He's not black
Can I just say that?
There's a lot of outrage out there - Rod Parsley is a spiritual backer of John McCain and he says all manner of awful, hate-filled, racist things against Islam. And John McCain is happy to have his backing, just like he was happy to get the support of the Rev. John Hagee...and the press and the public don't care because these men aren't black.
That's all there is to it. America is happy to have crazy pastors in the public square, so long as they're not black.
If "G-d Hates Fags" Fred Phelps got up on TV tomorrow and said he was endorsing John McCain, there'd be some mild tut-tutting, but it's not like anyone would observe that all the crazy religious people who think the world can't end soon enough mysteriously drift toward the Republican campaigns. Indeed, crazy almost seems to be a requirement for Republican religious thinking - how else can you explain former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's breathless and straight-faced declarations that the legalization of abortion resulted in the flooding of America with illegal immigrants from Mexico? Not even the least bit of tut-tutting for that declaration. And on NBC's Today Show this morning, the lead, pre-Mother's Day story was a a woman who has given birth to 17 babies, is officially pregnant with the 18th, thinks birth control pills are against G-d's will, and is soon to appear with her family on a....you guessed it, a reality TV show. Crazy white religious people are our historical heritage!
But hey, Barack Obama's pastor doesn't like American foreign policy, and guess what? That means Obama is a secret Muslim anti-christ who will ruin America.
It's pretty simple why there's so much zeit in that zeitgeist: he's black, and angry black religious people titilate use with fright. That's why we can't turn away from the Farrakhans and Sharptons - however marginal they really are, however much they pretend to run for president or stage photo-op arrests or give speeches at the margins of whatever it is America should be caring about, training a camera on a crazy black man excites Americans. Training a camera on crazy white people who pray for the end times just makes msot of want to change the channel.
So, get as outraged as you like about Parsley, Hagee, and McCain, or, for that matter, Bob Jones, Pat Robertson, and Falwell's offspring, ad infinitum, and loop. They're not black, so Americans wont care.
