Red-Headed Sasquatches for Jesus
Governor Palin and I have something in common – and it’s not just our lady plumbing. We were both raised under the influence of a particularly cuckoo strain of Christianity. It didn’t take in my case, perhaps because my exposure was intermittent, occurring only when my mom flaked out and fled for the ashram or took an EST course or something, leaving my poor siblings and me in the care of her Southern Baptist missionary parents.
But Palin continues to drink the cuckoo Kool-aid, as evidenced by these excerpts from a speech she gave in June to a graduating group at her family’s church:
While describing her family, Palin told students about her oldest son, 19-year-old Track, who is set to be deployed to Iraq this month with the U.S. Army. She urged students to pray “that our leaders—that our national leaders—are sending [soldiers] out on a task that is from God.”
“That’s what we have to make sure that we are praying for: that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”
About God’s role in her work as governor:
“I can do my part in working really, really hard to get a natural gas pipeline, about a $30 billion project that’s going to create a lot of jobs for Alaska. … [but] I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,” she said. “I can do my job there in developing our natural resources, in doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded. But really that stuff doesn’t do any good if the people of Alaska’s hearts aren’t right with God.”
It wasn’t all serious, though. At one point during the address, Palin praised the graduating class as “a bunch of cool-looking Christians.” Then she picked out one student in the crowd and said with a smile, “Ben, I don’t know you well enough yet, but looking at you, I’m thinking, people are going to interested in Jesus Christ through you because of the way you look - this red-headed Sasquatch for Jesus. You look good!”
Apparently, this speech was posted on the church’s website (I get a 404 when I try to access it at the MSNBC site, but you can view the scary details here), but McCain’s campaign didn’t know about it. Hmmm.
In addition to Palin’s biblical bigfoot reference, her pastor seems to have outdone Jeremiah Wright:
A review of recorded sermons by Ed Kalnins, the senior pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, offers a provocative and, for some, eyebrow-raising sketch of Palin’s longtime spiritual home.
The church runs a number of ministries providing help to poor neighborhoods, care for children in need, and general community services. But Pastor Kalnins has also preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war “contending for your faith;” and said that Jesus “operated from that position of war mode.”
So, how will it play? The Palin pick seems to have galvanized the theocrats who were tepid about McCain. Will it scare away the independents McCain needs to win? In a sane world, picking a clueless, inexperienced, unvetted scandal machine would doom a ticket that was already tethered to the albatross of an historically unpopular incumbent, an economy in shambles and a wholly unnecessary, ruinous war.
So why is it even remotely close? Because it was always going to be incredibly difficult to elect a black man in this country. Let’s be honest about this – if Barack Obama were the exact same candidate except that—instead of a black man, he was a white man named Ben Overton or something—he’d have a 20 point lead in the polls right now and would be cruising to a landslide victory. There was an excellent post about the race factor at the Driftglass blog last week. If you didn’t see it, I encourage you to read the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt:
…100 years from now, the Tale of Election 2008 will be the story of several million ignorant, white, working-class voters – both Democrats and Independents (the Republicans are a lost cause who will remain an unashamedly morally bankrupt open-sewer for at least another 30 years) and which way they turned.
If the Republican brand wasn’t so thoroughly trashed right now, there’s no doubt in my mind which way they’d turn—to the guy who looks more like them. It’s not 1960. We’ve come along way. But we’re not a post-racial society, not by a long shot. This was brought home to me vividly a few months ago when I was visiting my hometown (it’s just down the road from a little place called Rosewood – perhaps you’ve heard of it), and one of my relatives spotted the Obama sticker on my car and asked if I were really going to vote for “that coon.” In the ensuing rather heated conversation, I learned that this relative used the word “coon” in deference to my tender sensibilities, since I’d asked him previously to refrain from using the “n” word in my presence.
People like him will never vote for Obama, of course, no matter how horrendously bad for their personal interests continued GOP misrule would be. And fortunately, he and his ilk are dinosaurs lumbering toward the tar pit. But my fellow Democrats, let’s not be lulled into a false sense of security, no matter how much crazy continues to spill out of the Palin volcano. Crazy is normal to a whole lot of people, as are red-headed sasquatches for Jesus.
[Cross-posted at Betty Cracker]
Posted by Betty Cracker on 09/03/08 at 09:12 AM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Election '08 • Barack Obama • St. McSame • Marge Gunderson • Manchurian Wingnuts • Nutters • Relijun •
