Thu 6 Mar 2008
McCain in Buckhead - no word on slaves or Catholics
Posted by shelbinator under Local News, Politics, Weirdos
John “Straight Talk” McCain will be clogging up Buckhead traffic during rush hour today, dropping in for a minimum $1,000 fundraiser at the Westin.
Meanwhile, the state Democratic party is using the occasion of his visit to call, as many others already have, for McCain to denounce, reject, or maybe even denounce and reject the endorsement of some nutty evangelical preacher from Texas.
While McCain was effusive in his excitement about the right-wing pastor’s endorsement, he has been strangely silent when it comes to disavowing [John] Hagee’s extremist, hate-filled rhetoric. Hagee has endorsed a “slave sale” at his church, and advertised that, “Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone [Church].”
Dr. Joseph Lowery, of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda, said, “It’s a shameful display of racism and bigotry, and I just can’t imagine Senator McCain, who wants to be President of the people, not repudiating these comments.”
While slavery is an obviously uncool concept, and here in America it is represented in our history by how we shamefully treated blacks for the first few centuries of our time on this continent, as far as I can tell from limited excerpts about the incident, Hagee didn’t say anything about selling people of any particular race as slaves for the fundraiser. And given the generally reactionary, Biblical-era worldview of people like Hagee, one could suppose that he planned on “enslaving” people that looked just like him, much like some indebted slaves of antiquity.
Still, not the kind of substitute for a fish fry you want on your list of endorsements.
Here in Georgia, where nearly every single post on the AJC’s political blog has some bizarre anti-Catholic “fifth column” conspiracy rant of a comment from the moniker Will Jones, there might not be much of a Catholic voting bloc to rile up by repeating Howard Dean’s criticisms of Hagee’s rabid anti-Catholic statements. But these charming views are much less equivocal:
The televangelist, San Antonio megachurch leader John Hagee, has referred to the Roman Catholic Church as “the great whore” and called it a “false cult system” and “the apostate church”; the word “apostate” means someone who has forsaken his religion.
He also has linked Adolf Hitler to the Catholic church, suggesting it helped shape his anti-Semitism.
No mention of that part of Hagee’s “hate speech” here today. Fine. Be that way. We have the Google, and I’m here to cite it as your friendly neighborhood indignant Catholic.
Better get home and pack up my camera; I hear there will be anti-war protesters rubbing elbows with anti-Mexican protesters (who will probably be throwing elbows).
Edited to add: Need a little more insight into my bizarre reasoning? Check the comments.
Read more filed under Local News, Politics, Weirdos
March 6th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I’m sick of politics. I think I’ll start a cooking blog.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I do miss the simpler pleasures of vlogging about Natty Mojitos….
Oh! I have a food post coming right up. Stay tuned.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Maybe you need to start rubbing elbows with William Donohue. :P
Kidding aside, these kinds of arguments don’t lead anywhere. A lack of mention of every group that Hagee has offended is not some sort of implicit endorsement of his hate speech. I’m sure Hagee has also said some inflammatory bullshit about gays, but that wasn’t mentioned either.
They simply chose to focus on one topic, and since Atlanta’s has a large place in the history of the civil rights movement I see why they focused on that issue. Given Atlanta’s large and vocal gay population I’d say they have a bigger claim of being thrown under the bus than Catholics, but again, dealing with gay rights is something most politicians try to avoid like the plague since it’s so divisive.
One large group simply can’t address the concerns of everyone. I wish they could, but that’s why there are still groups focused on addressing specific issues (women’s rights, racism, etc.).
And really, trying to say that the “slavery” in question would be less racist even if it was about white people… It’s offensive. Period.
I’m sure it must be frustrating for you that anti-Catholic statements get a bigger pass in the Baptist laden south. I have no problem with you bringing that fact up, but bringing it up in relation to a memo that is already condemning Hagee just doesn’t ring true to me as something “curious.” Hagee is a hateful person, and I doubt the DPG thinks any of his inflammatory bullshit is ok. I do look forward to the day when Democrat leaders spine up and start vocally opposing ALL hate speech and the persons spewing it.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:50 am
“Given Atlanta’s large and vocal gay population I’d say they have a bigger claim of being thrown under the bus than Catholics…”
I’m not saying the DPG has thrown Catholics under the bus; hell, being thrown under the bus would be if there was actually some anti-Catholic legislation under consideration and major Democrats wussed out denouncing it like happened on the anti-gay marriage amendment issue a couple years ago. They sure got thrown under the bus.
But just because Georgia gays are more aggrieved than Catholics, and because they didn’t get mentioned as targets of Hagee’s hate today, either, does that mean I myself can’t gripe on my own blog about one of Hagee’s biggest cornerstones of bigotry being left out of a rather narrowly focused press release? Are any of our gay friends prohibited from griping on their blogs?
Sorry, my impression of this guy is that he has two main pillars of kookiness: he wants to bring on Armageddon, and he hates the Catholic Church. He also hates the Muslims and the gays, says really weirdly deprecating things for some kind of zionist, and, of course, there’s that whole slavery thing. Here is a good list of all his offenses.
So why did I feel compelled to repeat what was left out of today’s statement at the risk of appearing to belittle the offensiveness of slavery? I don’t mean to discount anyone’s level of outrage at this a-hole, but I ought to explain why I could conceive of a non-offensive interpretation of slavery, because I guess it may be a “niche” interpretation of Christianity. The name I chose for Confirmation into the church was Thomas, the apostle (”doubting Thomas”). According to some writings, Thomas went to evangelize in India only after Jesus himself reappeared post-mortem and sold Thomas, who was bitching about the lot he drew, as a slave to a passing Indian merchant. I have from time to time worn a chain on my wrist to remind myself of that bondage. And for all Christians generally, Jesus told the apostles before his last days in Jersualem, “Whoever of you desires to be first shall be slaves of all” (Mark 7:44). The ideal of Christianity that none of us meets is to submit and be a servant to our fellow man.
Now, I Googled around for a while and all I could find about Hagee’s church’s fundraiser newsletter was the same couple of excerpts used by every indignant article or blog post that said Hagee was meeting with local black community leaders to apologize for offending them by having a slavery-oriented fundraiser. But without being able to find anything that said Hagee planned to “enslave” anyone but his own congregants, I could readily see how the kind of community that probably mentions Jesus five times in every paragraph would find nothing more offensive in that than in being told to get down on their knees and wash their neighbor’s feet with their own hair and tears — another goofy ritual some of us have that might furrow the brow of the uninitiated.
Anyway. A comment turned thesis, but I felt compelled to explain that I wasn’t ignoring one part of Hagee’s bigotry to accuse anyone of implicit approval of his anti-Catholicism; I just felt like our local condemnation of the jackass was quite narrowly focused on the one aspect that didn’t find the most glaring on his ignominious rap sheet (for the above reasons that may be completely incomprehensible).