Bottom line: Barack Obama's STILL getting slimed in the media for his association with his ex-pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but as ThinkProgress so neatly details, McCain endorser John Hagee has just reiterated a rather more contentious claim:
So, sipping my organic shade grown Fair-Trade certified Nicaraguan coffee from Trader Joe's this morning, what should assault my ears but Juan Williams kerfluffling on GOP ads, slated for North Carolina, that lambaste Barack Obama for his association with Pastor Wright.
The fact that such biased twaddle can get past Morning Edition's editors and screeners indicates a massive systemic breakdown and I have no idea whether Williams is on the cash take, or simply getting invited to lots of cocktail parties with great food and libations, or if his selective approach to facts has paved the way for his stellar journalistic career but in the end none of that really matters...
[below: video shows extent of John McCain's "Pastor problem" that's being conveniently ignored by mainstream media]
But the bar is now so low that anything that's not patent gibberish now passes for learned media commentary but I can't let this one slide :
To harp on Obama's pastor Wright without recognizing that both John McCain and Hillary Clinton have "pastor troubles" too is to push propaganda.
To wit : "
[Doug Coe is] a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God." - thus wrote Hillary Clinton, who has been involved with Nazi-admirer Doug Coe's "Family" for 15 years, according to Jeff Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce, as described in their September 2007 Mother Jones story "Hillary's Prayer". Wrote Joyce and Sharlet,
Clinton’s prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship’s only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.
Indeed, a Norweigian paper has just identified Doug Coe as a Hitler admirer...
You'd think Hillary Clinton would want some distance from THAT. Well, she would were the media to pay even slight attention to the issue.
There's a bit of history relevant here- the recent NYT story on how the Pentagon bought a number of pundits who then pushed the need for a US attack on Iraq, but such sleaze goes back at least to the 1960's and the depredations of the 'Mockingbird' program ('you could get a journalist for less than the price of a good call girl", quipped one ex-spook associated with the program) and probably even further back than that.
Beyond his failure to recognize Clinton's pastor problem, Juan William's convenient memory lapse concerning John McCain's "pastor problem' is possibly even MORE egregious given that McCain is now sucking up to, and accepting the political endorsement of, religious leaders whom McCain lambasted, in the 2000 election, as "agents of intolerance".
Pastor John Hagee who has loudly endorsed McCain, has refreshed the scandal by reiterating, on the Dennis Prager show two days ago, and immediately following yet another half-assed attempt by McCain to distance himself from Hagee while holding on to Hagee's political endorsement, that hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for a gay-pride event that had been scheduled in New Orleans to occur before the hurricane preempted the event. [for details, see ThinkProgress story]
Hellooo Juan ! -
John McCain spent several YEARS rebuilding his relationship with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Falwell said, September 13, 2001, that America PROBABLY DESERVED the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and in the same telecast Falwell blamed, with Robertson concurring, the attacks on gays, the ACLU, feminists, "abortionists" and "secularists".
Now, McCain is enjoying a political endorsement from Pastor John Hagee, who has said repeatedly that hurricane Katrina was God's punishment upon gays.
So, Mr. Juan Williams, this is different from Obama's "pastor problem" HOW ?
In the following videos - all variants on the same theme, I explore John McCain's "pastor problem". Maybe, some day, mainstream media will acknowledge the extent of it with more verve and clarity.
Maybe fish will crawl out of rivers and climb trees.
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Below: another McCain/Hagee "pastor problem" videos, plus a more recent video I did exposing how John Hagee lied, to Jewish bloggers, about his motives for suporting Israel.
