Here we go again: another wonderful MSM love feast for St. John McCain - and a slam at Obama over dueling ministers. Courtesy of Yahoo News, Ed Stoddard has put up an article headlined "McCain's pastor a sharp contrast to Obama's"
"HOUSTON (Reuters) - John McCain's Phoenix pastor, Dan Yeary, is a folksy patriotic Southern Baptist who opposes abortion and believes homosexuality to be a biblical sin, but says Christians have an obligation to love such sinners.
That puts Yeary, who heads the church attended for the past 15 years by the Republican presidential candidate firmly in the U.S. Southern Baptist mainstream, and in line with the Republican Party.
He offers a sharp contrast to Democratic contender Barack Obama's former preacher Jeremiah Wright, who has stirred controversy with his fiery comments on race and America."
emphasis added
Looks like the media narrative is shaping up nicely. McCain is a nice wholesome mainstream Christian while Obama worships with a radical black extremist for a preacher. It gets better (for McCain)
Yeary, pastor for the 7,000-member North Phoenix Baptist Church, professes little interest in politics and prefers to focus on preaching and spiritual guidance. But McCain's affiliation with Yeary will do him no harm in wooing support from the key Republican base of evangelical Christians.
See, it's all about making the Republican evangelical base feel comfortable - and for the rest of us, Yeary can't be one of those really crazy bible thumpers because even though he's against gays, he still says they should be loved.
And what of Obama?
Obama's preacher by contrast sparked howls of protest for his angry sermons over what he called racist America, charging that the September 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy and claiming Washington was the source of the AIDS virus.
Wright was Obama's pastor in Chicago for two decades but the Illinois senator, locked in a tight battle with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, distanced himself from Wright in a widely hailed speech addressing race issues earlier this week.
Obama distances himself from Wright; McCain embraces Yeary.
What the article fails to mention is McCain also embraces John Hagee, John Rod Parsley (typo corrected), and any other preacher who can deliver that evangelical vote. BarbinMD had a concise round up of McCain's perfidy back on St. Patrick's day and the media hypocrisy that enables it. What Glenn Greenwald detailed is even more damning, both about McCain and the press.
The phrases "anti-American" and "America-haters" are among the most barren and manipulative in our entire political lexicon, but whatever they happen to mean on any given day, they easily encompass people who believe that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks, devastating hurricanes and the like. Yet when are people like Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Inhofe and other white Christian radicals ever described as anti-American or America-hating extremists? Never -- because white Christian evangelicals who tie themselves to the political Right are intrinsically patriotic.
Time and time again the MSM automatically puts God on the side of the GOP while repeating GOP slams against Democrats for their 'anti-Christian' agenda. The Republicans have made a deliberate effort to divide up the country along religious lines, but it's a story that doesn't get the scrutiny it deserves - and neither do the people the GOP cultivates in the name of "values".
Consider the ties between the Republican party and Sun Myung Moon. There's a great session at Firedoglake with John Gorenfeld about his new book "Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom" Take a look; you may be amazed at how deep Moon's influence runs in the GOP - and how sinister his real agenda is.
It's going to be a long campaign - and if the press is going to be writing propaganda pieces like the one Stoddard did for McCain, it's not going to be pretty. It's going to take a determined push-back to fight this. Letters to the Editor, calls to talk radio, etc. Having quotes and sound clips from the people McCain has been sucking up to won't hurt - if the MSM can keep looping Wright remarks out of context to tar Obama, it ought to be used on McCain too. Repitition works.
UPDATE: I found a great compilation of Hagee quotes along with McCain courtesy of Talking Points Memo. Devastating - and largely a dead issue to a media still going after Obama.