I held my breath watching Colin Powell on Meet the Press this Sunday, despite the fact that all signs pointed to an Obama endorsement. But I didn't expect this, which was highlighted in Glenn Greenwald's excellent post on the endorsement:
I did grow up a religious minority in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood. I remember one Born Again kid named Rex who used to like to tell me and the agnostic kid in my class that we were both going to hell because we didn't believe in God.
But the thing I've never understood is why anyone gives a shit about what religion anyone else practices. It's like a lot of deaf people arguing about what Beethoven sounds like. You know, if Rex really believed that I was going to hell, why couldn't he just let my soul burn forever for the sin of disbelief? Wouldn't that be punishment enough? Why torment me in this fleeting world when you've got an ETERNITY to gloat from your harp-playing cloud perch in heaven?
I wish Democrats got as up in arms about the awesomely sexy First Amendment (religion! speech! press! assembly! all the juicy stuff!) as the Republicans do about the Second Amendment. (Which I've realized I really don't care about. Have your guns! Just don't shoot me, please.)
Sarah Palin did an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network yesterday. Here's what she told them:
*Fareed Zakaria's 9-year-old son
I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be President? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: he's a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.I cried like the crybaby I am. I can't imagine what it's like to be Muslim-American in this era, what daily bravery it must take to put on a head scarf every morning. Or what it's like to be a turban-wearing Sikh, for that matter.
I did grow up a religious minority in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood. I remember one Born Again kid named Rex who used to like to tell me and the agnostic kid in my class that we were both going to hell because we didn't believe in God.
But the thing I've never understood is why anyone gives a shit about what religion anyone else practices. It's like a lot of deaf people arguing about what Beethoven sounds like. You know, if Rex really believed that I was going to hell, why couldn't he just let my soul burn forever for the sin of disbelief? Wouldn't that be punishment enough? Why torment me in this fleeting world when you've got an ETERNITY to gloat from your harp-playing cloud perch in heaven?
I wish Democrats got as up in arms about the awesomely sexy First Amendment (religion! speech! press! assembly! all the juicy stuff!) as the Republicans do about the Second Amendment. (Which I've realized I really don't care about. Have your guns! Just don't shoot me, please.)
Sarah Palin did an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network yesterday. Here's what she told them:
''Faith in God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and choose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit,'' she said.But the dragout Jeremiah Wright bloviating was okay? And making "Arab" oppositional to "decent family man" is okay? I guess all religions are created equal, but some religions are more equal than others.
*Fareed Zakaria's 9-year-old son
