Media revenge tactics are quite interesting to follow. Ever since the radical political rantings of Rev Wright hurt Sen. Obama to some extent they have been waiting to play “Pin the tail on the Pastor” to get at John McCain.
So first they said that Sen. McCain had a pastor problem with John Hagee. So somehow Obama siting in a church for 20 plus years listening to Rev Wright was the same as John Hagee whose church Sen. McCain has never attended. He became his “pastor” because he endorsed Sen. McCain. This didn’t really work out to the media hope so next they tried Pastor Rod Parsley’ another person who is not actually John McCain’s pastor or part of a church he attends.
So none of this really stuck so next they went after Gov. Palin and those “strange” Pentecostals. The fact that Gov. Palin does not attend an Assemblies of God church anymore didn’t matter. But it seems like a pretty stupid political move to make fun of Pentecostals considering how many their are. So they went after the sermons of the so-called non-denominational “Bible” church she attends. No red meat there other than pretty much normal Evangelical beliefs (still odd to the left though). Now the headlines is “Palin once blessed to be free from ‘witchcraft’.” She was prayed over by a visiting preacher from Kenya so now this person instantly becomes a pastor and other headlines include “Palin’s Pastor Problem.” The idea of spiritual warfare is of course alien to the media.
Obviously the media needs a lesson on whose one pastor is. It does not include people who endorse you or happen to visit your church. They also need to learn the difference between a pastor who makes political claims such as the U.S. created AIDS to kill blacks and a particular church’s theology. We have had many presidents with not exactly an orthodox understanding of theology. It would be a rare case when a candidate’s theology is actually relevant concerning presidential office. Obviously if someone belonged to some doomsday cult their theology would be quite relevant to their performance in office.
But the media and the left love gotcha politics, especially if it is in response to a gotcha.
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I suspect they know the difference. They don’t strike me as stupid, just deceitful.
You have been nominated for an award here
Holy cow, how stupid these people are. By “these” I meant the press.
If they are being decitful, then that’s one of the stupidest deciet there is.
Press; “Wow, Palin actually worships some kind of Creator God, and so do a lot of the people she hangs out with. How bizarre!”
I believe it’s a sign of a problem a much larger scale; namely, a lack of desire for or recognition of objective truth. I could write a thesis on the extent of apathy among high school and college aged students towards getting things “right.” We live in an age, remember, where good is good AND good is bad and few care that one of these things can’t possibly be true id the other one is true. The only place I’ve seen a big contrast to this is among Catholics who really know their faith, and among some Jewish writers. I imagine there are other groups, like these, where honesty and integrity are of importance.
“Obviously if someone belonged to some doomsday cult their theology would be quite relevant to their performance in office.”
And yet, when writing about Iran, the media fails to follow-up on the implications of having a president who appears to believe that the Tribulation can be brought about by human hands. So, there is no context to their Nuclear ambitions.
My point is that, being non-believers themselves, they don’t understand and couldn’t accept if they DID understand, the interplay between faith and action between one’s beliefs and one’s life-choices. To the media, one’s faith has about as much to do with the substance of Man as does the choice of clothing. It is merely a question of garb.
I kept thinking that all this bizzaro behavior by the press; the fawning over Obama, the embarrassingly venomous reaction to Palin, the openly editorialized threat of race wars; would backfire and the people would react against it and reject the Haircut in the Suit.
That does not seem to be the case these days as I look at the poll numbers, however.
So much fearmongering and finger-wagging. I hope that if Obama wins, the right will launch a “media war.”
I’m not Pentecostal, but I think being blessed against witchcraft isn’t a bad idea. All this wailing and gnashing of teeth over the selection of Palin as Vice President is odd. These folks sound as crazy and unhinged as the ones who were fighting for slavery right before the Civil War.
Actually, endorsements do matter, that’s why there are done in public. Once, they are public, people and their words are going to be evaluated. Obviously, McCain is going to disagree with you, because he did speak against what Hagee and Parsley preached in public. Palin got herself in trouble for her own narrow minded region-religion based ideology. That’s why she probably feels embarrassed about the recent Couric interview. As far as the media bias, I can say the same thing about this post. You are so quick to label the media as “left-wing Obama supporters” that are determined to get back at McCain for what happened to Obama and his pastor. Besides, if I had to guess, they still spent more time scrutinizing Obama’s pastor than Parsley and Hagge added together.
Do Roman Catholics believe Protestant/Pentecostal “ministers” have legitimate influence over witches and demons? I would think this is the sole realm of RC priests.
UTD – I find your theory highly unlikely. These guys are in the tank bigtime for the Big O.*
* I apologize to my fellow fans of the anime, Big O. We’d be better off if Roger Smith and his twenty-story robot were the Democratic nominee, and not the Dalai Obama. But I digress.
In any case, what Jeff described is, in fact, evidence of this bias. The media did not scrutinize Rev. Wright at all, which is why Obama could pass off his 20-year history at that church as “passing acquaintance” and largely get away with it. It was alternative media (largely online) that pushed that story until it got the attention it deserved. We can see it happening all over again now with Franklin Raines’ ties to the Obama campaign, and with Obama’s ties to Saul Alinsky and William Ayres – all much closer than either he or the MSM pretend or acknowledge. They are much too busy chasing everyone who may have accidentally glimpsed a Palin in the produce aisle in the Juneau A&P.
At this rate, McCain will have been mentored by people who were waiting on line at the DMV the day his kids got their drivers’ licenses.