What are your thoughts on the difference in media treatment of Sen. Obama's church and its beliefs and Gov. Romney's church and its beliefs?
The media and many Americans have shown the existence a gigantic double-standard that may fall along political party lines.
So many supposedly reasonable people are/were bothered greatly by Gov. Romney's Mormonism (but not apparently by Sen. Reid's faith), and yet those same people (likely self-proclaimed Christians) are unmoved by Rev. Wright's "Christianity" despite the reality that Mormons and their beliefs are more mainstream (and certainly less objectionable) than Rev. Wright.
I agree that there is a double-standard when it comes to the mainstream media's focus on the religious beliefs of a candidate. That double standard, I believe, is rooted in the media's leftist secularism.
As you noted, the media has no problem with Sen. Harry Reid's Mormon faith--because he is on the left. Similarly, they expressed no concern about Mo Udall's Mormonism when he ran for president on the Democrat side of the aisle. In the same way the MSM isn't concerned with the religious ties or the theology of the Reverends Je$$e Jack$son and Al Sharpton.
The MSM were doubtless more concerned with the fact that Romney was a conservative and moral individual with a fine family than they were with his Mormonism. I suspect most media folks were uncomfortable with the open bigotry expressed by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. They were happy, however, to exploit the religion issue (in more subtle ways) to make things difficult for Romney among evangelical conservatives.
What the MSM most despise are conservatives (or in Romney's case, moderate conservatives) who take religion seriously and who might help overturn the current abortion on demand legal regimen in the country. This ideology was expressed by Senators Schumer and Leahy when they put forward the idea that religiously serious Catholics should be disqualified from the Supreme Court because their religious beliefs might impact their moral convictions and thus their judicial rulings. By the lights of Schumer and Co. only morals without the genetic stain of religion qualify for inclusion in the public square--unless, of course, the political ideas that emerge from religion support leftist ideas.
In short, there is no philosophical integrity at play here--only pure pragmatism and opportunism.
The lame attempt to equate Romney's Mormonism with Rev. Wright's bigotry is nothing more than a smokescreen. The bigoted polity of the Mormon Church was changed several decades ago, and there is no indication that Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, ever embraced any racist ideas.
By contrast, Rev. Wright is an honest to god racist who spewed his venom for decades from the pulpit in the very church that Barak Obama chose to attend. Moreover, Obama explicitly embraced Wright as a mentor and praised him as the person who brought him to Christ--not mentioning, of course, that the Christ to whom he was brought was a "black Christ." Wright's church is the church Obama chose, not the one he was born into. It is the church that his family attends and the church he has supported financially--rather generously, compared to the Obama family's parsimonious charitable contributions over the years. Given those facts, it would be nice to know if Obama ever said diddlysquat about Wright's racist and anti-American ravings before they became a political liability. (I'm guessing that if he did, he would have said diddlysquat about it by now.)
You can be sure that the MSM would not have a hard time seeing the relevance of a white racist preacher whose church was attended year after year (and supported financially) by the GOP candidate. But Barak is on the left, and he is black. So his preacher can say any d--- thing he wants (as long, mind you, as it isn't conservative).
By the way, Charles Krauthammer had a good column on the Rev. Wright and Obama--as did (apart from his own bigoted anti-religious remarks) Christopher Hitchens. Then there was Ann Coulter's analysis--which seemed as accurate as it was scathing.
3 comments:
What are your thoughts on the difference in media treatment of Sen. Obama's church and its beliefs and Gov. Romney's church and its beliefs?
The media and many Americans have shown the existence a gigantic double-standard that may fall along political party lines.
So many supposedly reasonable people are/were bothered greatly by Gov. Romney's Mormonism (but not apparently by Sen. Reid's faith), and yet those same people (likely self-proclaimed Christians) are unmoved by Rev. Wright's "Christianity" despite the reality that Mormons and their beliefs are more mainstream (and certainly less objectionable) than Rev. Wright.
I agree that there is a double-standard when it comes to the mainstream media's focus on the religious beliefs of a candidate.
That double standard, I believe, is rooted in the media's leftist secularism.
As you noted, the media has no problem with Sen. Harry Reid's Mormon faith--because he is on the left. Similarly, they expressed no concern about Mo Udall's Mormonism when he ran for president on the Democrat side of the aisle. In the same way the MSM isn't concerned with the religious ties or the theology of the Reverends Je$$e Jack$son and Al Sharpton.
The MSM were doubtless more concerned with the fact that Romney was a conservative and moral individual with a fine family than they were with his Mormonism. I suspect most media folks were uncomfortable with the open bigotry expressed by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. They were happy, however, to exploit the religion issue (in more subtle ways) to make things difficult for Romney among evangelical conservatives.
What the MSM most despise are conservatives (or in Romney's case, moderate conservatives) who take religion seriously and who might help overturn the current abortion on demand legal regimen in the country. This ideology was expressed by Senators Schumer and Leahy when they put forward the idea that religiously serious Catholics should be disqualified from the Supreme Court because their religious beliefs might impact their moral convictions and thus their judicial rulings. By the lights of Schumer and Co. only morals without the genetic stain of religion qualify for inclusion in the public square--unless, of course, the political ideas that emerge from religion support leftist ideas.
In short, there is no philosophical integrity at play here--only pure pragmatism and opportunism.
The lame attempt to equate Romney's Mormonism with Rev. Wright's bigotry is nothing more than a smokescreen. The bigoted polity of the Mormon Church was changed several decades ago, and there is no indication that Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, ever embraced any racist ideas.
By contrast, Rev. Wright is an honest to god racist who spewed his venom for decades from the pulpit in the very church that Barak Obama chose to attend. Moreover, Obama explicitly embraced Wright as a mentor and praised him as the person who brought him to Christ--not mentioning, of course, that the Christ to whom he was brought was a "black Christ." Wright's church is the church Obama chose, not the one he was born into. It is the church that his family attends and the church he has supported financially--rather generously, compared to the Obama family's parsimonious charitable contributions over the years. Given those facts, it would be nice to know if Obama ever said diddlysquat about Wright's racist and anti-American ravings before they became a political liability. (I'm guessing that if he did, he would have said diddlysquat about it by now.)
You can be sure that the MSM would not have a hard time seeing the relevance of a white racist preacher whose church was attended year after year (and supported financially) by the GOP candidate. But Barak is on the left, and he is black. So his preacher can say any d--- thing he wants (as long, mind you, as it isn't conservative).
By the way, Charles Krauthammer had a good column on the Rev. Wright and Obama--as did (apart from his own bigoted anti-religious remarks) Christopher Hitchens. Then there was Ann Coulter's analysis--which seemed as accurate as it was scathing.
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