Doesn’t he understand that their is a big dif between your self-selected pastor of 20 years and some yahoo who endorses your campaign.
How does Rich get away with this crap in a paper like the NYT?
Well, as I recall, Obama had to forceably and unequivocably reject the endorsement of Louis Farrakan. Here, McCain is not only not rejecting the endorsement of Hagee…He is appearing in a joint press conference with him. Can you say “Double standard”?
Look, no two instances are exactly alike. Yes, the relationship between Wright and Obama is different than that between McCain and Hagee…but I think that is actually a mix of good and bad. After all, it wouldn’t be like backstabbing a friend for McCain to disassociate himself from Hagee, whereas it is a much more serious personal step for Obama to so strongly disassociate himself from the pastor who married him and his wife.
And, while Wright has some pretty wacked-out ideas, he is at least a pretty tolerant guy, at least judging from an interview I read with him (in a German newspaper?). I haven’t read enough about Hagee to know for sure but I would be shocked to find any fundamentalist preacher saying things as tolerant as what Wright said in that interview.
As for how Frank Rich gets away with writing a column for the NYT, look if George Will can be considered a revered columnist, it seems to me that anything is possible.
Rich is 100% correct. Unlike Wright, Hagee actually has said offensive, bigoted things and McCain sought him out and sucked him off onstage to get his endorsement. The political right has been awash for years in these kinds of bottom-feeding, hate-mongering, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, America-bashing, Jesus-hustling con-artists and the media’s never said boo. There’s no evidence that Wright ever gave Obama any reason for concern or said anything objectionable enough to warrant concern about Obama having been part of his 6000 member church. Plus, unlike most of the fake-pious swine on the political right, Wright has actually done some good in this world (plus he served his country, unlike Hagee).
Umm…yea. If only he’d addressed that point in his column. :rolleyes:
There’s a big difference between a pastor whose endorsement is actively sought by a politican and a pastor who simply preaches in a church that happens to include a politican as one of its members.
McCain/Hagee is an example of the former situation.
Two men enter, one man leaves?
I’ll pick Wright. He was a Marine. Unless it is found that Wright is gay. Then Hagee will gain the Invincible Fist of a Righteous God and be able to smite Wright with a withering look.
Obama has publicly rejected Wright’s nuttiest views.
On the other hand, McCain has been silent about statements by Hagee that are arguably even viler than Wright’s worst utterances. The hate directed at Catholics and the claim that New Orleans deserved Katrina are loathsome.
Even though it’s reasonable to argue that Obama over the course of many years should have weighed Wright’s objectionable views against his positive messages and come down harder on the bad stuff (or found another church altogether) - is it right for Obama to have taken the heat that’s come his way over Wright, while McCain’s eager and unrenounced association with Hagee gets maybe 24 hours of coverage and is then forgotten?
I guess what I’ve gotten wrong ever since Wright popped up was that the Obama candidacy is in large part about healing the racial divide.
My assumption was that some folks care about all of the healing that his own pastor needs and that Obama might have provided up to this point.
That would go a long way toward convincing some that Obama really is about change.
Your…hijacking your own thread?
I guess the logic must be, “Well, now that my OP got so thoroughly trounced, better to try some other excuse for an argument.”
I’m not sure what it is you realistically expected Obama to do. You cannot change the mindset of someone who has been on the receiving end of racism for decades with a few eloquent words. You might also consider the nature and source of the evidence about Wright’s racism and do a little research into the man before you cast a judgment. We’ve been manipulated and misdirected by this kind of crap before.
If I was going to call Wright a racist it would be because of a possible lingering anger and resentment from personal experience and seeing how this country generally treated his race in decades past. Considering that and listening to more of his words than a few chosen to distort his image, I think he’s done a good job of rising above it to make his words and actions more good than bad.IN a mix of good and bad that is the realistic view of most humans he has striven to serve others and succeeded. I’d also note that speaking about the history of racism in this country is not hateful or blame America first.
Obama’s stated goal is to have a realistic honest dialog about racism so we can continue to heal the racial divide that is already healing. His own solid shot at the presidency is a sign of that healing. He suggested this was better than being outraged and angry by a few specially selected comments taken out of context by dishonest political tools with malicious intent.
The pundits keep saying that the 20 year relationship is the key difference between Obama/Wright and McCain /Hagee. It’s a difference no doubt but is it a relevant and significant difference when it comes to judging who should be president? Republicans have courted the religious right for years and tolerated all kinds of hateful speech. Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, and others have their own crazy ideas of what’s wrong with this country and how to fix it. After they state their crazy ideas publicly, republicans still seek their votes and have their pictures taken shaking hands and smiling without strongly denouncing their particular brand of hate speech. This kind of political bullshit has been going on for at least 20 years. Maybe , for the sake of honesty and patriotism, we should take a closer look at that 20 year relationship as well. McCain harshly {and honestly} criticized Falwell in the past but when he needed the support of the religious right to run for president they somehow healed their rift. Would you call that hypocrisy?
IMO we have to be smarter and more involved than we have been in recent years if we want country and our government to get better.
We’ll have to see McCain publicly repudiate Hagee and his message (even in a measured, respectful, hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner denunciation, like Obama’s of Wright last week) before we can even begin to talk about equivalency here.
This is the Hagee link from Frank Rich’s column RE Hagee’s comments on the RCC.
I don’t know what else Hagee has said, but on this point, to the degree that the RCC
did participate in the persecution of Jews (and Protestants) and that some Catholic leaders (tho not the RCC herself) cooperated with the Holocaust, then yes, those Catholic leaders & institutions were being The Great Whore. The same goes for Protestant & Eastern Orthodox churches & leaders who persecuted Jews, Catholics, etc. AND for those Jewish institutions & leaders in the first century A.D. who persecuted the Apostolic-era Christians. Of all these groups, the RCC’s persecutions lastest longest & were the most far-reaching, so as far as this goes, Hagee was not wrong.
Hagee on Katrina/gays though was just being an @$$, as were Falwell, Robertson & Wright on 9/11.
Come on. You have completely sanitized his comments. He makes the claim that Hitler supposedly stated that he was going to do nothing different than the church, just do it more efficiently. Hagee’s entire “discussion” goes on, at length, about the “cult” and about the “false system” and he does not make any statement that large numbers of Catholics did bad things, he claims that the RCC is the direct descendant of Baal worshippers from the Davidic era.
“To the degree”? Catholics and the institutional church are responsible for many atrocities for which they should be held accountable, but that is clearly not what he was claiming in that lecture.
I’m not a Hagee fan. I was just commenting on that particular clip. Now, I’ve seen elsewhere clips of him attacking Martin Luther for his anti-Jewish writings, and also I’ve seen that Hagee claims that he has cooperated with various Catholic groups & ministries. I have no idea if that is true. If so, however, Hagee’s view on Catholicism may well be more nuanced than his critics would have us believe. I hope that he doesn’t buy into the old Hislop “Two Babylons” crap that tries to trace the RCC back to Nimrod & Semiramis.
Edit- the Wikipedia article on Semiramis does say that Hagee promotes that theory- oh crap.
Hagee also says that historical persecution of Jews, including the Holocaust, was “God’s judgement” on them for their “disobedience and rebellion.”
There’s also the homophobic crap, but the media never makes much hay over right wing gay bashing.
But he has the picture to prove everything. He also has a pointer.
Well, some modern Orthodox rabbis have agreed, and a case can be made from the warnings in the Hebrew Scriptures about that, mainly in the latter part of Deutonomy & throughout the Prophets. Myself though- I think that any Divine judgment in past history was mostly fulfilled in 70 A.D. and probably settled during the Bar Kochba revolt.