http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5909
I think this is something like the 3rd week the “liberal media” has been bashing Obama over Rev. Wright’s “God Damn America” sound bytes. This isn’t surprising for those who have noticed how the mainstream media has consistantly jumped to the side of the underdog. First they loved up to Obama because he was the “new guy”, then they jumped over to Hillary when he started to win, and have continued to switch partners as the polls swing back and forth so as to drag the Democratic primary out as long as humanly possible. It’s not like they didn’t have this stuff on Wright from the very beginning.
Yes, Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan are both crazy. But they really aren’t as racist and hate-filled as everyone would have you believe. Obviously the part about government infecting the population with AIDS and Syphallis is nothing but a crazy conspiracy theory, but it’s hardly unthinkable. North Carolina secretly sterilized 65,000 people between 1929 and 1974. His statements on “God Damn America” were issued against the violence that America spreads, whch is something Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out as well, saying that America was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and that “America was founded on genocide, and a nation that is founded on genocide is destructive.”
Farrakhan has blamed the Jews of Hollywood for making movies that depict black people as “less than human.” He’s said every American Jew is also a dual citizen of Israel, and in some cases, like that of Liberman, this is true. He’s called Hezbollah “freedom fighters”, which of course is nonsense, but it is true that they are a product of Israel’s injustice towards the Palestinian people. He’s said that rich Jewish bankers helped finance Hitler, which is partially true; many Jewish bankers did help finance both sides during the World Wars. And he’s said that for having such a small number of people, the Jews have a large influence over American and European politics, which is true.
A lot of it is skeevy, but really pretty low on the radar in terms of being “out-and-out” anti-semitic. Both of them deny being anti-white or anti-semitic, but then so did Mel Gibson. Like Apocalypto, there are hateful insinuations cloaked in historical interpretations, but I feel like I’ve heard so much worse, which brings me to Rev. John Hagee.
Hagee said that American and Israel need to ally up to bomb Iran to fulfill “God’s Plan”, which pretty much makes him admittedly anti-arab and anti-islamic. He considers Harry Potter to be contemporary witchcraft. Hurricane Katrina was an act of God meant to punish New Orleans for “a level of sin that’s offensive to God,” namely homosexuality, but also Bush’s pressuring Israel to give up some of its illegal settlements in the “tit for tat” exchange. He even erroneously said that the hurricane hit on the same day as a Gay Pride Parade, which in fact was scheduled a week later (plus the primarily gay neighborhoods such as the French Qurater were spared). He’s blamed Hitler’s anti-semitism on Catholicism without any consideration to the anti-semitic Protestant culture of Martin Luther (something very common; my sister’s history teacher Coach Ourso from Mandeville High teaches the same). He’s also written a book called Beginning of the End about how giving the Golan Heights to the Palestinians is “signing a deal with the Anti-Christ” that will bring about the Apocalypse. On a Praise-A-Thon broadcast in 1993, he said that “poverty is caused by sin and disobeying the Word of God.”
Unlike Farrakhan and Wright, Hagee is one of the highest-paid television evangelists in the world, making over a million dollars in 2001 alone. Hagee has claimed that McCain has sought out his vote, and after his endorsement, McCain said more than once that he was “very proud to have Pastor Hagee’s support.” This, however, is not the story the media is interested in, because it doesn’t fit into the Hillary vs. Obama fight that they have been trying to frame for months now.
Lou Dubose writes in the Huffing Post:
“John McCain needed an evangelical to embrace and send a message to the Christian right that he will do their bidding, even if he’s not quite one of them. He settled on San Antonio End-Timer John Hagee.
Hagee’s bizarre theology would be harmless enough (perhaps) if confined to his multimillion-dollar temple. But John Hagee has a constituency that extends beyond his congregation. He used that constituency to build a foreign-policy advocacy organization–Christians United for Israel (CUFI)–that is now pressing for a pre-emptive war with Iran. CUFI brought 4,500 End Times activists to Washington for its July 2006 inaugural event, followed by a day of lobbying on the Hill.
Hagee was straightforward in announcing his agenda: “The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West,” he said.
John McCain has been pressed to renounce Hagee. He cannot. Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, whose unsolicited “endorsement” created a problem for Sen. Barack Obama, can preach religious hate. But he works on the fringe of American religion and politics and is an unlikely guest at anyone’s White House. The influence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright–Obama’s longtime pastor who is cut from a different cloth than Farrakhan–doesn’t extend beyond the African-American community in Chicago.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, is deeply invested in John Hagee and his followers.”