I see that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has chosen to get into a religious spat with Queen Idiot Sarah Palin. It’s a mistake to engage in civil debate with Palin, or any of her supporters.
In her new book, “America by Heart,” Palin objects to my uncle’s famous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which he challenged the ministers – and the country – to judge him, a Catholic presidential candidate, by his views rather than his faith. “Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.”
Palin writes that when she was growing up, she was taught that Kennedy’s speech had “succeeded in the best possible way: It reconciled public service and religion without compromising either.” Now, however, she says she has revisited the speech and changed her mind. She finds it “defensive . . . in tone and content” and is upset that Kennedy, rather than presenting a reconciliation of his private faith and his public role, had instead offered an “unequivocal divorce of the two.”
Yes, it is idiotic to complain that a Catholic was being defensive about his religion in 1960 America. The whole point of the speech was to reassure people that we weren’t going to be putting the Pope in charge of our affairs if we elected a Catholic to office. There had never been a Catholic president before and there hasn’t been one since. Joe Biden is the first Catholic vice-president. This country was founded by protestants and non-conformists who were fleeing the overreaching power of the Catholic Church and the Church of England. It took a lot of Catholic immigration in 19th and early 20th century to create an electorate that would seriously consider being led by a Catholic. But Palin doesn’t understand any of that. To her, John Kennedy was just being defensive about his faith, as though he were embarrassed by it. He was actually appealing to the highest ideals of the Founding Fathers in order to be given a chance. He said that he would resign (something Palin should be able to relate to) if his religion ever conflicted with his job as president.
I think it’s beneath the Kennedy family to respond to Palin’s nonsense. Let her say what she wants.
Except for the South and the backcountry (western Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, north Georgia, the Southern Appalachians an a lot of the Southern Peidmont). The coastal plain in the Carolinas and Virginia were settled by the gentlemen and indentured servants of a joint stock company (the Virginia Company) and feudal grants to eight Lords Proprietors (of Carolina) who decided to run their property jointly until the Crown took it over in the 1720s. Irreligion was the best description of these folks. Parishes served mostly as local units of government that recorded baptisms, weddings, and deaths. Only the Great Awakening in the late 1700s changed this, producing the wave of Baptist and Methodist churches in the South, many which still exist 230 years later. Shaking off the Anglican church was a political act not a theological one.
The backcountry was settled by Presbyterians from pre-William of Orange Northern Ireland. Although they were religious, they joined with the Methodists and especially the Baptists in demanding radical separation of church and state in the Constitution.
Folks came to this country for a variety of reasons, which is why assertions about it being a “Christian nation” are so controversial. It depends on which colonies you focus on. The irony is that the genealogical and theological descendants of those who most wanted an absolute separation of church and state are the ones who are arguing the strongest for the “Christian nation”, “city on a hill” mission of the Puritans. And those who are genealogical and religious, though not specifically theological, descendants of those Puritans and Anglicans are most in favor of an absolute separation of church and state.
Excellent comment TarheelDem. I had never thought about that reversal.
Follow up question: what percentage of total Scotch-Irish immigration occurred before 1690? Prior to your posting I would have guessed that 18th century migration was much greater than 17th century. I would love to know the facts.
Very little until the 1700s, but the backcountry wasn’t available for settlement until then. And the flood of backcountry settlers, most Scotch-Irish, but some from the Coastal Plain is one of the proximate reasons for the French and Indian War. It was when Virginia pushed into the Ohio Valley (Braddocks expedition in 1755, with George Washington as a junior officer). What had been simmering since 1747 became war when the French found the British war plans after Braddock’s defeat at Fort Duquesne.
Maryland was founded by Catholics.
From Wikipedia: “In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore in the Irish House of Lords, fresh from his failure further north with Newfoundland’s Avalon colony, applied to Charles I for a new royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. Calvert’s interest in creating a colony derived from his Catholicism and his desire for the creation of a haven for Catholics in the new world.”
But if a Muslim citizen were to run for higher office Princess Caribou would DEMAND that he make the exact same kind of speech that Kennedy made.
I also wish that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend had chosen not to engage Ms. Palin as you cannot win an argument with a dishonest idiot.
I dunno, BooMan. too many on the right would run with this revisionist history, so I can’t blame the Kennedys for striking back immediately.
Why shouldn’t the Kennedys respond to Palin? Everyone else does.
I’ll say it again: this is the longest goddamn 15 minutes I’ve ever experienced.
That’s why Palin has been such a huge defender of Muslims in American politics.
(snark off)
The heart of Palin’s constituency is the news media. The alternative to responding to her theidiocy is not the dignity of letting her bark unheard in the back yard. It is to let it go unchallenged, and therefore become established as something thoughtful instead of something radical and destructive. The news media understand as much about the Founders’ stance on religion in government as they do about arithmetic, i.e. nothing. It’s a shame, but we are going to be constantly obliged to mud wrestle on the playground with these clerical fascists. I’m glad Townsend did this.
She is setting the stage for dragging her wacko religious views front and center. Reverend Mutha,
witch hunts and all the other joys of a backwoods religious zealot. She can kiss my ass.
I agree, Booman, and would take the point further. A big part of the strategy of the Republicans is to make ridiculous allegations and attacks in order to distract the political debate away from substance. The result is that the public comes to view politics as a petty exercise that is unable to address the problems facing our nation, rather than a serious and important endeavor. This leads less people to get involved which, in turns, leaves politics to the right-wing crazies who form the base of the Republican party.
Progressives just feed into this approach every time we engage the ridiculous rantings of folks like Sarah Palin. Instead, we should be spending our time on our positive message. To the extent that we have to engage the folks like Palin, we should quickly dismiss their statements with humor or derision, and then turn the discussion back to our positive vision.
“(W)e should quickly dismiss their statements with humor or derision, and then turn the discussion back to our positive vision.” Yeah, this is pretty much what we’ve been doing since Reagan’s candidacy in 1980, thinking this or that right-wing statement is so OBVIOUSLY stupid that people will laugh it off and the news media will correct it. How’s that working out for us?
What we need is a communications strategy that is not reactionary, but instead drives conversation.
Since being outrageous gets attention, how should we be outrageous?
No, the news media will not correct it because their owners have a stake in biasing the news.
But the idea of ignoring Queen Quitter until January 2012 is a good idea.
There are other, more outrageous, really, stuff we can discuss. Take the failure to extend unemployment insurance and the Republicans holding the unemployed hostage for tax cuts for the rich. Or the narrative that people are unemployed because they are too lazy to work, and unemployment insurance encourages that. (A University of Chicago economist, Casey Mulligan, has become the the go-to Keynes denialist on that one.)
No one said only react. As to driving conversation, it all depends on who the “we” is executing your strategy.
Being outrageous only gets useful attention for right wingers. If the outrage is against other Democrats, the news media say, “Democrats divided over X.” If it is against Republicans, it gets ignored, unless it is from a mainstream Democrat, and then the media say, “Partisan wrangling,” or the Democrat ends up apologizing. If it is against a conservative or right wing policy, the media trot out some conservative Democrat to tut-tut the idea. As you note, the media are biased.
We need to buy one major network for at least a reasonable discussion of our ideas, and again, that would depend on who “we” are. Right now, we are counting on one piece of a network owned by the largest defense contractor to take our ideas seriously, and that is about to be sold off to right wingers.
We have been ignoring outrageous crap from right-wingers since Ronald Reagan said that trees cause 90% of air pollution, and it’s not working. Whether we ignore her or not, Palin’s most important base is the news media, so she will get all of the “earned” media she wants. Leaving her foolishness uncontested is a bad idea. Everything she says should be contested by someone who can get on the air.
If your “we” is Democrats, tell me what “we” stand for, and we can figure out how to message it. If your “we” is progressives, who is going to listen to “us”? All sorts of progressive groups hold press conferences with really great messages on really important topics. Few from the MSM attend, and fewer still write or air stories.
As to holding the unemployed hostage to tax cuts for the rich, that’s another “Democrats divided” story, starting with the President.
quickly dismiss their statements with humor or derision
Mainly with derision. Don’t dwell on it but someone (the DNC chair?) should get a derisive statement out when it is appropriate. Then go on to more important topics but the statement will be out there for others to point to, noting the silliness of the original statement.
Humor doesn’t work with the GOP, they think that it is praise. As evidence, see how many conservatives think that Steven Colbert is actually conservative and isn’t making fun of them!
The press now seems to be running with the ‘American anxiety’ meme. And the labor department apparently helped them out by releasing a jobs report that didn’t make it clear that 350,000 jobs were removed from their report in their ‘seasonal’ adjustment for November. Why don’t we ever hit back at the press on things like this? Maybe Hilda Solis should have been calling all of the talking heads and making the jobs numbers clear.
On another note, apparently many of the wikileaks docs show quite productive foreign policy achievements for the Obama White House. I haven’t actually read any of the wikileaks docs but this is according to Steve Clemons of the Washington Note and Bobby Kennedy Jr. on Ring of Fire today, for me it was today at least. I would like to hear more about this.
Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you – they are wrongadult advertising
English escorts