Barack Obama isn't the only presidential contender with a prominent bigot among his supporters. John McCain accepted the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, who regularly attacks the Catholic Church as "the great whore of Revelation," a "false cult system," and "the anti-Christ." McCain deflected concern about Hagee's bigotry simply by saying he does not endorse all the opinions of people who back him. "He says he has never been anti-Catholic," McCain added, "but I repudiate the words that create that impression."
Like the hatred spewed by Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright, Hagee's diatribes are available on videotape, but the mainstream media has barely reacted. The likely reason: reporters, editors and intellectuals aren't much interested in attacks on Catholics. Minorities, women and gays are eligible for sensitive concern. Catholics aren't.
Consider some recent provocations, mostly publicity-free. Comedian Bill Maher said Catholics are schizophrenic for believing that in communion they are "drinking the blood of a 2000-year-old space god." A skit on Utah public radio said Mike Huckabee's family likes "deep-fried body of Christ — boring holy wafers no more… Mike likes to top his Christ with whipped cream and sprinkles." In Jerry Springer: the Opera, which played for two nights at Carnegie Hall in January, Jesus is an effeminate gay-like character who walks around in a diaper and is hailed as a "hypocrite son of the fascist tyrant on high." The Virgin Mary is introduced as a woman "raped by an angel," and Eve fondles Jesus' genitals.
Bearded guys dressed as nuns are regular feature in gay parades, sometimes accompanied by a swishy Jesus. In painting and sculpture the bashing of Christian symbols is so mainstream that it 's barely noticed. Attacks on the Virgin Mary include Mary coming out of a vagina, Mary encased in a condom, Mary pierced with a phallic pipe, Mary as a bare-breasted Jesus figure presiding at the Last Supper and an Annunciation scene with the Archangel Gabriel giving Mary a coat hanger for an abortion.
Jesus on the cross can be wrought in chocolate ("My Sweet Lord"), as a homosexual sex scene, or on the cover of the New Yorker as the Easter Bunny. Advertisers and movie-makers feel free to mock Catholics too. An ad for Equinox fitness clubs featured young women dressed as nuns sketching a naked man while staring at his crotch. Elizabeth: the Golden Age took many swipes at Catholicism. Writing in the Newark Star-Ledger, critic Stephen Witty wrote that the film "equates Catholicism with some sort of horror-movie cult, with scary close-ups of chanting monk and glinting crucifixes. There's even a murderous Jesuit…a second cousin to poor pale Silas from the Da Vinci Code."
Off-Broadway has produced many plays about corrupt cardinals and stupid nuns. In most cases these are not real plays, just political screeds by angry gays and feminists lashing out at the church over abortion or gay rights The anti-Catholic play almost writes itself. Just have a gay Jesus or a lesbian Mary have sex with a pope, Judas, or a farm animal, and contract a venereal disease or go to work in an abortion clinic. Nobody in the art world will object. Instead there will be lots of talk about artistic freedom.
The establishment in this country needs to do a bit more thinking about civility and transgression. Believers can expect open and honest argument about their doctrines and social teachings, and frank criticism about poor behavior. But it is not civil or honest to attack a religion by trying to degrade its symbols. The word for this is propaganda.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
In 1855, Abraham Lincoln responded to the virulently anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant “Native American Party,” popularly known as the “Know-Nothing Party,” by writing:
“I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
A century and a half later, “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.”
March 31st, 2008 at 9:58 am
I agree that Catholicism, indeed, Christianity in general has been a target of self-obsessed, self-satisfied art snobs. But this is not the reason they give St. John McCain a pass on his backers. They have put a screen up on which they project the candidates in the role assigned to them: McCain as an independent maverick (even though his voting record shows him flip-flopping into the most loyal disciple Bush has), Al Gore was a liar (even though the New York Times had to make up all the lies they then ascribed to him), and now Barack Obama is held to account for all the distortions that Fox News lies about him and those who don’t understand fire-and-brimstone preaching, much less the whole black experience in America misunderstand.
McCain embracing Hagee and misunderstanding the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite are forgiven, while reporters admit that if a Democrat had done the same thing, there would be a bigger outcry in the press.
Besides, anything Jeremiah Wright said is nowhere near as incendiary as Francis Schaeffer who called for armed insurrection against America and was invited to the White House and embraced by every Republican president from Ford to Bush I.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Mr. Leo, I’ve been a big fan of yours for years, and fo rhte last 10 years that I subscribed to USNews, you were the reason.
But, I have ot say this column is not up to your standards of rationality. You start of equating Barrack Obama’s close 20-year association with Rev. Wright to McCain’s cursory association with Haggee. That really doesn’t fly at all. Every candidate draws support from people whose views they don’t necessarily agree with, and may even be hateful and divisive, but not every candidate chooses such a person as a spiritual advisor. There really is no moral equivalency here, and it’s the kind of slipshod argumet in defense of Obama that I expect to see on the Daily Kos.
But then,
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
…but then (my post somehow submitted itself while I was in the middle of sentence. How rude!)
…but then, by the third paragraph the whole Obama thing is dropped, and we’re into a commentary on Catholic bashing. But, after the first couple of examples, you even stray from that theme. The liberals and artists you cite aren’t bashing Catholicism specifically — for the most part, they wouldn’t know a Catholic from a Baptis from a Morman. It’s pretty much straight Christianity bashing.
So, for me, this column just kind of drifted from point A to B to C without much purpose. While I agree 100% with your last paragraph, the journey there seemed studded with false turns.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I came back to say two things:
1) I regret posting a negative review of this column. Even a lesser John Leo column is always worth reading.
2) I wouldn’t even feel the need to say that if there were more comments here…where is everyone?
If these columns aren’t being read, they should be. Someone needs to be getitng the word out, and getting linked. I notice that Drudge still has a Townhall.com link for John Leo. How out of date is that? Just getting that fixed would probably double the traffic here.