THE DAILY BLADE: The 800-Pound Elephant In The Room
Some right-of-center pundits are finally becoming fed up enough to challenge the allegation that any conservative who does not vote for Mitt Romney is an anti-Mormon bigot. (Conversely, a liberal who refuses to vote for Romney may well be motivated by religious bigotry.)
As Mormonism is a rather exotic faith about which the average American knows little, the Romney campaign promised to explain its tenets clearly and forthrightly. However, the candidate has consistently said little about his faith, other than the longevity of his marriage demonstrates that Mormons believe in traditional American values.
If the campaign’s own focus group testing and polling has revealed that conservatives and evangelicals who have done their own research to fill in the blanks are less likely to consider Romney a serious candidate, Plan A is no longer viable. So dump Plan A and switch to Plan B: Suggest that if you disagree with Romney’s belief system enough not to want to vote for him you are a de facto religious bigot.
Here’s Mike Gallagher’s take on Romney supporters trying to bully or shame people into voting for their candidate by using a favored tactic of the left:
I like Mitt Romney. He’s obviously a smart, talented, decent man with the kinds of values and ideology that most mainstream conservatives can appreciate. …
As we learn more and more about Mormonism, we are forced to confront the fact that the church clearly has some peculiar and unusual beliefs. If the belief that the Garden of Eden is in Jackson County, Missouri doesn’t get your interest, how about the conviction that people will be gods and goddesses of their own planets in the hereafter? Or the sacred undergarments many Mormons wear, believing in some kind of protection against spiritual or physical harm? And more importantly, how about their belief that God is a person of the flesh and that the Bible needed to be altered and updated by a man named Joseph Smith who was visited by an angel named Moroni in the early 1800’s? …
If a presidential candidate has a set of religious beliefs that seem contrary to the vast majority of Bible-believing Christians and those beliefs might cause someone to decide not to vote for that person, how can that possibly be called bigotry?
One of the proponents of the notion that were it not for religious bigotry every conservative and Republican would vote for Romney without hesitation is Hugh Hewitt, who has authored a book on Romney (“A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney”) and is an enthusiastic supporter of his candidacy, so Gallagher invited him on his radio program to explain himself:
He argues that Americans need to substitute “Jew” or “Catholic” for Mormon. And he uses the slippery slope argument, that if someone is disqualifying someone because of their Mormon faith, how long before mainstream Christians are next?
But where that position totally and completely breaks down is when you ask Hugh to substitute the word “atheist” for Mormon … Hugh would have no intention of ever voting for someone who doesn’t believe in “a deity.”
Hmmm. So Hugh Hewitt tells me that I’m being intolerant and even bigoted for suggesting that someone with religious beliefs other than my own might not get my vote for president, but its perfectly okay for him to disqualify someone for being an atheist?
So much for tolerance, I guess.
The Stiletto thinks Gallagher could have just as easily made his case by asking Hewitt whether he would vote for a Jain, who would never take the
Thanks to Gallagher, we already know Hewitt won’t vote for an atheist. If he won’t vote for practitioners of these and other non-mainstream religions or belief systems either, he should either admit he’s a bigot himself, or back off.
Buy His Book! Watch His TV Network! Join His Campaign (Against Global Warming)!
At a book signing in New York last week promoting "The Assault on Reason," Al Gore criticized the "trivialities and nonsense" of celebrity gossip in the media and descried the "destruction of the boundary between news and entertainment,” according to Agence France-Presse. Call The Stiletto a cynic, but his comments seem a tad self-serving seeing that Current.tv, his TV network that will air user-generated content for a target audience of 18- to 34-year-olds, is scheduled to launch August 1st.
Ditto his urging the crowd of 1,300 “cheering and screaming fans” who gave him “a rock star reception” to focus instead on such issues as climate change. Is it just The Stiletto, or is there anyone else who thinks that every article with “Global Warming” in the headline should have “Al Gore For President” as the subhead?
On the other hand, Gore may have a point about the nonstop media coverage of the vulgar and sometimes criminal antics of BritneyLindsayParis – though he’s full of hot air on global warming. The New York Times reports that 8 to 12-year old girls “are deeply immersed in the dirty laundry of celebrities - their eating disorders, bouts with drinking and drugs, and run-ins with the law (and one another). The gritty details are all around them: on the Web, on cable, at the top of the network news and splashed across the covers of magazines.”
Fortunately, girls in that age range are “highly judgmental” and are “really heavily under the influence of their parents,” Cornell University professor Dr. Ritch C. Savin-Williams tells The New York Times. However, as kids grow older and realize that self-destructive or skanky behavior “doesn’t lead to total ruination of your life, they may ... be willing to entertain that” warns New York University’s Dr. Richard Gallagher.
Editorial Note: Is this New York Times photo staged, or what?
Hillary Spends More Time On Campaign Theme Song Than Reading
Hillary Clinton asked users of video sharing site YouTube to help her decide on a campaign theme song – a detail that is, apparently, being debated within her circle of advisors and campaign strategists with the vigor of such seemingly more important calculations as how many votes she needs to cast in lockstep with Barack Obama to negate having voted in favor of authorizing the
Hillary posted two videos promoting the contest, which began May 16. The number of songs currently under consideration has been winnowed to 10 – five of which were suggested by the campaign ("Suddenly I See," KT Tunstall; "Rock This Country!" Shania Twain; "Beautiful Day," U2; "Get Ready," The Temptations; and "I'm a Believer," Smash Mouth) and five of which were write-in candidates ("Are You Gonna Go My Way," Lenny Kravitz; "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now," McFadden & Whitehead; "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," The Police; "You and I," Celine Dion; and “The Best," Tina Turner).
Leaving aside that Hill is not young enough, hip enough or hot enough to be associated with Lenny Kravitz in any way whatsoever, should voter fraud taint the results – a not-unheard of occurrence with political contests supervised by Dems - The Stiletto offers these candidates for the do-over: “This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag,” Charlie Daniels; “God Bless The USA,” Lee Greenwood; and that oldie-but-goodie “Stand By Your Man,” Tammy Wynette.
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