“James Dobson, you owe America an apology. The fictional letter released through your Focus on the Family Action organization, titled “Letter From 2012 in Obama’s America”, crosses all lines of decent public discourse. In a time of utter political incivility, it shows the kind of negative Christian leadership that has become so embarrassing to so many of your fellow Christians in America. We are weary of this kind of Christian leadership, and that is why so many are forsaking the Religious Right in this election…”
This is pretty much exactly what needed to be said.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is my hero. Really, truly, properly. I just think he’s one of the best men to ever have lived. I got to meet him once, when he was the Archbishop of Cape Town, as my Nan and Aunt worshipped there and knew him a little. It’ll probably be one of my favourite memories till I die.
Anyway, it turns out that he has been in Chicago, where he was giving a talk called, “The Dawn of a New Moral Awakening,” at a breakfast given at Chicago Center for Cultural Connections.
“The other day, we were traveling and went through one or another of the airports,” Tutu told the diverse audience that included several other Christian bishops, rabbis, imams, Sikhs, and Buddhists, among others. “And the [television] screens showed some illustrations or cartoons of Barack Obama wearing Arab clothes, Muslim garb. I didn’t see all of it because we were passing through, but there was something about it … he was holding a gun and ‘terrorist’ was something that was put down there.”
“I felt incredibly sad for this country,” Tutu said, his sparkly eyes flashing with emotion behind wire-rimmed spectacles. “I thought, how obscene. How repulsive. And also, how dangerous! You know what’s happened already? There are people in this country and in many other countries who are saying, ‘Islam is a religion that propagates violence. Islam is a religion that propagates terrorism.’ It’s an offensive, repulsive, obscene [mischaracterization] and dangerous. And they say this because one of his names is ‘Hussein’? They forget that the other name means ‘blessing.’”
It’s a familiar message but one that bears repeating, if the “Barack Hussein Obama is a covert Muslim terrorist” e-mails that keep arriving in my mailbox — a week before the election — are any indication.
“Imagine what would happen if all Christians said, ‘Jews, you killed our Lord!’” Tutu said. “There was a time when Christians said, ‘Jews are guilty of deicide,’ of murdering God. That was obscene. That was repulsive and that was dangerous, because from that came the justification for the persecution of Jews, ending with the Holocaust. It’s dangerous. Dangerous!”
Reducing any person or people to a stereotype is dangerous, the archbishop insisted, especially if it’s done with the claim of a divine imprimatur.
“I don’t know about you, but I am so glad I’m not God,” Tutu said, drawing one of many bursts of laughter from the rapt audience. “I really am glad I’m not God. But I’m also so glad that God is God. He is an incredible God!”
Instead, Tutu said, “God says, ‘Help me. Help me. Help me make this world the kind of world I intended for it to be. Help me. Help me so I can make this world more compassionate. Help me. Help me to make this a world that is more caring. Help me, help me, please help me, to make this world a world where there will be no poverty; where my children won’t spend as much as they do on weapons of destruction, and would spend a small fraction of what they do on killing to make sure my children everywhere have enough to drink and have food to eat. Help me. Please help me. Please help me. I have no one except you.’”
These people need to be stopped from being allowed to claim that they are speaking for Christianity as a whole, right about now.
I am horrified that this is actually a serious advert, though not surprised. I am sick of the way that this kind of thing makes a lot of militant athesists assume that this is what I think and believe just because I’m a Christian. I’m sick of the way the Christians who believe and promote this kind of thing get to tell me I’m going to hell because I don’t think like they do. And I am absolutely disgusted by things like Focus on the Family’s Letter from 2012 which not only misinterprets Obama’s policies and views and the amount any president can get done in one term, but which seeks to make people vote based on fear, and which condems young evangelicals for voting for Obama.
It is way past time for those young evangelicals to reclaim their faith from these people, and to say, “No, I think you’re getting it wrong.” It doesn’t have to be a condemnation of the beliefs – though it certainly should be of some of the methods of spreading them – but an explanation of why we believe what we believe, and why it’s ok for us to believe it. Kudos to Jim Wallis and Co. at God’s Politics and Sojourners who try and drag Christian social concerns into a non-partisan-specific but politcally active field. We need to stop the fundamentalist religious right from dictating the discourse about the Christian faith. They don’t speak for all of us, and they shouldn’t be allowed to.
The frustration of many over the inability of the US debates monitors to actually guide and focus the debates has been fairly clear for the last month.
Last night, the BBC’s American editor got a leeeetle over excited: “2117: Yippee! Schieffer actually interrupted Obama to point out that he had to answer the question – not sure he did answer it but it was a brave effort. He did it again with McCain. He’s already earned his 1000000000 billion dollar salary.”
He’s been yearning to unleash Paxman or Humphrys on the candidates for weeks…
Maybe if the BBC insists on cutting the wages of some of its journalists, the likes of Paxman, Humphrys and Marr could start an interviewing school for other nations who lack the benefit of their skillz.
I never really jumped up and grabbed the feminist tag. I always associated it with people like Germaine Greer, who I never really liked, and I never wanted men to be doormats, ‘cos that would be no fun. But, Oh, My, Dearest, Life. This article by someone called Noemie Emery, who I’ve never heard of before, and who I assumed was a man (not recognising the name) until I googled them, because seriously, a woman could come up with this shit?
“There is something else that Palin brings to the table, that may be an unspoken source of this angst. She is the first woman near the very top level of politics who really looks and behaves like a woman, a woman whom men want to look at, and other women may want to look like. She has cheekbones to die for, movie-star hair, and has mastered the delicate dress code of looking both stunning and powerful.”
This is what you think a woman should be? You think all women want to look like Sarah Palin? Like they have 1000 pins in their hair, a poker up their backside and a nervous twitch masquerading as a flirtatious wink. Go away and find a suitable cliff to jump off.
And appart from that – you think all men want to look at Sarah Palin? Surely the popularity of the very different Scarlett Johanssen and Natalie Portman is testament to the fact that that is Not True.
I am aware that we live in a ridiculously shallow age, where FDR might not get elected because of his polio, and where Hillary Clinton gets mocked for her pant-suits and Sarah Palin commended for her hair, and where this matters in politics. But surely the role of any halfway decent political commentator is to debunk this and call it for the crap it is?
“The less fetching army of liberal women may feel something like this. And thus be a little put out.”
I am liberal and therefore I am ugly? I am ugly and therefore I am liberal? Hillary Clinton is ugly? Sure, she’s not Kate Moss, but she’s hardly disfigured. Nancy Pelosi is ugly? And may I once again call up on Scarlett Johanssen (who I can hardly be said to adore, as I think she has got less interesting as she has got older, in terms of the role’s she has picked), who is very definitely Not Ugly, and is an Obama supporter to an almost embarrassing degree.
I don’t vote with my eyes, or thinking about the vision of me I wish I saw looking back at me in the mirror when I look into it. I know no woman who does.
Sarah Palin “survived” (Emery’s words) the debate. Fabulous. All women seek just to ’survive’ the struggle of daily life. And we all want to see a leader on the world stage who ’survives’ from day to day, wildly, desperately, flailing in response to the events around her, rather than going out, being curious about the world and what she might achieve within it beyond, ‘Oh sure, it’d be nice to have all that power, to you know, do stuff with.’
I don’t like Margaret Thatcher. I don’t like her policies. I don’t like what she did to my country. But at least she had policies, she cared, she could do more than survive. And I can respect her abilities even if I don’t like the way she used them. I have no respect for Sarah Palin at all.
I feel ill, having read that. And I hope that if Noemie Emery has or ever does have a daughter, that daughter will tell her just where to get off.
“I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers…”
Thank you Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live.
They say every cloud has a silver lining, and the only one in the potential election of John McCain is more of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. But it’s still not worth it, America.
I got annoyed by Sarah Palin’s speech last night. That’s probably fairly noticeable. It was a well written, well delivered piece of work, and it was bitchy and partisan as hell.
It’s one thing to disagree with your opponent, it’s quite another to dismiss their career path with a sneer. ”Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organiser”, except that you have actual responsibilities.”
Bada-bing-bang-boom. Community Organisers *so* lack a sense of responsibility. That’s why they took the job, rather than getting straight onto the political ladder by becoming mayor of a small town.
But then we get this little gem.
“I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion – I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people. Politics isn’t just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.”
Basically, “I’m not a member of the Washington elite, and therefore I’m more likely to change things than him, except, could you please forget that thing where I literally just said I have more experience than him because I got into politics as a mayor whilst he was faffing around doing jack shit in the South Side of Chicago.”
And that’s before we get into the ‘My family are off limits for political games, because they didn’t chose this, but I get to parade them around like there’s no tomorrow,’ crap.
