Christopher Hitchens shines in this one. He will, of course, be called "hateful" and "bigoted" because his language is -- not intemperate, but strong, and I think accurate.
As Barack Obama is gradually learning, his job is to be the president of all Americans at all times. If he likes, he can oppose the idea of marriage for Americans who are homosexual. That's a policy question on which people may and will disagree. However, the man he has chosen to deliver his inaugural invocation is a relentless clerical businessman who raises money on the proposition that certain Americans—non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, homosexuals, nonbelievers—are of less worth and littler virtue than his own lovely flock of redeemed and salvaged and paid-up donors.
This quite simply cannot stand. Is it possible that Obama did not know the ideological background of his latest pastor? The thought seems plausible when one recalls the way in which he tolerated the odious Jeremiah Wright. Or is it possible that he does know the background of racism and superstition and sectarianism but thinks (as with Wright) that it might be politically useful in attracting a certain constituency? Either of these choices is pretty awful to contemplate.
A president may by all means use his office to gain re-election, to shore up his existing base, or to attract a new one.
It seems to have become a truism that anyone elected to public office in this country uses the perquisites of that office to work for re-election. If they happen to get some business done in the meantime, all well and good, but the goal is to stay in power. It's strange to think we've finally hit the point where a president begins working for re-election before he's actually taken the oath of office.
My own feeling is that Barack Obama, like all the rest of us, has certain blind spots and has his eyes focused on his reasons for following a certain course of action -- and it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone to think about the downside.
Or he just doesn't give a shit about the downside.
We've just had eight years of that.
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