UPDATE: I just got the word, we've also been endorsed by the Detroit News, which I was NOT expecting! Woo-Hoo!!
Best part is the final line of the endorsement: "Vote no on the Baby Jesus charter amendment." ROFL!! Who says the News can't have a sense of humor from time to time?
(Read my recent postings for the backstory here)
Well, it's a week later than expected, but with just 3 days to go before election day, the Berkley Nativity Brouhaha has finally entered "Alabama Ten Commandments in the Courthouse" status.
That's right, tonight (Friday, Nov. 2), during Brit Hume's "Special Report" from 6-7pm, FOX News is scheduled to run a story on our ongoing small-town nativity-at-city-hall drama. They followed us around town during our weekend canvassing a few weeks ago, and interviewed two of our spokespersons (Rev. Peter Moore of the Greenfield Presbyterian Church, and city Councilmember Phil O'Dwyer, both of whom support the "NO" vote on the charter amendment).
I'm a bit surprised that it's ending up on Hume's show--I would've figured that O'Reilly or Gibson would be all over this, given their obsession with all things "War on Christmas-sey", but whatever.
Ironically, I don't have cable (gasp!), so I'm gonna have to rely on someone else taping or TIVO'ing it for me. Any volunteers?
In any event, we'll have to see how they play it-on the one hand, it's FOX; on the other hand, one of the main arguments that we're making AGAINST the proposal is that if it passes, the nativity would have to be cluttered up with all sorts of secular and/or non-Christian stuff, which guys like O'Reilly can't stand. We may, bizzarely, end up with FOX on OUR side on this, of all things.
In other nativity news...
--In addition to the recent endorsement of the NO vote by the Detroit Free Press, we just picked up a potentially even more crucial endorsement: the Royal Oak Daily Tribune. Since this is a local issue, I suspect that support by the local papers will carry more weight than the Freep or Detroit News.
--Speaking of the News, for their part, they haven't endorsed either side yet, but they did post a "dueling banjos"-style pair of editorials today. The "NO" side was written by Rev. Moore (see above) and Rev. George Covintree Jr. (of the Berkley First United Methodist Church, which also happens to be where the nativity is scheduled to be displayed this holiday season); the "Yes" side was written by Richard Thompson, who happens to be the president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center (the same ultra-conservative Christian legal outfit that the "Yes" group--until now--tried to distance themselves from...looks like they've decided to pull a complete 180˚ in the final days).
---Finally, we at the Citizens for Religious Freedom (Vote NO) group have gotten just a little bit sick and tired of the constant misrepresentations and misleading by the "Yes" group, so we've posted an in-depth list of their false claims and the facts for each one of them.
To learn more about this ongoing saga, visit our website at http://www.citizensf... and help us get Berkley residents to Vote NO on Nov. 6th!
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