Right-wing media continue barrage of religious attacks against Obama
On Fox News' Hannity, host Sean Hannity again attacked President Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and guests Richard Miniter and Noelle Nikpour attacked Obama over devotional messages he receives, while earlier this week, right-wing blogs attacked Obama over his church attendance. These attacks follow repeated religion-based smears of Obama both during the 2008 presidential campaign and after he took office.
Media conservatives revive attacks on Obama's religion, church attendance
Hannity, panel invoked Rev. Wright, said Obama is "being politically correct" with his relationship with God. On his Fox News show, Hannity led a panel discussion of "devotional" emails Obama said he receives on his BlackBerry and stated, "Well, it looks like we might have a replacement for Jeremiah Wright." Hannity further said, "[I]f he ever says, 'G-D America' or 'America's chickens have come home to roost,' we won't know about it." Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers responded, "Why can't you let go of it? It's just like, it's just so long ago." During the discussion, author and journalist Richard Miniter stated, "Sean, the big question is, 'What are the other faiths?' Is he talking about Islam?" Minter went on to say, "It's kind of weird. Every president has had a personal relationship with God, and for him to say, 'Well, some days it's Buddha, some days it's Jesus.' It's kind of strange." Miniter later asked, "Why is he being politically correct on such an important relationship?" Republican strategist Noelle Nikpour stated, "This administration, especially Obama, when all the stuff came out with Reverend Wright, he was going to a radical church, and I think a lot of Americans want to see that he has picked a church home for his wife, for his children." [Fox News' Hannity, 2/3/10]
Fox Nation: "One Year Later, Obama Still Hasn't Found a Church." A February 1 Fox Nation headline stated, "1 Year Later, Obama Still Hasn't Found a Church." The headline linked to an ABCNews.com article that reported that "[t]he first family, once regular churchgoers, have publicly attended services in Washington just three times in the past year."
Big Journalism asked, "What's so hard about finding a church?" and invoked Wright. A January 31 post at Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism website linked to the ABC article and stated: "More than a year after he arrived in Washington, President Obama, amazingly, has not yet been able to find a church. You really can't make this stuff up." The post further stated, "What's so hard about finding a church?" adding, "maybe the reason he hasn't found a church is that he's having a hard time finding a speaker as imbued with the true spirit of Christianity as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright."
NewsBusters' Graham also invoked Wright to attack Obama over church attendance. In a NewsBusters post criticizing the ABC article, Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, wrote: "No one in the ABC piece is allowed to question if Obama now has a phobia about church attendance due to his 20-year membership in the church of radical-left Rev. Jeremiah Wright." Graham further stated: "It's certainly true that other presidents haven't attended a church on 52 Sundays a year. But Obama's long relationship with the poisonous Rev. Wright makes him a unique case."
Media have repeatedly attacked Obama over Wright, church attendance
Hannity, conservative media frequently attack Obama for relationship with Wright. Hannity -- who claimed he "broke the story" about Wright during the 2008 campaign -- has mentioned Wright on dozens of different episodes of his Fox News show since Obama's inauguration. In addition to Hannity, numerous other conservative media figures have used Obama's relationship with Wright or his attendance at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Wright previously was the pastor, in order to attack Obama. These media figures include Brit Hume, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Tucker Carlson, and Burt Prelutsky.
Conservative media frequently attack Obama over church attendance. Conservative media figures including Fox News' Gretchen Carlson, Politico, and syndicated radio host Rose Tennent have used Obama's church attendance to attack him. On the August 20, 2009, edition of Fox & Friends, Carlson stated that "it's a little disingenuous to call on religious leaders when, in fact, you have not chosen a church yet and you're the president of the United States." The following day, Carlson asserted, "[T]here are so many interesting things to discuss about this, because some people were saying yesterday, well, President Obama has not found a church yet -- I think he was going to attend at Camp David potentially -- but for somebody to be now invoking religion when it hasn't been what appears to be a huge part of your life is also an issue." Politico, Tennent, and Fox News compared Obama's attendance at church to the frequency of his gym visits, with Hume stating that Obama had "been seen dropping off his daughters at school, taking his wife out to dinner, and frequenting a gym in Chicago. But one location Mr. Obama has not been photographed at is church." An on-screen graphic that appeared during the segment read "Fit or Faithful":
Ahh, No Miss Nikpour. Most Americans realize that it's none of our damn business. It's hacks such as yourself that would politicize something as personal as one's faith and religion. And you can drop your reverence act too, it has nothing to do with some angelic wish for a church home for the Obama family, but has everything to do with scoring some sleazy political point any way you can. Phony.
I think a lot of Americans want to see that he has picked a church home for his wife, for his children."
Is there photo evidence of Rev. Dubya attending church?
The really galling thing is when a president makes a big deal of his own religiosity, and then fails even to put that much of an effort into his worship. (Kudos to right ON for nailing this hypocrisy.) I allude to Reagan and G.W. Bush. Carter and Clinton both faithfully attended Baptist churches in the area. G.H.W. Bush (and for that matter, John McCain) rarely alluded to matters of faith, so his lack of attendance didn't bother me.
President's should be free to believe or not believe as it suits them. It's the hypocrites that spout piety but can't get their bums to a pew that tick me off, too.
But he was so wounded by his antics over the past couple of months that he had to regain some measure of credibility with these kinds of comments.
Look for him to continue this behavior for a few weeks, with a few out of control rants mixed in. This is very typical troll behavior, and shouldn't sway your original opinion in the least.
And the people who lead those on the right are quite intelligent and shrewd. Anytime you underestimate them, you do so at your own and our nation's peril.
You seriously are one of the most bizarre characters I have ever come across on this or any politically themed website. Your unhealthy obsession with Right ON boggles the mind. Granted, he goads you into it quite often, but you come in out of nowhere and make all these ridiculous accusations filtered through your paranoid delusional rantings with no proof, no basis in logic and no sense.
I have never read anything that Right ON's ever written praising the RNC or the GOP in any way, in fact he criticizes them with equal fervor as he does Democrats much of the time. This week alone he has called them phony and laid into them forcefully. Yet you say he gets paid by them to post here? Where is your proof? How does that make one lick of sense? Oh, it's his cagey way to hide it or something, it all smacks of pure jealousy on your part that he often makes more logical and cogent points than you do. And that he always calls you "Sue" because he believes that is your real screen name. It's obvious you don't like that, and it shows.
Why don't you, and he, stick to the issues and stop playing "War of the Roses" around here? And don't say he starts it because where on this thread did he start anything, yet you dump all over him with no provocation.
I feel sorry for you. I really do.
But I completely agree that political strategists are a pox on humanity. They live in a false world where you are only winning if the other guy is losing. Words like cooperation and synergism are meaningless to them.
It's just so "family values"
"Oh Senator Craig!!! Time for your radio 'interview' in the men's toilet".
Now it's CBS that has Dobson's hatemongers on speed dial to formulate an "acceptable" pro-life Super Bowl ad. Even though leaked text of the ad shows it's chock full o' lies.
Our president's family's religious practices are none of our business and, according to the Constitution, completely irrelevant.
Hume needs to go stick his head in a toilet and flush. First he starts trying to proselytize Tiger Woods, now this. Shut up, Hume.
and they are never wrong in anything. for they are republicans and by definition can never be wrong.
God out of anything. So why does Media Matters care?
Another right wing robot speaks. Not the truth. Just speaks.
It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into [our] institutions [today] are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have.... The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation.
-- Pat Robertson, New York Magazine, August 18, 1986
I think "one man, one vote," just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise. There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now, a minority, and they need and have a right to demand a protection of their rights.
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, March 18, 1992, suggesting that South African white people's votes ought to count more than other votes because they are in the minority
I read your book. When you get through, you [a reader] say, "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer." I mean, you get through this, and you say, "We've got to blow that thing up." I mean, is it as bad as you say?
-- Pat Robertson, to syndicated columnist Joel Mowbray, author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Endangers National Security; the US Department of State is located in Foggy Bottom, a Washington, DC, neighborhood; "Foggy Bottom" is sometimes used as a synonym for Washington, DC, quoted from AANEWS (October, 2003)
o Said in July 1981 in response to Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell's opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, "Every good Christian should be concerned." as quoted in Ed Magnuson, "The Brethren's First Sister," Time Magazine, (20 July, 1981)
* On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."
o Speech in the US Senate (16 September 1981)
* Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.
o Said in November 1994, as quoted in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience (2006)
* When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.
It is an attack on those who hate America and what America stands for.
It is an attack on those who despise freedom.
It is an attack on those who despise wealth.
It is not an attack on religion.
/snark
There is a simply astonishing lack of mirrors over there on the right.