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The All-White Elephant in the Room
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Sunday 04 May 2008
Bored by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly
to YouTube, search for "John Hagee Roman Church Hitler," and be
recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.
What you'll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing
in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of
a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice.
The woman is "the Great Whore," Mr. Hagee explains, and she is
drinking "the blood of the Jewish people." That's because
the Great Whore represents "the Roman Church," which, in his view,
has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.
Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb.
27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives'
favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race.
Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything
then about Mr. Hagee's views? This particular YouTube video -
far from the only one - was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before
the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks,
including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75
million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher
in 30 seconds, tops.
Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has
made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it's true, did not
blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created
Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled
"homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came."
Mr. Hagee didn't make that claim in obscure circumstances, either. He
broadcast it on one of America's most widely heard radio programs, "Fresh
Air" on NPR, back in September 2006. He reaffirmed it in a radio interview
less than two weeks ago. Only after a reporter asked Mr. McCain about this Katrina
homily on April 24 did the candidate brand it as "nonsense" and
the preacher retract it.
Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee's calumnies, any
more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright's. But those who try to give
Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case.
It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr.
Hagee's church.
That defense implies, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain was a passive recipient
of this bigot's endorsement. In fact, by his own account, Mr. McCain
sought out Mr. Hagee, who is perhaps best known for trying to drum up a pre-emptive
"holy war" with Iran. (This preacher's rantings may tell
us more about Mr. McCain's policy views than Mr. Wright's tell
us about Mr. Obama's.) Even after Mr. Hagee's Catholic bashing
bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce
him, as Mr. Obama did an unsolicited endorser, Louis Farrakhan, at the urging
of Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos
two Sundays ago that while he condemns any "anti-anything" remarks
by Mr. Hagee, he is still "glad to have his endorsement."
I wonder if Mr. McCain would have given the same answer had Mr. Stephanopoulos
confronted him with the graphic video of the pastor in full "Great Whore"
glory. But Mr. McCain didn't have to fear so rude a transgression. Mr.
Hagee's videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr.
Wright's. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn't
have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.
Perhaps that's why virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant
prototype for Mr. Wright's fiery claim that 9/11 was America's
chickens "coming home to roost." That would be the Sept. 13, 2001,
televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks
on America's abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr.
Wright blamed the attacks on America's foreign policy.) Had that video
re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked
to explain why he no longer calls these preachers "agents of intolerance"
and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in
2006.
None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right.
It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama's long relationship
with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh
Mr. Obama's judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as
it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous
to pretend that there isn't a double standard operating here. If we're
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.
When Rudy Giuliani, still a viable candidate, successfully courted Pat Robertson
for an endorsement last year, few replayed Mr. Robertson's greatest past
insanities. Among them is his best-selling 1991 tome, "The New World
Order," which peddled some of the same old dark conspiracy theories about
"European bankers" (who just happened to be named Warburg, Schiff
and Rothschild) that Mr. Farrakhan has trafficked in. Nor was Mr. Giuliani ever
seriously pressed to explain why his cronies on the payroll at Giuliani Partners
included a priest barred from the ministry by his Long Island diocese in 2002
following allegations of sexual abuse. Much as Mr. Wright officiated at the
Obamas' wedding, so this priest officiated at (one of) Mr. Giuliani's.
Did you even hear about it?
There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play
in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also
a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama
are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but
the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st
century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American
among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there
are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during
the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power
than blacks.
A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite
an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right
passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost
never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their
own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply
accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing
to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused
of "political correctness" or "reverse racism."
An all-white Congressional delegation doesn't happen by accident. It's
the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern
strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own
adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party's
South Carolina primary of 2000.
This year Mr. McCain has called for a respectful (i.e., non-race-baiting) campaign
and has gone so far as to criticize (ineffectually) North Carolina's
Republican Party for running a Wright-demonizing ad in that state's current
primary. Mr. McCain has been posing (awkwardly) with black people in his tour
of "forgotten" America. Speaking of Katrina in New Orleans, he
promised that "never again" would a federal recovery effort be
botched on so grand a scale.
This is all surely sincere, and a big improvement over Mitt Romney's
dreams of his father marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Up to
a point. Here, too, there's a double standard. Mr. McCain is graded on
a curve because the G.O.P. bar is set so low. But at a time when the latest
Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll shows that President Bush is an even greater
drag on his popularity than Mr. Wright is on Mr. Obama's, Mr. McCain's
New Orleans visit is more about the self-interested politics of distancing himself
from Mr. Bush than the recalibration of policy.
Mr. McCain took his party's stingier line on Katrina aid and twice opposed
an independent commission to investigate the failed government response. Asked
on his tour what should happen to the Ninth Ward now, he called for "a
conversation" about whether anyone should "rebuild it, tear it
down, you know, whatever it is." Whatever, whenever, never mind.
For all this primary season's obsession with the single (and declining)
demographic of white working-class men in Rust Belt states, America is changing
rapidly across all racial, generational and ethnic lines. The Census Bureau
announced last week that half the country's population growth since 2000
is due to Hispanics, another group understandably alienated from the G.O.P.
Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority
nation in three to four decades. Yet if there's any coherent message
to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah, it's
that this nation's perennially promised candid conversation on race has
yet to begin.
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