Reply #4: There certainly seems to be a double standard in effect for black politicians. [View All]

[Plaid Adder]

None of the examples you've suggested seem to me like reasonable comparisons. Romney's entire campaign was based on pandering to right-wing Christians as One Of Them; that made it inevitable that the fact that he was a Mormon would become a problem. It amazes me that no one on his staff realized that right-wing Christians want to vote for a Christian; but that's a completely different problem from the one the media has created for Obama.

Kerry was under attack for taking communion and being pro-choice. Opinion is divided on whether it is ethical or consistent with Catholic doctrine to deny politicians the sacrament on that basis, but in any case that's an instance of a politician being punished for publicly dissenting from his religion's established doctrine. If Obama was being pilloried in the media for having said that he didn't believe in the divinity of Christ but still worshipping in a Christian church, maybe that comparison would be meaningful. As it is, I think it's apples and oranges. Nothing in Christian doctrine obliges one to believe that America has been damned for its homicidal foreign policies or that AIDS is a government conspiracy.

I am not familiar with the Giuliani incident but I assume it has something to do with the fact that his well-known marital and sexual escapades would put him in the category of people who shouldn't receive communion, and yet he took it anyway. In that case, there's pretty much no relationship between his case and Obama's, for reasons given above.

When I see the media going after McCain because he hasn't publicly renounced the lunatic opinions professed by the right-wing Christian demagogues he's been quietly sucking up to for the past several years I'll reconsider your claim. I think it'll be a while, though.

The Plaid Adder