Pity the poor Christians in America
Okay. Let's see a show of hands. Who agrees with me that of all the clueless remarks made about the Charleston, S.C. shooting, Rick Santorum's was the most absurd. I can't see you, but I know more than a few arms are going up.
And for those who missed it, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said on Thursday that, yes, this was a “crime of hate," but instead of drawing the obvious conclusion, the one the shooter intended us to understand, Santorum tied the event to a broader “assault on our religious liberty.”
"You just can’t think that things like this can happen in America. It’s obviously a crime of hate. Again, we don’t know the rationale, but what other rationale could there be? You’re sort of lost that somebody could walk into a Bible study in a church and indiscriminately kill people,” Santorum told radio host Joe Piscopo Thursday on AM 970, a New York radio station. “It’s something that, again, you think we’re beyond that in America and it’s sad to see.”
The former Pennsylvania senator pointed to what he described as anti-religious sentiment.
“All you can do is pray for those and pray for our country,” Santorum said. “This is one of those situations where you just have to take a step back and say we — you know, you talk about the importance of prayer in this time and we’re now seeing assaults on our religious liberty we’ve never seen before. It’s a time for deeper reflection beyond this horrible situation.”
The white supremacist gunman, before shooting his black victims said, "You rape our women and are taking over our country." And yet not only is Santorum unable to glean this monster's rationale for his actions, but the only one he can come up with is that it had to be about an attack on religious liberty.
Rick Santorum will not be his party's nominee for president, which means that everything he says is intended to appeal to a base that will keep his speaking fees high once he drops out. Whatever he says, whether he believes it not, has to be filtered through that lens. But to imagine that there is a significant constituency in America that believes religious persecution of Christians, which is clearly what Santorum means, is a more significant problem than racism is to make one weep.
Or maybe the more incredible part of this story is that Joe Piscopo is still working.
posted by Richard K. Barry at
9:25 AM
2 Comments:
Yeah, I was shocked to learn Joe Piscopo has a radio show. But we all gotta work.
There is a cargo cult aspect to the conservative movement. They see the African American movement organize against oppression, so the conservatives claim that whites are the real victims of oppression. It's that whole "I'm rubber and you're glue" thing. But this one is over the top. And it's disgusting. A group of people are dead because of racism and Rick Santorum makes it about his pet issue. What a vile man.
By
Unknown, at 2:59 PM
In Christianity there is a unity and an equality of all Christian believers, regardless of race. The Church was involved in a prayer meeting slash Bible study. I don't know if there were any white people in attendance or not, but any assault that pits race against race and wants to start a war is from Satan, opposed to Christ and His Church. Santorum did well to stand with his fellow believers and decry the attack. To say that the attack was against religion in general, however, is wrong. It was against the Christian Church and against the Christian call to Christian unity. Some religions want to further the racial divide, so it was not an attack against those religions, and not an attack on the idea of religious belief in general.
By
Anonymous, at 10:15 PM
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