-Caveat Lector- http://www.nwanews.com/adg/story_Editorial.php?storyid=57879
Fact-finding sidetracked by theology Gene Lyons Posted on Wednesday, March 3, 2004 Pardon me, but is the United States electing a president this year or anointing a high priest? The 2004 campaign has hardly gotten under way and instead of debating political issues, everybody's bickering about theological abstractions. Religious disputation fills the air; everybody says God's on his side. A less useful way to handle the affairs of a democracy can hardly be imagined. On TV, the usual jokers are up to their usual tricks. Crackpot televangelist Pat Robertson, who like Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed that the 9/11 attacks were God's vengeance for America's sexual sins, now says God personally assured him that President Bush will win in a landslide. "60 Minutes" wag Andy Rooney antagonized the faithful by joking that God told him that Robertson and actor/director Mel Gibson are a couple of nut cases. Exploiting "hot button" issues to drive up ratings and circulation, the mass media did all they could to help Gibson promote his calculatedly provocative film, "The Passion of the Christ," and assisted San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to turn thousands of legally dubious gay marriages into a made-for-TV spectacle. This soon after an Alabama judge won nationwide notoriety by setting up a veritable altar inside a courthouse and defying a federal injunction to remove it. Newsweek asked Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, whose wife is a Jew, if he accepted Jesus as his savior. Not to be outdone were CBS News anchor Dan Rather and New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, who did their best to turn last week's Democratic presidential debate into a Sunday school class. Rather opened by demanding that the four participants complete "in terms of your own spirituality, if you prefer religiosity... the sentence, 'This I believe'" .... Bumiller subsequently closed the proceedings by asserting that Bush has claimed that "God is not neutral" in the nation's wars, adding: "He's made quite clear in... speeches that he feels God is on America's side. Really quick: Is God on America's side?" "Really quick," no less. This from the representative of The New York Times, supposedly the nation's most serious newspaper. I'd have voted for anybody who had cited the least honored (by politicians) of Jesus' teachings about not making a public spectacle of your prayers. No Democrat was that quick-witted, although Sen. John Edwards thwarted the reporter's ecclesiastical grandstanding by citing Abraham Lincoln's answer to somebody who wanted him to join a prayer asserting that God sided with the Yankees during the Civil War. According to Edwards, Lincoln said, "I won't join you in that prayer, but I'll join you in a prayer that we're on God's side." For Sen. John Kerry, the irony must have been paralyzing. Back in 1960, John F. Kennedy, the last Roman Catholic senator from Massachusetts to make a serious run at the presidency, had to contend with suspicions that he'd turn the White House into a tool of the pope. He dealt with them in a brilliant speech to Baptist clergymen in Houston, Texas, affirming his commitment to the First Amendment separation of church and state. Delivered today, the same speech likely would cause the gang on "FOX News Sunday" or "Hardball" to question the candidate's piety. Not that doing the pope's bidding would please FOX News theologians, understand. Pope John II opposes abortion, yes, but also the death penalty and the Iraq war. Elsewhere in the same debate, Bumiller badgered Kerry to state whether he's a "liberal." When he objected to her repeated interruptions, she curtly reminded him, "You're in New York." Really quick, Ms. Bumiller: Is the pope a liberal? My point's an elementary one. To anybody with a strong interest in the visible world, two huge issues surfaced last week that should figure prominently in the 2004 debate. Both are 100 percent secular; neither got raised during the Democratic debate. The first was Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's astonishing contention that Social Security benefits will require trimming to close huge deficits, the ones caused by Bush's millions-for-millionaires tax cuts. Astonishing because Greenspan chaired the commission that in the 1980s successfully raised payroll taxes to make the system fiscally sound at least through 2042. Also because three years ago, Greenspan testified that Bush's tax cuts would prevent the government from running excessive surpluses. He now urges that we loot the Social Security Trust Fund to cover his own "fuzzy math." This isn't a matter of faith, it's a matter of arithmetic involving promises made to American workers over generations. Then there's the White House's failed attempt to run out the clock on its own 9/11 commission by staging a transparent farce in which House Speaker Dennis Hastert pretended to refuse the president's plea to grant it a two-month extension, then relented under bipartisan Senate pressure. This after months of refusing to turn over key documents or permit key White House aides like Condoleezza Rice or Bush himself to testify. Why, you'd almost think they had something to hide. Theology, in such circumstances, is always preferable to facts. • Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award. www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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