Pot/Kettle Time
I found Kathryn Jean Lopez's op-ed piece in yesterday's Sacramento Bee mildly amusing. It seems Ms. Lopez, stalwart editor of National Review Online, was outraged! by the Democrats use of religion (gasp) in a political ad.
If public opinion isn't on your side, hit your opponent below the belt. This seemed to be the game plan for some Louisiana Democrats, who recently used religion to try and derail Republican rising star Rep. Bobby Jindal's run for the governorship.
Ms. Lopez finds the political ad sponsored by the "official" Louisiana Democratic Party and shown in the northern part of that state offensive. In that ad, Mr. Jindal is accused of being anti-Protestant, based on an admittedly sloppy reading of some columns he wrote for a conservative Catholic publication. Was the ad offensive? Well, if the ad (which I haven't seen) is as Ms. Lopez described, of course it was. Not content to leave it at that, however, Ms. Lopez extends her outrage to the attacks which haven't been made yet:
For a country that was founded by folks escaping religious persecution, the existence and exploitation of religious bigotry is ugly and unfortunate. We've seen it in the presidential race, with observers predicting that Mitt Romney's Mormonism will ultimately do in his campaign. ...
Ah...so that's it. Ms. Lopez' golden boy just might have a problem if religion is injected into the politics of the presidential campaign. Well, religion has been injected, both directly and by innuendo by the GOP for the past twenty years as the Religious Reich took over that party. Now, however, because it just might bite that party in the backside, suddenly religion shouldn't be part of politics.
And as to the hitting below the belt complaint, well, lately that part of several prominent Republicans' anatomies has become so prominent that it's pretty hard to ignore as a target.
If public opinion isn't on your side, hit your opponent below the belt. This seemed to be the game plan for some Louisiana Democrats, who recently used religion to try and derail Republican rising star Rep. Bobby Jindal's run for the governorship.
Ms. Lopez finds the political ad sponsored by the "official" Louisiana Democratic Party and shown in the northern part of that state offensive. In that ad, Mr. Jindal is accused of being anti-Protestant, based on an admittedly sloppy reading of some columns he wrote for a conservative Catholic publication. Was the ad offensive? Well, if the ad (which I haven't seen) is as Ms. Lopez described, of course it was. Not content to leave it at that, however, Ms. Lopez extends her outrage to the attacks which haven't been made yet:
For a country that was founded by folks escaping religious persecution, the existence and exploitation of religious bigotry is ugly and unfortunate. We've seen it in the presidential race, with observers predicting that Mitt Romney's Mormonism will ultimately do in his campaign. ...
Ah...so that's it. Ms. Lopez' golden boy just might have a problem if religion is injected into the politics of the presidential campaign. Well, religion has been injected, both directly and by innuendo by the GOP for the past twenty years as the Religious Reich took over that party. Now, however, because it just might bite that party in the backside, suddenly religion shouldn't be part of politics.
And as to the hitting below the belt complaint, well, lately that part of several prominent Republicans' anatomies has become so prominent that it's pretty hard to ignore as a target.
Labels: Religion
posted by Diane at 5:26 AM
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