A Change long overdue...that sounds familiar...

2008-06-11T21:30:34Z

elsprinklero stumbled across this old Kennedy campaign ad and honestly, I was equally inspired after watching it as I was after watching that Obama video.

Just something fun to end your Monday.

Watch the video

New Obama Ad With Caroline Kennedy

2008-06-10T21:30:09Z

Wow, this is powerful stuff. Even more so because she has mostly stayed out of the political spotlight. And I believe it is running in a number of Super Tuesday states.

The Clintons might want to whip out that old footage of a 16-year old Bill shaking JFK's hand again...

Watch the video

Religious bigotry: Like the angel of death, it has a logic of its own

2008-01-12T20:40:56Z

Tim Rutten takes on the press' handling of religion, comparing Romney, Huckabee, and JFK:

THE American press habitually handles stories involving religion with all the dexterity of a surgeon wearing mittens.

That must be the same surgeon who Michael Jackson used. Cheap shot. Sorry.

What was missing was any discussion of the numerous and very legitimate questions that ought to be asked about religion and the candidacy of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose surging popularity in Iowa sent Romney to the podium in the first place. [...] Doesn't anybody think it's worth asking whether it's proper or even desirable for a clergyman to occupy the White House?

Religion and politics have been comingled to the point that the press, and too many voters, have accepted it as the new normal or worse, they've simply become desensitized.

[One suspicion is that] some ancient Mormon elder in Salt Lake City is going to pick up the telephone and order President Romney to do something kooky. Huckabee, by contrast, already believes kooky things for religious reasons -- in things like creationism, which he thinks should be taught in the public schools. Doesn't anybody thing it's worth asking whether a nation fighting to remain technologically competitive can afford a president who -- for religious reasons -- wants to encourage as many children as possible to join him in scientific illiteracy?

Or a president who believes that abortion = the Holocaust? Anyway...

Then there's the issue of the Iowa campaign ads in which Huckabee declares he is "the Christian candidate." [...] Romney isn't a Christian in the eyes of most evangelicals. However, neither are Catholics, Unitarians or Quakers, let alone Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Bahais or -- God help them -- the despised atheists. That's the thing about religious bigotry -- and the ad is nothing less -- once it is set loose, like the angel of death, it has a logic of its own.

Logic isn't the word I'd use, but let's move along to the ineveitable comparison of Willard Romney's address to that of JFK's:

First of all, it was nothing like Kennedy's storied speech in setting, intention or content. Kennedy was straightforward; Romney was clever.

Kennedy spoke to a hostile audience of Protestant clergymen and took their questions afterward; Romney spoke to a hand-picked crowd at a Republican presidential library and took no questions.

Kennedy defended -- indeed, insisted on -- separation of church and state; Romney simply asked that what is essentially a religious test for office be expanded to include his religion.

Those points aren't often emphasized in the corporate media, now are they? John F. Kennedy:

"But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people."

Romney:

"It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America -- the religion of secularism."

Rutten:

(It's a little hard to figure out who these scheming secularists really are: While polls show that just one in four Americans say they are less likely to vote for a Mormon, 61% say they won't vote for an atheist.)

It was, beginning to end, an appeal to a single GOP constituency, the evangelical right, which now applies a religious test for office. Unlike Kennedy, Romney doesn't have any problem with such a test -- he just wants it graded on a steep enough curve to include Mormons.

Good luck with that.

Why was he even given television time for that speech? I guess they were running out of tape loops of the Holloway suspects who were released, or "Ready, set, shop!" stories.

At least those pieces have a logic of their own.

John F. Kennedy at Brave New Films

A Change long overdue...that sounds familiar...

New Obama Ad With Caroline Kennedy

Religious bigotry: Like the angel of death, it has a logic of its own