the message on Monday? At what point do your pastor's mistakes outweigh the good he does for your congregation and make you leave your church?

Or step away from church, pick anyone you care about: think about your disagreements, not the "Less Filling Tastes Great" stuff, but the real points of contention, like voting the other way on Referred Law 6, making comments about Indians that set your teeth on edge. How do you respond to that friend? Do you denounce and disown that friend? Call that friend on it publicly? Delete that friend from your Facebook account?

I wonder if the answer to those questions is anything like the answer to the question of how we respond to our country -- to ourselves -- when it does so much good, yet fails in so many ways.

More Notes on Rev. Wright

So many interesting comments from Drs. Blanchard and Schaff on Reverend Wright -- where to begin?

I have to admit, Wright's latest inflammatory comments to the National Press Club have caught me off-guard, not to mention in the middle of the big semester-end homework push at DSU. I haven't gotten to review the whole transcript, let alone the video. From the sounds of it, he went farther than Obama could stomach without changing his relationship with the pastor. I honestly don't know: is Wright taking advantage of a teachable moment (and I still think the Obama candidacy is a spectacular teachable moment) to get people talking, or is he just grandstanding? I need to think about that.

In the meantime, permit me to dignify Drs. Blanchard and Schaff with some responses:

--Dr. Blanchard displays his really bad tendency to tilt against the really bad arguments he wishes his opponents would make rather than addressing the actual arguments that have been made. (Remember Blanchard's argument that the International Left ignores Tibet? Yeah -- all those Olympic torch relay protestors are Limbaugh listeners.)

First, Blanchard imagines how I would would respond to a hypothetical conservative pastor who would condemn homosexuals and declare AIDS their just desserts. Surely I'd condemn such a sermon... well, probably, but not because of my politics. I suspect such a pastor would be getting theology wrong and preaching an un-Christian message of exclusion and scapegoating. Condeming homosexuals is very different from critiquing the entire nation of which one is a citizen.

Blanchard proceeds to shift the discussion away from the theology that was placed on the table in the Moyers-Wright interview. Blanchard prefers to wallow in the more radical claims that the U.S. government invented AIDS and promotes drug addiction among blacks. I'm with Blanchard there -- I have no time for such fringe conspiracy theories. Wright's delvings in such nuttiness don't help his parishioners do practical good any more than Leslee Unruh's rantings. But those rantings do not call into question the validity of the theology and history presented on the Moyers program. Tolstoy wrote some dreck, but War and Peace is still a treasure. Wright gets some important things wrong, but his discussion with Moyers about where the black church comes from still deserves our attention and agreement.

Dr. Blanchard soundly rebuts the words he puts in his opponents' mouths with this conclusion:

Suppose for the moment that the United States had never existed. Would the world today be a better place or a much worse place? I would like to think that Cory would agree with me on this one. I am not sure what Barack Obama would say, if he were being honest, and that concerns me a lot more. I am pretty sure what Reverend Wright would say.

Dr. Blanchard imputes a lack of patriotism to Senator Obama and Rev. Wright that is not supported by either man's biography. I wouldn't even make that argument about Senator Clinton (and it's possible my distaste for her exceeds Blanchard's distaste for Obama).

But I don't think Obama would make any argument in response to Blanchard's question. The world better off without America? Great premise for a Harry Turtledove series, pointless question for politics. America's here: what do we do to make sure America continues to make the world a better place?

Finally, Dr. Schaff questions whether Rev. Wright's preaching deserves to be called prophetic.

We are called to love the Lord and love our enemies. I am not sure Rev. Wright's congregation gets much of either message.

Actually, I thought that was the whole point of the sermon in which Wright spoke of the chickens coming home to roost. He was speaking on the Sunday after 9/11, trying to address the urge for revenge that he had heard from many parishioners. Anyone standing up that weekend saying the U.S. shouldn't go to war stood a fair chance of starting a fist fight.

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I may swing the big debate stick at our Northern professors, but I enjoy our conversations, abbreviated as they may be by the many competing concerns in our lives. Dr. Blanchard, Dr. Schaff, I appreciate your occasional attention to my lakeside ramblings... even when you are flat wrong.

Moyers Interview with Wright -- A Bibliography

Now that you're all digging out from our last (really, it's gotta be!) April snow, here are some thoughtful articles discussing Bill Moyers's interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright on PBS last night, from people who appear to have watched the whole interview:

1. Manya Brachear, religion writer, "Did the Wright Interview Make a Difference?" ChicagoTribune.com, 2008.04.25.
2. Dave Winer, "Why Is It So Quiet After the Moyers-Wright Interview?" HuffingtonPost.com, 2008.04.26.
3. James Brett, "Moyers on Wright," OpEdNews.com, 2008.04.26.
4. Pastor Daniel Schultz, "Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers' Journal," StreetProphets.com, 2008.04.26.

Choice quote from Pastor Dan on Wright's theology and the "stunning" level of discourse presented on PBS last night:

It's certainly deeper and more relevant than anything James Dobson or the 'values voters' advocates could put forward.