Media gives McCain a pass on his ‘minister’ problem
by George Curry
As Jon Stewart said on “The Daily Show,” Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been dominating cable news coverage like a missing White girl. Meanwhile, John McCain has his own Rev. Wrong in the form of Rev. John Hagee, a San Antonio-based minister who refers to the Catholic Church as the “great whore” and calls Hurricane Katrina divine retaliation for New Orleans’ support of gays and lesbians.
Unlike the Democratic front-runner, McCain actively sought and accepted the support of Hagee. Obama has been hammered about controversial statements made by his former pastor, even after strongly rejecting them. In the Feb. 26 debate alone, the name of Min. Louis Farrakhan was brought up nine times. On the other hand, McCain has not been hounded to denounce and repudiate Hagee.
According to a recent study by the monitoring group Media Matters for America, the New York Times and the Washington Post have published 12 times as many articles mentioning Obama’s ties to Wright as articles mentioning McCain’s link to Hagee. From Feb. 27 until the beginning of May, the Washington Post had published 53 stories mentioning Obama’s relationship with Wright, but only three mentioning McCain and Hagee. Over that same period, the New York Times published 46 stories mentioning Obama and Wright, but only five about the McCain-Hagee connection.
In the May 4 New York Times, columnist Frank Rich wrote: “It is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double-standard operating here. If we’re going to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.”
However, that isn’t the case. And it never has been. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on abortion supporters, gays, feminists, the American Civil Liberties Union, and People for the American Way, yet no one called on President George W. Bush, who enjoys Robertson’s and Falwell’s political support, to denounce and repudiate them.
As Rich pointed out in his column, former Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani allowed a former priest kicked out of a Long Island diocese in 2002 for sexual abuse to officiate one of his weddings. The candidate was never asked to denounce and repudiate the defrocked priest.
McCain, the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, gets a pass on Hagee. Consider the following:
• Speaking on the National Public Radio (NPR) program “Fresh Air” on Sept. 18, 2006, Hagee said, “The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade [in New Orleans] on the Monday that Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. … And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”
• In that same NPR interview Hagee also said, “Those who live by the Quran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.”
• The Wall Street Journal (July 27, 2006), referring to Hagee’s church bulletin, reported, “To help students seeking odd jobs, his church newsletter, The Cluster, advertised a ’slave’ sale. ‘Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone,’ it said. ‘Make plans to come and go home with a slave.’ Mr. Hagee apologized but, in a radio interview, protested about pressure to be ‘politically correct’ and joked that perhaps his pet dog should be called a ‘canine American.”’
• Summarizing Hagee’s record, Catholic League President Bill Donahue said, “For the past few decades, he [Hagee] has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘the great whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’”
• In his book “What Every Man Wants in a Woman,” Hagee said, “Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist. ”
• In another section of the book, Hagee writes: “Only a Spirit-filled woman can submit to her husband’s lead. It is the natural desire of a woman to lead through feminine manipulation of the man.”
On the April 20 edition of ABC’s “This Week,” McCain, referring to Hagee, said: ”I’m glad to have his endorsement.” He explained, “I admire and respect Dr. Hagee’s leadership of the … of his church.”
That position disturbs Donahue of the Catholic League. He said, “Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee.”
George E. Curry, former editor in chief of Emerge magazine and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach.
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May 8th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
You guys really need to leave the Ministers of God alone. Jeremiah Wright told the truth about a lot of things, so did Hagee.
I know a lot of stuff in polically incorrect, but when the Kingdom of God is here on Earth at full force, there are going to be a whole lot of changes happening that many people would consider to be politically incorrect.