Interesting back-and-forth going on between me and another Xangan.  This featured post on Revelife (Christian Xanga) was about John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as VP.  The author surmised that perhaps she was chosen specifically because of her conservative Christian and anti-abortion position.  The author posited these questions:

“If you are pro-life, could you vote for a candidate who was pro-choice?  If you are pro-choice, could you vote for a candidate who was pro-life?”

“I guess I am also wondering, should abortion be the only factor deciding our presidential elections?”

Among the responses was this one from Big_Esh.  (Emphasis mine)

Well, he might support pro-life, and he might want that quality in his running mate, but I seriously doubt a veteran politician as he would choose his second in command based on one moral value.  The media, as I am sure everyone out there knows, tends to be liberal in how they portray everything that goes on in this nation, and of course they are going to pick McCain apart. 

Nevermind that Obama comes from what looks like a racist background and has no real clue how to “change the face of politics” (see his speech at the DNC for proof of that)…let’s attack McCain because of one value that his running mate happens to have. 

To which I responded:

Huh?  Obama comes from a racist background?  With a Kenyan father, a white mother from Kansas, and a very diverse extended family?  How do you figure that as a racist background?

To which she responded:

I am, of course, referring to that awful pastor who is so blatantly racist it makes my teeth hurt.

Say what you will, but if you sit and listen to a man spew out such hatred, and continue to show your support by your membership of his congregation, then you are in essence showing support for what is being preached.  People leave a church when they are offended enough, and this clearly didn’t bother him enough to leave.  I know he “denounced” such hate, but actions speak louder than words, and Obama continues to support that man.  Red flag…not to mention his wife said she had never been proud of America until Obama became a candidate…where the heck has she been living?

Being of a diverse background does not give someone a get out of jail free card for racism. And being black, or another minority does not give someone the right to be racist towards whites, although that seems to be more accepted these days.

I’m not sure where Sarah (the name Big_Esh gives in her profile) lives, but felt it was worth addressing some of her – what I preceived as – slips of logic: 

Thank you for responding.  Would you agree that Senator McCain’s “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”) would not be an accurate or fair way to encapsulate his foreign policy positions? 

Would you agree that even though Governor Palin doesn’t disown her daughter after it turns out she’s engaged in premarital sex, that it would be out of context to construe the Governor’s continued support of her daughter as an endorsement of her actions?

If you agree that we should try to judge candidates by considering their words in their original context rather than out of context, if you agree that it is okay for people to support those they are close to, even if they don’t agree with their words and actions, then I think you and I will agree that labeling Senator Obama a racist because of out of context comments his minister and his wife made, really isn’t a sound way to make decisions. 

Much in the same way that, even though I’m not a McCain-Palin supporter, I don’t think that Senator McCain is chomping at the bit to bomb Iran and I don’t think that Governor Palin’s support for her daughter is an endorsement of unwed motherhood and premarital sex.  Although I do have to chuckle, now that we have a good example of why “abstinence only” education isn’t so effective.

I’m wondering what her response will be or if she will have one at all.  It is frustrating that in this election, people seem to form their opinions more from pundits than facts.  I’m curious if she ever watched (or read) the sermons in context?  Surely we can agree that we need to have more substantive discussions.

Interesting quote that I came across while preparing this entry.  In the May 5, 2008 edition of the Huffington Post, Lara Cohen, news director at Us Weekly, which is regularly lambasted because of its focus on supermarket tabloid concerns, turned the criticisms back on the mainstream media and their coverage of the Reverend Wright controversy:

“The true hallmark of sensationalized journalism is ginning up controversy to drive sales, and for the mainstream news media Wright was a tailor-made tabloid icon. With newspaper sales at record lows, network news ratings tanking and 24-hour news channels desperate to fill up all 24 hours, Wright’s outbursts were the mainstream media’s equivalent of Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch—a train wreck no one could turn away from. And so they milked it, regardless of the impact on the very race they were supposedly covering objectively.”