Monday, November 15, 2010

Charming.

Perhaps you remember our last item on Sally Quinn's vanity project, On Faith? Tony Perkins used The Washington Post's bandwidth to blames gays for gay teen suicide... on National Coming Out Day. Quinn's co-moderator Jon Meacham has since left the site and Newsweek is no longer a partner, but the content remains the same -- all hate, all the time. Pope Pius groupie law dean, Ronald Rychlak, takes the occasion of Obama's trip to India and Indonesia to suggest that it's Obama's fault everyone thinks he's a Muslim. Here's the warm up:

The president, whose middle name is "Hussein," was born in Hawaii and moved to Indonesia at age 6 to live with his mother and stepfather, who was Muslim. While there, he attended Catholic school and Muslim school. He also attended Muslim prayer services with his Indonesian stepfather. According to an interview he did in 2007 with the New York Times, he said that the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."

Did you know these things? I totally did not! Anyway, Rychlak complains that Obama "has refused to allow any school records, grades, papers written by him, or other records from his youth." This, he says, "has led people to speculate." (Speculate about what, exactly, he does not say.)

He's also irritated that Obama once said "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation" -- leaving out the rest of the sentence: "or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation." He's unhappy that Obama pledged to push back at negative stereotypes of Islam. And -- naturally -- he's displeased that Obama believes Feisal Abdul Rauf has the right to build a community center the hallowed ground of the Burlington Coat Factory. "Let's be clear," he says, probably because he assumes On Faith's readers are idiots...

One cannot see into the heart of another, and we must respect and accept the president's claim to be a fully believing Christian. It is unfortunate that he has had to face so many crazy theories, beliefs, and downright falsehoods. On the other hand, his demeanor and his approach to religion is the cause of most of the problems.

It's the "on the hand" that so precious. And it's the difference greeting the coming demise of a once-great institution with a period of celebration, as opposed to mourning.

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