Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Where's journalism?
Looking for journalism in the major news media outlets is pretty much like playing "Where's Waldo?".
Much has been written about leaders in conservative Catholic circles going after John Kerry for being a prochoice candidate.
A bishop from the Vatican has gone so far as to say that American Catholic diocese should be denying Kerry communion for his position.
Yet these conservative activists are strangely silent this week, as the Republican Convention highlights their prominent prochoice members in prime time. Where is the denial of communion to Rudi Giuliani, the prochoice Catholic who also denies social justice and has affairs outside of marriage? Where is the denial of communion to Arnold...the great actor from Hollywood who participates in group sex,porno films, drugs and kills babies ineutero?
As Amy Sullivan writes,
The dirty little secret about these groups is that they don't demand that Catholic politicians -- who, according to church teaching, should be held to a higher standard because of their visible status -- conform to all church positions on issues like the death penalty or war or immigration reform or combatting poverty. And they don't really care if PCRCs stray from church teaching on abortion (sounds like you need to read Evangelium Vitae a bit more carefully, guys...)
What they do care about is defeating Democrats. Some of them don't even try to gloss over that fact. Deal Hudson (the now-disgraced and resigned former head of Catholic outreach for the Bush/Cheney campaign) told the Washington Post last spring that "he believes the denial of Communion should begin, and end, with Kerry."
So they're hypocrites, you say. Thanks for the newsflash, brainiac. So what?
The so what is that, for whatever reason, journalists listen to these guys. Remember last spring, when John Kerry couldn't take a step without some reporter trying to examine his molars for evidence of unswallowed communion host? The issue of whether or not Kerry should, as a pro-choice Catholic, take communion was pressed by conservative Catholics with a partisan agenda and it was wholeheartedly accepted as a relevant story by most major news outlets.
And there you have it. The major news outlets once again come into play...failing to do the job of being journalists. Being manipulated by a group of religious fanatics...bent on the destruction of a political group because of their diverse religious/spiritual and political beliefs.
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Much has been written about leaders in conservative Catholic circles going after John Kerry for being a prochoice candidate.
A bishop from the Vatican has gone so far as to say that American Catholic diocese should be denying Kerry communion for his position.
Yet these conservative activists are strangely silent this week, as the Republican Convention highlights their prominent prochoice members in prime time. Where is the denial of communion to Rudi Giuliani, the prochoice Catholic who also denies social justice and has affairs outside of marriage? Where is the denial of communion to Arnold...the great actor from Hollywood who participates in group sex,porno films, drugs and kills babies ineutero?
As Amy Sullivan writes,
The dirty little secret about these groups is that they don't demand that Catholic politicians -- who, according to church teaching, should be held to a higher standard because of their visible status -- conform to all church positions on issues like the death penalty or war or immigration reform or combatting poverty. And they don't really care if PCRCs stray from church teaching on abortion (sounds like you need to read Evangelium Vitae a bit more carefully, guys...)
What they do care about is defeating Democrats. Some of them don't even try to gloss over that fact. Deal Hudson (the now-disgraced and resigned former head of Catholic outreach for the Bush/Cheney campaign) told the Washington Post last spring that "he believes the denial of Communion should begin, and end, with Kerry."
So they're hypocrites, you say. Thanks for the newsflash, brainiac. So what?
The so what is that, for whatever reason, journalists listen to these guys. Remember last spring, when John Kerry couldn't take a step without some reporter trying to examine his molars for evidence of unswallowed communion host? The issue of whether or not Kerry should, as a pro-choice Catholic, take communion was pressed by conservative Catholics with a partisan agenda and it was wholeheartedly accepted as a relevant story by most major news outlets.
And there you have it. The major news outlets once again come into play...failing to do the job of being journalists. Being manipulated by a group of religious fanatics...bent on the destruction of a political group because of their diverse religious/spiritual and political beliefs.
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