The Fold

For those following mine and Jaz's discussion on Obama and Rev. Wright, and the scrutiny on all sides, we still are replying back and forth on Lisa's site. Jaz has also posted some sort of 'tell all' on his site about why Obama really attended Wright's church. I've read it a few times and still don't know what the "real reason" is. Anyway, I'm just trying to keep people in the flow of information.

I haven't said much on PN about the right wing hysteria over Obama's connection to Wright and his subsequent speech mainly because I don't really care. I see very little difference between what John Hagee and Rod Parsley have said and Rev. Wright. If Wright is a racist America hating pig, then so is someone who says America deserved Hurricane Katrina and that America provoked 9/11 or that America was created in large part to destroy Islam. Republicans really have no room to talk about crazy preachers. The one difference, though, is when a crazy Republican supporting preacher says something inflammatory they're considered patriotic while a Democratic supporting preacher is called racist and anti-American.

I also don't-- maybe ever-- link to Huffington Post. But I came across a post that sums up the double standard between right wing preachers and left wing preachers. Frank Schaeffer, whose father was a leading right wing/conservative/Republican leader, writes:

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

It's true. There's no bigger patriot in America than a right wing preacher who uses his pulpit to call America out for its evilness. Even the ones who say America has been damned by God for our sins, like Hagee does, is paraded around by the right wing. But those who say God should damn America for our racist past, largely a conservative sin, is as un-American as one can get.

There's nothing more patriotic than a white male preacher telling us all that God is going to kill us for not supporting Republican platforms (abortion, gay rights, invading countries at will, etc.) except for maybe a chickenhawk white male that tells us how George Bush's war in Iraq was the right thing to do and that everything has been a huge success (nee pretty much the entire 25% of Americans who still support Bush). Both are treated by our media establishment and our political establishment as heroes of the American cause. But dare say God should damn us for excluding-- in best cases exclusion meant disenfranchising and not killing-- blacks and other minorities and we have a right wing high speed come apart. To sin is to commit Democratic platform issues, to live as a God-fearing American patriot is to walk a conservative line led by the most patriotic of right wing white male preachers. Is this really an argument the right wants to bet their third term on?