Red State/Blue State
A political discussion between Red State conservative Dave Simpson – a former reporter, editor, publisher and columnist – and Greg Bean, Blue Stater and executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.
Dear Greg:
Now that the dust has settled and the sexists have prevailed in your favorite party’s nomination fight, I have some advice for the "presumptive” candidate, Barack Obama. (And, how sick are we of hearing the word "presumptive?” Pretty darned sick, I presume. It’s like the nine months before your baby is born, and you have to call it "it” because you don’t know if Little It is a doe or a buck.)
My advice to Obama is this: Find a really boring church and join up. If half the congregation is asleep in the pews on any given Sunday, that’s the church for Barack.
I come at this with experience. When I was young, my parents took me to the Presbyterian church. While I was usually packed off to Sunday school, on special occasions like Christmas and Easter, I had to sit through the church service.
Those were some of the longest hours of my life, Greg. I would study my little program to see how much of the service was over, and how many more dogs had to be hung before we could get the heck out of there. The stuff the minister talked about was a complete mystery to me.
One Christmas Eve, I killed time by counting the dead moths in the bottom of one of the big chandeliers that hung over the sanctuary. The next Christmas, there were even more dead moths, so they hadn’t cleaned the thing all year.
If our minister got up one Sunday and referred to our country as "the U.S.K.K.K. of A.,” there would have been audible grumbling in the congregation, and some folks would have walked out. And, if he dared say, "God blank America” – like Pastor Nutball – I’m pretty sure the ladies in the congregation would have gotten the vapors, and the men would have stormed out, driven their Buicks home, gotten their little boxes of pledge envelopes, driven their Buicks back to church and turned them in at the church office, never to return again.
And I grew up outside Chicago, so we were only about 10 miles from Obama’s former church.
If Barack Obama wants to be president, he needs to join a church like our old church, where the most controversial thing ever said in the service was that folks weren’t getting their pledge cards turned in on time, or that everyone needed to chip in to buy a new pipe organ.
Later on, when I had a wife and family of my own, we had a brief fling with the Unitarians, and they might also work for Obama, because they were pretty boring, too. The one thing the Unitarians were most ardent about was that you could believe any old thing you wanted, and nobody could get too ardent about anything. It wasn’t allowed.
That would be perfect for Obama and his family. He needs to put his church firmly on the back burner, at least until Election Day. That fiery talk might keep you awake on Sundays, but it’s not the kind of stuff Americans want their president consuming on a weekly basis. Obama should be dozing away in the pews on Sunday mornings, like most Americans.
Your friend,
Red State Dave
[email protected]
Dear Dave:
As I’ve written before, I was and am very troubled by Barack Obama’s association with Pastor Nutball and his foot-dragging denunciations of the guy’s crazy ideas.
His loyalty to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, caused him a lot of trouble, and even more when Pastor Nutball started cashing in on his 15 minutes of fame by saying even wackier things on national television.
But I think there’s a double standard at work here, my friend. And I think people like you Red State conservatives are perpetrating the injustice.
When Willard (Mitt) Romney was a candidate, everyone said his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, was probably going to be an issue for some voters in the campaign. But even though Romney attended Mormon services regularly, there wasn’t a soul who asked him to repudiate some of the church philosophies and history that cause some people to think they’re a cult.
Nobody asked him to repudiate the concept of blood atonement for sins, or the Mountain Meadows Massacre, or God telling Joseph Smith Jr. and Brigham Young that having a lot of wives is a really ducky idea. Nobody asked Willard to stop going to church because the church has some ideas and history it’d just as soon not talk about.
And then you have John McCain.
When he was endorsed by Pastor John Hagee, the guy who said American foreign policy toward Palestine is causing God to attack the U.S. with terrorists, and called the Catholic Church "the great whore," McCain said at first that he was honored.
Then, under pressure, he denounced some of Hagee’s comments, but not the man. It was only recently that McCain, again under pressure, denounced Hagee’s endorsement entirely.
And what about his endorsement by Rod Parsley, president of the Center for Moral Clarity and leader of the right-wing Patriot Pastors? Here’s a guy who advocates criminal prosecution of adultery, and compared Planned Parenthood to the Nazis.
How long did it take McCain to denounce his endorsement? It took too long, but it isn’t as big an issue with you conservatives as Pastor Nutball.
Like you, my family and I have pinballed around looking for the right church. We also tried the Unitarians for a while and my wife is still attracted to the Episcopalians.
But if Barack is looking for a safe church to attend, he’s welcome to join me at mine, The Church of What’s Happening Now, Taco Stand and Re-cap Shop. We meet every Sunday at a local garage and our main philosophy is that we like rock music and cheeseburgers, and we try to live decent lives. The guy who owns the garage once said he hates the Eagles, but that’s the most controversial thing ever said in one of our services. We don’t want Rev. Hagee, Rod Parsley or Jeremiah Wright Jr., ’cause they’d spoil our feng shui, but Barack Obama should feel right at home.
Your reverent friend,
Blue State Greg
[email protected]