Air America’s Rachel Maddow seems to be the only MSNBC commentator who views the double standard being applied to Obama and other presidential candidates, when she’s not interrupted bullied and screamed at by Joe Scarborough who has to carry on like a maniac in order not to meet the same fate as Tucker Carlson. His show was cancelled. If two CNN reporters on the show Ballot Bowl surmised that Obama’s association with Rev. Wright hurt him, why doesn’t Hillary Clinton’s association with Billy Graham, her spiritual advisor, hurt her? In a Time interview, Hillary Clinton reported that the evangelist “fulfilled a pastoral role during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and helped the First Lady endure the ordeal. At that time, Clinton said, Graham was ‘incredibly supportive to me personally. And he was very strong in saying, ‘I really understand what you’re doing and I support you.’ He was just very personally there for me.’”
Billy Graham in a conversation with Richard Nixon described the Jews as “satanic” and offered that they owned the media and peddled pornography. If Mrs. Clinton denounced and rejected Billy Graham, of whom the editor of Newsweek Jon Meacham likened to God with his blue eyes, etc., her poll numbers would decline overnight. Jon Meacham was on a Sunday talk show, March 23, 2008, criticizing Rev. Wright and taking some jabs at Obama, part of it laced with sarcasm. He said that now people have found that Obama doesn’t “walk on water,” maybe because for Meacham only Billy Graham can perform such miracles.
And if that weren’t enough, the day before, C-Span’s guest was Donald Lambro, The Washington Times’ chief political correspondent who joined in the media’s running loop devoted to criticizing Obama’s relationship with his pastor. The Friday before, Diana West, a reporter for the same paper, appearing on the Lou Dobbs show, criticized Michelle Obama and Rev. Wright for their “anti-Americanism,” and quoted Victor Davis Hanson, a far-right columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Their boss is Rev. Sun Myung Moon who warns Korean widows that their husbands will go to hell if they don’t give him money. If, for them, Obama should disown Rev. Wright, why are they still working for a religious shakedown artist? Why don’t they step away from Rev. Moon’s anti-Americanism reported by Robert Parry of Consortiumnews:
…Moon’s jingle of deep-pocket cash also has caused conservatives to turn a deaf ear toward Moon’s recent anti-American diatribes. With growing virulence, Moon has denounced the United States and its democratic principles, often referring to America as “Satanic.” But these statements have gone virtually unreported, even though the texts of his sermons are carried on the Internet and their timing has coincided with Bush’s warm endorsements of Moon.
“America has become the kingdom of individualism, and its people are individualists,” Moon preached in Tarrytown, N. Y., on March 5, 1995. “You must realize that America has become the kingdom of Satan.”
In similar remarks to followers on August 4, 1996, Moon vowed that the church’s eventual dominance over the United States would be followed by the liquidation of American individualism. “Americans who continue to maintain their privacy and extreme individualism are foolish people,” Moon declared. “The world will reject Americans who continue to be so foolish. Once you have this great power of love, which is big enough to swallow entire America, there may be some individuals who complain inside your stomach. However, they will be digested.”
During the same sermon, Moon decried assertive American women: “American women have the tendency to consider that women are in the subject position,” he said. “However, woman’s shape is like that of a receptacle. The concave shape is a receiving shape. Whereas, the convex shape symbolizes giving. (…) Since man contains the seed of life, he should plant it in the deepest place.
“Does woman contain the seed of life? [“No.”] Absolutely not. Then if you desire to receive the seed of life, you have to become an absolute object. In order to qualify as an absolute object, you need to demonstrate absolute faith, love and obedience to your subject. Absolute obedience means that you have to negate yourself 100 percent.”
(On November 18, The Washington Post reported that Richard Miniter, former editorial page editor of The Washington Times, had filed a complaint against the paper, charging that he was “coerced” into attending a Unification Church religious ceremony that culminated in a mass wedding conducted by Rev. Sun Myung Moon.)
Diana West and Donald Lambro are applying a double standard for their boss and for Rev. Wright. And why does CNN keep on as a regular the employee of a man who hates our country so much? Does Lou Dobbs agree that the United States is satanic? Does Jonathan Klein, CNN’s boss? Where is NOW?
When Richard Cohen appeared on television on March 21, he joined the media chorus in taking offense to the remarks of Rev. Wright. This is the columnist who defended the practice of racial profiling by Washington shopkeepers.
On March 20, the Dalai Lama was the subject of gushing praise by a writer for Time magazine where Rev. Wright had been roistered all week on cable. From Jameswagner.com: “the Dalai Lama explicitly condemns homosexuality, as well as all oral and anal sex. His stand is close to that of Pope John Paul II, something his Western followers find embarrassing and prefer to ignore. His American publisher even asked him to remove the injunctions against homosexuality from his book, Ethics for the New Millennium, for fear they would offend American readers, and the Dalai Lama acquiesced.”
Also, why isn’t there a running loop about John McCain’s relationship with controversial ministers? Are those who control the media easy on him because he plays the father in their fantasies?
What about these “wackadoodles”? The late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Rev. John Hagee. About 9/11, Falwell said “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For The American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’”
And Pat Robertson: “I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you, this is not a message of hate — this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.” This was Robertson commenting on “gay days” at Disneyworld.