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BLASPHEMY
07/02/2008
This essay will be controversial. However, it is a sincere attempt to offer new thinking at a time when we desperately need it, when we have in a very real sense lost our way as a people.
We have, in short, allowed ourselves to be horrified, insulted and distracted by words, while we ignore deeds that are the real horror.
Some words uttered by public figures are indeed shocking, but many are deemed offensive by politicians or the media who deliberately misinterpret them. In this age of words (internet, radio, television), at the same time that we condemn the talk, we ignore or excuse heinous realities and unconscionable deeds to which the talk refers. Nowhere is this more obvious than in this current presidential campaign when each side scrutinizes the words of the candidate and his surrogrates for some verbal gaffe, slip up, or easy-to-spin (i.e. misinterpret) statement in order to gain political advantage.
I offer three recent examples of how words have been portrayed as far more criminal than deeds.
The first involves the words of comedian Bill Maher, and a recent effort on the part of a Catholic group, the American Life League, to have HBO take him off the air. Catholic Churches around the country are engaged in an effort to expose parishoners to the "anti-Catholic" words of Bill Maher and sign a petition condemning him. And it is true, Bill Maher has said some pretty inflammatory things about the Catholic Church, blasphemous things you could argue. One of the tamer things he said, at the time of the child abuse scandal at the polygamous compound in Texas, and prior to the Pope's visit to America, was:
"Whenever a cult leader sets himself up as God’s infallible wingman here on Earth, lock away the kids. Which is why I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That’s right, the Pope is coming to America this week and ladies, he’s single!"
I won't go into some of the other things Maher has said. Many are highly objectionable even to those of us who find much fault within the Church. But Bill Maher is a comedian, and comedians skewer all kinds of sacred cows. Comedians are inherently blasphemous, if by blasphemy we mean irreverence towards things that are considered sacred or untouchable.
Maher definitely has his own issues with the Catholic Church, the church in which he was raised, and it is understandable that some practicing Catholics believe his words go too far, but here's my question: which is worse – Bill Maher making fun of the church, reminding everyone of the pedophilia scandal, or the molestation of children by hundreds of priests, the shielding of those priests by bishops, and the defense of the bishops by the pope? (Didn't the previous pope assign Cardinal Law to Rome where he could hide from media scrutiny and possible indictment?)
Bill Maher may be a jerk, his words outrageous, but they are just words. He's not molesting children, but rather expressing his outrage that the Church in which he was, as he says, "indoctrinated," has allowed its priests to molest children. He may be doing it in a crass and ugly way, but are his words worse than what a group of priests and bishops have done? Apparently so, because to some his words are worthy of the kind of action that was never undertaken during the pedophilia scandal itself.
I wonder if the group which is now condemning Maher conducted any campaign to stop the abuse? Did they have a petition drive directed towards the scandal? Did they scream their heads off about what these priests and bishops were doing? I doubt it. They probably honored and respected the church throughout the scandal, insisting, as did many devout Catholics, that this was just a small group of men, blaming "homosexuality" when it is actually heterosexuals who usually molest children. No doubt some of them refused to see the evil that was part of the institution itself, and at least partly the result of the rule of celibacy, which attracted too many sexually immature or conflicted men who were then expected to live celibate, lonely lives. (Imagine if someone today tried to say that the Inquisition was simply an aberration, that most priests did not torture anyone. Would we all agree that because the Inquisition was mainly carried out by a small group of priests that it was not worthy of condemnation, that it did not do enormous damage to both ordinary people and the church itself?)
Two final questions: would Bill Maher be able to attack the church this way if it had not allowed such heinous behavior to continue for decades, and should we be more upset about Maher's blasphemy, or more upset about the horrific behavior of some priests, bishops, and even the pope? In other words, is it the words or the deeds that are more deserving of condemnation? And if it is the deeds, why are we allowing ourselves to be distracted by the words of a comedian?
A second example of getting agitated about words rather than reality is the reaction to retired army General Wesley Clark's words Sunday on Face the Nation. Though it was a small dust-up, it did dominate the news cycle for more than 24 hours. Wesley Clark was stating why he thinks Obama will make a better commander in chief than McCain. He started by praising Obama's judgment, character and ability to communicate. He said McCain, in spite of his experience in the Navy, as a pilot and POW, and in the Senate, was largely "untested and untried" in terms of being a commander in chief. He continued by praising McCain's service and courage, said he had always looked up to him, but said McCain was running on that experience, implying that it qualified him to be president, when he had actually never had executive experience.
At these words Bob Shieffer acted astonished and said "Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane, and gotten shot down." Clark then responded with the actual words of Shieffer, words that shocked media pundits: "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down are qualifications to be president."
For two days these words of Clark have been stirring up trouble on the cable channels, in the two campaigns, and on the internet. The McCain campaign saw an opportunity to play the victim, claiming that Clark was "dissing" McCain's war record, his service, and his sacrifice as a POW. Media pundits were horrified, asking Clark if he was going to apologize, and the Obama campaign distanced themselves from Clark's comments (which Maureen Dowd, writing today in the New York Times, characterized as an illustration of the longstanding rivalry between grunts and flyboys.)
Obama wisely said discussions like this didn't solve one problem for the American people, but the McCain campaign hired a swift boat liar from four years ago to actually attack Clark's service in retaliation for this imagined insult, and demanded Obama cut Clark loose, when the Obama campaign actually had no connection to Clark.
Obviously, McCain is making political hay because he is behind and he has nothing else to run on but attacking Obama. (He also seems to have a very thin skin.) However, these words of Clark couldn't be characterized as blasphemous if the American people didn't consider war a sacrament. McCain, as a former POW, is a saint in the sacrament of war, and saying anything negative about him, even expressing an undeniable truth - that his war record doesn't qualify him to be president - is, at least to McCain supporters and the not so liberal media, verboten. (Interesting, isn't it, that it was okay to say a lot of negative things about John Kerry's war record, to portray him as a liar and thus a false hero.)
Well, I'm going to say something really blasphemous. I'm going to say what no one else will say, that we Americans are far more horrified by words that can be interpreted as "dissing" a war hero, than we are by war itself, and the acts of war, including what John McCain did as a fighter pilot and including his vote for the Iraq War.
At one time there were large numbers of people who protested against war and even condemned the acts of soldiers, most of whom were drafted, but we seem unwilling to go there anymore. So I will go there. Yes, John McCain suffered terribly in prison, and his courage is to be admired, his sacrifice respected. But John McCain was not drafted. The son and grandson of admirals, he went to Annapolis, with the goal of being a career naval aviator. He flew bombing missions over North Vietnam, in another war based on false pretenses and dangerous ideology, and in doing so undoubtedly killed civilians. As for McCain's Iraq vote to authorize the president to go to war against a country that never attacked us, that also involved the bombing of many, many civilians.
Regardless of John McCain's involvement in killing civilians, he is considered a war hero because of his courage and time in a POW camp. Okay, I understand wanting to honor the military service of brave men and women. But bombing civilians, getting shot down and being held prisoner is part of the risk one takes when one volunteers to join the navy and fly bombing missions. And no matter how horrified anyone in the Republican Party or the media are by Wes Clark's words, the actions of John McCain in Vietnam do not remotely qualify him to be president. They may say something about his character, but character is only one factor in choosing the next president, and matters of war are only one issue.
Here are the questions: are Clark's words questioning McCain's qualifications to be president any worse than the act of bombing civilians or the vote to authorize war against a country that had not attacked us? Is it words or deeds that are more important? And how is it that war has become so sacred that daring to take a warrior off of his pedestal, or refusing to canonize him because of his service, is worse than waging an immoral war, which causes the deaths of millions of civilians?
A final example of overreaction to words also occurred within a political context. During the primary season, at a private fundraiser, Barack Obama said this:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Immediately, Hillary Clinton and John McCain saw an opening and characterized Obama as an elitist, someone who was condemning small town America for their attachment to their guns and their religion. Most of the attacks on Obama left out the part where he talked about "anti-trade sentiment," "anti-immigrant sentiment," or "antipathy to people who aren't like them." Instead, they focused on the words "bitter," "guns," and "religion," and made it sound like Obama was saying some Americans were "bitter" and that was what made them want guns and become religious.
What Obama was actually saying was no different than what Democrats have been saying and writing about for years, that when people are stuck in poverty, when they lose the American dream, they are susceptible to manipulative politicians who use prejudice, racial resentment, and religious wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage to get elected. Of course those weren't Barack's exact words, but that was his meaning.
Instead of actually examining what Obama was saying, however, the media took Clinton's narrative and painted Obama as antagonistic to working Americans, as mocking their religion and their gun ownership, when what he was actually doing was trying to understand their thinking and their voting record. MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who almost always gets it wrong, spent weeks trashing Obama for what became known as his "bitter comments," even as Matthews himself made Obama's case. Time and again he would ask guests if they knew why working class white Americans, whom he also referred to as "regular guys," were so patriotic, why they expressed so much love of country. His answer? "Because it's all they've got."
Isn't that just a slight paraphrase of what Obama was saying? Working class Americans pay a lot of attention to their church and to gun issues because it's all they've got. They've been robbed of everything else by Republican administrations, who consistently use these issues to keep them in line, to distract them from the wholesale transfer of wealth from poor to rich. I am reminded of my studies of the Middle Ages, and how the Church was the center of life, especially for the peasants, because they had nothing else and never would in a society where class was determined at birth. The nobility held all the property and all the wealth, but at least the Church promised them a better deal in the next life. Is that really the society we want to build here, a society where religion and guns are all the people have because the politicians have taken everything else from them?
Obama was pointing out something important about what is happening right under our noses, but instead of examining it and educating the public, the media allowed the political narrative set by Hillary Clinton to be their reality. It made for good television. Obama said something offensive, therefore he must be condemned.
Here are the questions: Are Obama's words more heinous than the fact that the American dream (of moving out of the class of your birth) is no longer viable for most people? Is it more offensive to say people are being manipulated into voting against their own interests with wedge issues surrounding guns and religion than it is to educate the public so that they can't be manipulated?
And finally, when are we going to look at the realities of our time in history, and the organization of our society, rather than just allow ourselves to be fooled by those who feign outrage over mere words?
When are we going to heed the messages, attend to the problems, and stop shooting the messengers?
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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