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You are here: Home / Politics / Religion / Sorry, So Sorry

Sorry, So Sorry

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Halfwit evangelist Franklin Graham is backpeddling after his idiotic remarks the other day:

Graham, president of the relief organization Samaritan’s Purse and the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, said he now accepts Obama’s declarations that he is a Christian.

“I regret any comments I have ever made which may have cast any doubt on the personal faith of our president, Mr. Obama,” he said in a statement.

“I apologize to him and to any I have offended for not better articulating my reason for not supporting him in this election — for his faith has nothing to do with my consideration of him as a candidate.”

Graham said he objects to Obama’s policy stances on abortion and same-sex marriage, which Graham considers to be in “direct conflict” with Scripture.

More than a dozen members of a religious subgroup of the NAACP had accused Graham of “bearing false witness” and fomenting racial discord.

“We can disagree about what it means to be a Christian engaged in politics, but Christians should not bear false witness,” the NAACP statement said. “We are also concerned that Rev. Graham’s comments can be used to encourage racism.”

Bearing false witness must be Christian speak for “being an asshole.” At any rate, he isn’t sorry at all, and achieved everything he intended to accomplish. He got to re-sow the seed that Obama is “the other” among the wingnut base, and now he gets to be the martyr who spoke the truth but was beat down. This will only increase the belief among the base that Obama isn’t Christian, and again feed their persecution complex that actual Christians can’t speak without retribution.

He knew what he was doing, even though he is a lot dumber than his father (who was also a jerk).

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  1. 1.

    fasteddie9318

    Wait, “bearing false witness” is still a bad thing? And yet that somehow hasn’t stopped Santorum?

  4. 4.

    gaz

    Graham, president of the relief organization Samaritan’s Purse and the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, said he now accepts Obama’s declarations that he is a Christian.

    At first glance, I read “Santorum’s Purse”

    Thanks for the lulz, however unintentional.

  5. 5.

    Comrade Mary

    JOHN! JOHN! YOUR WEB GODDESSES FIXED THE BLOCK QUOTE PARAGRAPH PROBLEM!

    First para

    Second para after a blank line with no underline

  6. 6.

    Hal

    Obama the mooslim, Hillary killed Vince Foster, Bill is a serial rapist who shot down Ron Brown’s plane.

    Bearing false witness is the GOP motto.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    He doesn’t claim to be “Samaritan’s Brain.”

    What. a. dumbass.

    Couldn’t one of the Graham daughters taken up the family banner? Why this jackal?

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    Great. Franklin Graham topic, and an online ad for Liberty University.

    And Angelina’s disappeared!

  9. 9.

    jl

    I think the Ten Commandments, in the original language, are written in very simple form: ‘No lies’, ‘No theft’, ‘No murder’, etc.

    These preacher men should stick with that kind of language when they apologize for committing a sin. IMHO.

  10. 10.

    General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)

    this is a religious country, up to a point. And there is a limit to morons like Graham trying to use preacher politics on the voters, to not turn off all the folks that believe in baby jeevus, but want the little rascal and his right wing toadies to stay out of politics, at least in an obvious way. This is why a lot of repubs are wincing at Rick’s brazen bible thumping. Law of diminishing returns, that sort of thing.

  11. 11.

    joeyess

    I, like my fellow readers over at Pharyngula, really like this whole John-Cole-Says-Fuck-Religion thing. Keep pounding on these pious assholes, Cole. It helps drive the debate in the right direction. No matter how big or small the forum, it’s the volume that counts.

    Just ask the Medicare-Scooter-Patriot crowd. Look at what that small number of jerks were able to accomplish. Imagine if we could get that organized.

    Oh,look! We are!

  12. 12.

    brettvk

    I am heartily sick of the habit we’ve developed of promoting the children of celebrities in multiple fields to some sort of prominence because of their last names. This dynasty crap has to stop.

  13. 13.

    Anoniminous

    Intellectual dishonesty is where the Christo-Wingers live. Anything they disapprove of, e.g., Global Warming, MUST be proved 100% without anyone saying nay. Anything they approve of, e.g., Obama is not a Christian, is automatically True and refutation or push-back is oppression.

    Assholes. The lot of ’em.

  14. 14.

    jl

    @Elizabelle: Angelina Jolie? Has she disappeared in real life, or just from a BJ ad?

    How about Brad?

    If they’ve really disappeared, maybe it is the Rapture. That would be an interesting Rapture, if it just took BranJolina.

    I guess fundamentalist preacher men being the topic brought that scenario to mind.

    A person could almost like a Rapture that took only decadent Hollywood celebs and, maybe also assorted impoverished riff raff and outcasts.

  15. 15.

    Soonergrunt

    @Elizabelle: Because the daughters are supposed to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, with their husbands as their masters, that’s why.

  16. 16.

    Suffern ACE

    Somebody must’ve pointed out that Obama’s UCC church, as far as protestant churches in America go, is much older than his johnny come lately sect.

  18. 18.

    joeyess

    @Elizabelle:

    Couldn’t one of the Graham daughters taken up the family banner? Why this jackal?

    Don’t you know that it is an article of faith in the Xtian world — all monotheistic religion, really — that men do the talking? Very paternalistic, they are.

  20. 20.

    Chris

    Bearing false witness must be Christian speak for “being an asshole.”

    A lying asshole, to be specific, yes.

    This will only increase the belief among the base that Obama isn’t Christian, and again feed their persecution complex that actual Christians can’t speak without retribution.

    My GOD! Christians can’t randomly make up bullshit without being called on it! (Well, not always). WHERE DOES IT END!!!!

  21. 21.

    cathyx

    I’m hoping and feel pretty confident that the wingnut base isn’t actually all that big, so that in a larger election for president or senator say, their candidate won’t win.

  22. 22.

    ThresherK

    Isn’t this the kind of half-assed meaningless takeback that only happens just before we determine if he weighs the same as a duck?

  23. 23.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    he objects to Obama’s policy stances on abortion and same-sex marriage, which Graham considers to be in “direct conflict” with Scripture.

    What does Scripture have to say about these things?

  24. 24.

    JPL

    If I were to guess which one practices his Christianity in daily life, it wouldn’t be Franklin. Asshole is to kind a word.

  25. 25.

    Percysowner

    Bearing false witness actually means lying through your teeth, so yeah Reverend Grahame did a bad thing.

  27. 27.

    opie_jeanne

    @Elizabelle: There is another brother who I think is a much better person, wants to honor his father’s wishes about a number of things including where he is buried when he dies. This one should not inherit the family business, so to speak.

  29. 29.

    Frank

    Graham said he objects to Obama’s policy stances on abortion and same-sex marriage, which Graham considers to be in “direct conflict” with Scripture.

    First of all, Obama is against same-sex marriage. So what the heck is Graham talking about? Is he lying or does he simply not know better?

    Second, who the heck cares if any of Obama’s stances are against the Scripture? We have separation of church and State in this country.

  31. 31.

    Comrade Mary

    @Comrade Mary: HEY! It was fixed — I noticed it in the Snowe thread, and again when I loaded this thread a few times — but now it’s broken again.

    Will go away and sulk now.

  34. 34.

    Brachiator

    @Elizabelle:

    Couldn’t one of the Graham daughters taken up the family banner?

    Be careful of what you wish for.

    Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of famed evangelical leader the Rev. Billy Graham, believes that the 9/11 attacks on America were a wake-up call from God.
    __
    She believes that the event, though tragic, served as a call to all Christian believers to start a revival in the church. It was this horrific event, Lotz explains, that further sparked and reinvigorated her interest in spreading the gospel. According to Beliefnet, as she watched the towers fall on television a decade ago, God set her “heart on fire”

    I don’t think this is an improvement on the other Grahams.

  35. 35.

    TuiMel

    I could not care less about Franklin Graham, what he thinks or does not think, or his rationale for what he thinks, does, or says. He is not relevant to me, and I am hard pressed to understand why any non-sectarian news outlet would consider him relevent.

  36. 36.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @opie_jeanne:

    There is another brother who I think is a much better person, wants to honor his father’s wishes about a number of things including where he is buried when he dies.

    The horse has bolted on that one: when Ruth Graham was on her deathbed, Franklin very obviously leaned on her to agree to be buried in the Charlotte themepark (talking animatronic cows, piped music at the gravesite) instead of the place she’d picked out near her home. Billy will be buried by her side.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @Anoniminous:

    Yeah, I forget about the sexism. But was hoping one of the girls had felt genuinely “called” to preach.

    I remember some reporting from 2007, when Ruth Graham was dying. She wanted to be buried near Montreat, a small community she loved.

    Franklin, of course, wanted her buried at the Graham family theme park aka the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte.

    And that is where she, and eventually Billy, will rest.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    Aha. The Ruth Graham burial story is even in Wikipedia.

    Also located on the Library grounds is the Prayer Garden, where Ruth Graham was buried on June 17, 2007. She was against being buried there, and preferred her home in the mountains to be her final resting place until just before she died.[citation needed]

    Shall have to help them find the citation.

  40. 40.

    Soonergrunt

    I’m certain that it’s already been noted here, that Davey Jones of the 1960’s boy band (created back when even boy bands had musical, writing, and signing talent) has died.
    I’m a bereaver.

  43. 43.

    Argive

    Reminds me of when I was canvassing for Obama before the 2008 primary and got the following response from an elderly lady:

    “Well, I don’t want to vote for him because I’m a Holocaust survivor and he’s a Muslim.”

    Gahhhhhh. Still gets a rise out of me every time I think about it.

  46. 46.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Litlebritdifrnt: I have your verses on abortion for you. Numbers 5:11-29. No, it’s not an injunction against abortion – it’s God telling priests to feed bitter water to women accused of cheating on their husbands, which will cause them to miscarry if they are guilty. In other words, forced abortions.

    Fuck Franklin Graham and his ilk with a rusty pitchfork™. He can miss me with that shit.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    Now to find the Washington Post citation. That’s my memory, too.

    Months ago the Graham children had argued over where their parents would be buried, but the evangelist and his wife insisted they would make the decision themselves, and they kept it private until it was clear Ruth was close to death. The Washington Post reported last year the couple’s youngest son Ned, citing the wishes of his mother, opposed burying his parents at the library. Ruth Graham wanted to be buried at The Cove [family home in Montreat], he said.

    http://www.wsoctv.com/news/news/ruth-graham-dies-at-montreat-home/nGtPL/

    Theme park, with dairy bar, over all.

  48. 48.

    Pippa

    I signed up for his website and left him a message on the contact us screen saying his father must be so disappointed in him. I think that is what made him rethink his comments.

  49. 49.

    Anoniminous

    @scav:

    I think “uncouth boors for whom American Idol was the height of Art and Culture” sums it up.

    Hope like hell they do get “Raptured.” Not only will we get all their tawdry stuff the average global IQ will increase 5 to 10 points.

  51. 51.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    Graham said he objects to Obama’s policy stances on abortion and same-sex marriage

    along with Obama’s war on gun owners! There has been no change in federal policiy concerning any of those topics. These guys have to make sh*t up to satisfy their own boogey men.

  52. 52.

    Skippy the Wondermule

    He is a tool and a jerk but I disagree John, he didn’t know what he was doing.

    9 times out of 10, what we interpret as malice is simple stupidity. He is not smart enough for the underhanded play you attribute to him, he really isn’t.

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    Here’s the Washington Post story, by Laura Sessions Stepp, and it’s fascinating.

    A Family at Cross-Purposes

    It is a struggle worthy of the Old Testament, pitting brother against brother, son against mother, and leaving the famous father, the Rev. Billy Graham, trapped in the middle, pondering what to do.
    __
    … at this moment everyone’s attention is on the visitor, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, who is talking about a memorial “library” that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, headed by Franklin, is building in Charlotte. Cornwell toured the building site and saw the proposed burial plot. She was asked by Ned, who opposes Franklin’s choice, to come and give his father her impression.
    __
    “I was horrified by what I saw,” she tells Billy, in the presence of a reporter invited to be there.
    __
    The building, designed in part by consultants who used to work for the Walt Disney Co., is not a library, she says, but a large barn and silo — a reminder of Billy Graham’s early childhood on a dairy farm near Charlotte. Once it’s completed in the spring, visitors will pass through a 40-foot-high glass entry cut in the shape of a cross and be greeted by a mechanical talking cow. They will follow a path of straw through rooms full of multimedia exhibits. At the end of the tour, they will be pointed toward a stone walk, also in the shape of a cross, that leads to a garden where the bodies of Billy and Ruth Graham could lie.
    __
    Throughout the tour, there will be several opportunities for people to put their names on a mailing list.
    __
    “The whole purpose of this evangelistic experience is fundraising,” Cornwell says to Billy Graham. “I know who you are and you are not that place. It’s a mockery. People are going to laugh. Please don’t be buried there.”
    __
    Billy Graham’s eyes never leave Cornwell’s face as she talks. Ruth Graham sighs. A lot.
    __
    “It’s a circus,” Ruth says at one point, softly. “A tourist attraction.”

  54. 54.

    JGabriel

    Breaking:

    Bob Kerrey changes mind again, will seek Dem nomination for NE Senate seat after all. (No link yet, but TPM is headlining it.)

    .

  55. 55.

    joeyess

    @TuiMel:

    I could not care less about Franklin Graham, what he thinks or does not think, or his rationale for what he thinks, does, or says. He is not relevant to me, and I am hard pressed to understand why any non-sectarian news outlet would consider him relevent.

    Precisely because he’s irrelevant. The great American Media is determined to stoke up the partisan bickering. Especially in a presidential election year. Good, tasty, and plentiful ad money! Democracy in action!!

  56. 56.

    EEH

    @artem1s:

    no really, its not a joke

    It is. I think you need to read the disclaimer page although there are quite a few clues all over the place that it’s satire.

  57. 57.

    Liz

    Part of me really wants this crazy right wing shit to continue through the year, just to make Obama and the democrats seem more normal. I just feel like if they keep everyone distracted with teh CRAZY, it will better Obama’s chance of re-election. Kind of like when Aragorn and the men of the West drew Sauron’s eye away from Mordor and Mount Doom so that Frodo could destroy the ring.

    Kind of.

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Why does this nitwit get any media time at all? For being the idiot son of a mostly forgotten evangelist? or being the idiot son of a right wing relic from the seventies? What say Julie Nixon and Bebe Rebozo Jr? Where is a young Hruska to speak for the mediocre? Or are we just saying Luke Russert covers that base?

  60. 60.

    eemom

    @Skippy the Wondermule:

    He is a tool and a jerk but I disagree John, he didn’t know what he was doing.
    9 times out of 10, what we interpret as malice is simple stupidity.

    Forgive him Father, for he knoweth not his ass from a hole in the ground.

  62. 62.

    reflectionephemeral

    he is a lot dumber than his father (who was also a jerk).

    Let’s not forget Grandpa, Christianity Today editor L. Nelson Bell:

    “Pseudo tolerance is not tolerance at all but simply ignorance.” If Jack Kennedy were to become President, he said, then Montana’s Mike Mansfield would become Senate majority leader and Massachusetts’ John W. Mc-Cormack would continue as House Democratic floor leader. “Both are fine men, but both belong to a church with headquarters in Rome.” And to Bell, Rome was little better than Moscow: “The antagonism of the Roman church to Communism is in part because of similar methods.”

  65. 65.

    piratedan

    @The Dangerman: perhaps… Pleasant Valley Mournday would be befitting as well… They say that you always remember your first, these guys were the first ones that I ever spent hard earned birthday cash on for vinyl…

  67. 67.

    Anoniminous

    @Elizabelle:

    I don’t think “being called” is an option for women in that milieu anymore. Which is different from their start since from the 1920s through 1940s Amie McPherson not only ‘ran the grift’ she thought-up and developed most of it.

  68. 68.

    timb

    Better yet, since the President, to his eternal shame, OPPOSES same sex marriage, can Franky please explain how he and the president differ?

    Hey, Frank, it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter heaven. Does Frank know Jesus told the rich man to sell everything in order to follow him?

    Who’s in violation of Scripture now, asshole

  69. 69.

    Comrade Dread

    @asiangrrlMN: The verses you cited don’t discuss a pregnancy being involved.

    It’s simply a test the Israelites were to give a woman whose spouse accused her of infidelity, and failing the test meant the woman would be barren for life which was considered a horrific punishment at the time.

    The injunction against abortion would be the verses against murder, which would be dependent upon accepting the premise that an unborn child is a complete human being with the attendant rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that would entail.

  71. 71.

    joeyess

    @chopper: I realized that was a dumb question the moment I hit ‘enter’ and fully expected to take heat for it. Just not this late in the thread. You hold grudges, don’t you? ;^)

  72. 72.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Elizabelle:

    Once it’s completed in the spring, visitors will pass through a 40-foot-high glass entry cut in the shape of a cross and be greeted by a mechanical talking cow. […]
    “It’s a circus,” Ruth says at one point, softly. “A tourist attraction.”

    So this is Franklin’s and his sister’s vision for their parents’ earthly remains? There are so many times when you read about right-wingers and you think, if Carl Hiassen put this in a novel, you’d say he went too far.

  73. 73.

    makewi

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Even if you could make the stretch that this is an abortion procedure – you would then be saying that the abortion is fine if it is requested by the husband and performed by the temple priest. Why do you hate women’s rights?

  75. 75.

    Southern Beale

    More than a dozen members of a religious subgroup of the NAACP had accused Graham of “bearing false witness” and fomenting racial discord.

    Yes more of this please. We need more religious people called to task for bearing false witness — i.e., lying about people. It’s the fucking 9th Commandment, after all. If fundies are going to go on and on about how much they love the 10 Commandments shouldn’t we at least remind them when they break them? Especially that oh-so-inconvenient 9th one?

  76. 76.

    Violet

    @Soonergrunt:

    I’m a bereaver.

    Perfection. I loved the Monkees. Such a fun show. Does anyone else remember when MTV ran something like three straight days of Monkees shows? I stayed up with some friends and we watched show after show until finally we collapsed. They had some “audition footage” for the eventual members. I don’t know if it was real or not, but it was fun.

    RIP, Davy.

  77. 77.

    redshirt

    I watched the Monkees routinely as a child but besides the musical numbers, I can’t remember the basic format of the show. I’d rather have one of you tell me than look it up – did they have plots? Were they solving mysteries?

  79. 79.

    Chris

    @reflectionephemeral:

    That link in the original post made me sad. I don’t know much about Billy Graham, but I did remember him being one of the people who rooted for civil rights. I guess racial tolerance didn’t bleed over into religious tolerance.

    @rlrr:

    Fundie Christians think it’s OK to lie sin since they all think they have a “Get out of Hell Free” card.

    FTFY.

  80. 80.

    jonas

    @asiangrrlMN: Psalm 139 is also a major scriptural touchstone for pro-lifers, where the psalmist talks about God “creating [his] inmost being” and “knitting [him] together” in the womb. They interpret this as proof that life begins at conception and is the work of God’s hand, etc., taking what is clearly meant to be a poetic image literally.

  81. 81.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Comrade Dread: She would miscarry if she got pregnant – it says so in the verses. If one argues that abortion is taking a life, one would have to agree that so is miscarriage – which many women go through. So, we have God saying that the punishment for a woman who cheats is to suffer a miscarriage – which, again, is the loss of life.

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    I ask because I know we have a fair number of African-American commenters here: are AA Christians as obsessed with their “testimony” as white evangelicals are? I have a feeling that part of Graham’s specific assholery here is that he was expecting Obama to respond to him in the same way a white evangelical does, by falling all over himself to give his “testimony,” but I’m pretty sure people in AA churches don’t do that. Am I incorrect?

  86. 86.

    JPL

    @jl: It must be a hoax because everyone knows that good Christians are concerned with feeding the poor, not just baptizing them.

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne

    If anyone’s interested, apparently Obama did specifically do an interview on how he became born again back in 2004 when he was still a state senator. It’s pretty interesting, because he specifically links it with the long history of black churches fighting for civil rights:

    And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened because I’d be spending an enormous amount of time with church ladies, sort of surrogate mothers and fathers and everybody I was working with was 50 or 55 or 60, and here I was a 23-year-old kid running around.
    __
    I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and it’s importance in the community.
    __
    And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.

    But Obama’s connection specifically to the history of black churches couldn’t possibly be why Graham doesn’t think Obama is a “real” Christian, now could it?

  88. 88.

    jonas

    @asiangrrlMN: Which goes to the point that throughout history, opposition to abortion has been almost entirely animated by the fear that women use it primarily as a way to conceal pregnancies arising from infidelity or general sluttiness. In the passage from Numbers, the ritual and resulting abortion are used to detect adultery and punish the woman accordingly — she not only loses the child she was carrying, but, the text implies, is condemned to be barren henceforward.

  89. 89.

    Comrade Dread

    @asiangrrlMN: The English translations that use that verbiage aren’t as accurate as some others. The New American Standard is considered the best literal translation and reads the curse as “her abdomen will swell and her thigh will waste away.”

    Without diving into a bunch of other texts that I’ve long since boxed up and stuck in the garage since dropping out of seminary, I couldn’t really tell you what the latter part of that means, if it’s a curse of being barren (as in her womb wastes away) or if it’s more of a literal she’s going to have skinny thighs and have issues walking.

    /seminary geek

  90. 90.

    Violet

    @asiangrrlMN:

    If one argues that abortion is taking a life, one would have to agree that so is miscarriage – which many women go through.

    And this is where it’s utterly ridiculous. Many women have miscarriages that happen so early they don’t even know they were pregnant to begin with. Maybe their period is a few days late. Maybe they notice that when it does arrive it’s a bit heavier than normal, or maybe not. Many times that’s an early miscarriage. The woman doesn’t even know.

    This also happens with “vanishing twins”, where the woman is pregnant with twins, one doesn’t make it, and the tissue is reabsorbed and by the time the woman knows she’s pregnant, she’s told it’s a single pregnancy and never has any idea she was originally pregnant with twins. Recent medical research has shown that this sort of thing happens way more often than we ever suspected.

    When we think of miscarriages we generally think of later pregnancy loss, where at least the woman knew she was pregnant. T can be horribly difficult and hard on a woman. But they are not at all the most common form of miscarriage.

    If the Republicans were to pass one of these personhood laws, it would be like Romania under Ceauşescu. Women would have to be inspected monthly lest they accidentally miscarry when they didn’t even know they were pregnant.

  91. 91.

    Svensker

    @joeyess:

    Don’t you know that it is an article of faith in the Xtian world—all monotheistic religion, really—that men do the talking? Very paternalistic, they are.

    Well, not entirely. The Quakers have always had women as ministers. And, of course, many current Protestant Christian denominations do now, as well.

    Your brush, she is a bit too broad, Cholmondeley.

  92. 92.

    Martin

    @Skippy the Wondermule:

    9 times out of 10, what we interpret as malice is simple stupidity. He is not smart enough for the underhanded play you attribute to him, he really isn’t.

    Then he shouldn’t fucking be on TV as an authority on anything if he’s too stupid to actually be an authority on anything.

  94. 94.

    Al

    I remember as a youngin’ looking through a Life magazine with a interview of Billy with pictures of his very expensive house and thinking that that man was a false prophet. No way a man with those kind of possessions could believe anything in the Good Book. Course now that I’m an atheist I realize that he understood it better than any real believer.

  96. 96.

    Marcellus Shale, Public Dick

    its not false witness if you actually believe it. you put your faith in god telling you which sources are good and which ones are bad. therefore, god only lets you believe the things he wants you to believe are true, so believing them is living in god’s image.

    because god had a motherfucker of a lawyer.

  97. 97.

    Chris

    @Skippy the Wondermule:

    He is a tool and a jerk but I disagree John, he didn’t know what he was doing.
    …
    9 times out of 10, what we interpret as malice is simple stupidity. He is not smart enough for the underhanded play you attribute to him, he really isn’t.

    It’s plausible because, among other things, they aren’t used to being challenged – at all. Romney’s one of the most egregious examples, but the entire party lives in a hermetically sealed alternative universe in which you can speak nothing but bullshit and never have to worry about anyone questioning or arguing the point. (God knows the media doesn’t do a hell of a lot in that department).

    And they get so used to it that eventually they’ll say some of that bullshit in front of a larger audience because they just plain forgot that not everyone out there has their Sacred Knowledge and they just sound like plain dingbats to those who don’t. Which seems to be what Franklin did here.

  101. 101.

    kindness

    Speaking of Juan Cole….Anyone here read Informed Comment? Today he posts:

    Wikileaks is publishing internal memos of the Stratfor security analysis firm. A few tidbits have emerged in these very early days, to wit:
    1. Up to 12 Pakistani active-duty and retired officers from the Inter-Services Intelligence agency knew that Usama Bin Laden was in Abbottabad and were in regular contact with him. The Pakistani chief of staff is denying the report.

    Can’t wait to hear what the reichtwingnutz make of this one.

  102. 102.

    Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity

    So, Ma and Pa Graham get to be buried in a third-rate Disneyland?

    How all too appropriate for a cheap showman and charlatan who never did a damn thing for anyone but himself his entire life.

  104. 104.

    Soonergrunt

    @kindness: Considering that Stratfarce is the right-winger go-to false “intelligence” shop, you should expect some caterwauling. The fact that they are only ahead of the news by about a couple of days (in the rare instances where they are actually correct) should tell you something.
    As far as ISI being in bed with UBL–the CIA was saying that back in 2002 if memory serves.

  105. 105.

    jl

    @Violet: Thanks. Those hard biological facts are why any ‘life begins at conception law’ will turn the country into a totalitarian reproductive police state, deprive women of civil rights, and result by necessity in unfair selective application of the law. In short a nightmare for everyone, but especially women of child bearing age.

    That is why, even the very backward and patriarchal people who came before us (even Christians) decided that there was no person until ‘quickening’, and the debated when ‘ensoulment’ occurred. They had no choice, since medical technology of the times did not permit snooping into a person’s innards. Now they can snoop, and it has given fundamentalist crazies an excuse to play God, which they like to do at every opportunity, even though that is one form of blasphemy, which is another deadly sin.

    Edit: and in places with very high infant mortality, why, real socially recognized life did not begin until the kid had survived a few days, and was therefore likely enough to be a relatively permanent person to deserve a name.

  106. 106.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    @rlrr: Why should it matter what Scripture says?

    To me, it doesn’t. To governing, it doesn’t. But it does deflate Graham’s point quite a bit if Obama’s policies are supposedly contrary to Scripture on points Scripture doesn’t talk about.

  109. 109.

    Kevin

    Sorry, John.

    Their, there, or they’re.

    Loose or lose.

    Effect or affect.

    Backpeddling or backpedaling?

    You be the judge.

  110. 110.

    Elizabelle

    @Raven:

    Steven Stills?

    Learned that Neil Young recorded early on with Rick James (later “Super Freak”).

    1960s salad days.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @jonas:

    Which goes to the point that throughout history, opposition to abortion has been almost entirely animated by the fear that women use it primarily as a way to conceal pregnancies arising from infidelity or general sluttiness.

    I don’t think this is true. For most of history, there were no safe means of inducing abortion. Or people didn’t understand anatomy enough to attempt one. Women got pregnant and had the child, abandoned it, or killed it.

  112. 112.

    Amir Khalid

    @Raven:
    I’ve heard that Charles Manson, a failed musician and songwriter before he started his Family, also auditioned to be in the Monkees. Manson didn’t make it either. (However, he did eventually get one of his songs recorded by Guns’N’Roses.)

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    For most of history, there were no safe means of inducing abortion. Or people didn’t understand anatomy enough to attempt one.

    Sorry, no, chemical abortions have been around for centuries, if not millennia — women who drank pennyroyal tea knew what they were doing. And surgical abortions have been around pretty much as long as civilization, with some techniques dating back to 2700 BCE.

    Abortion has been around for as long as women have been bearing children, and men have been trying to control it for just as long.

  117. 117.

    Raven

    @Mnemosyne: See what that acid did? But it’s funny, they seem to be much more popular with people a decade younger than me. Their music seemed so silly at the time.

  119. 119.

    Schlemizel

    @redshirt:
    They always had some loose excuse to be running around. Chased by spies because of mistaken identity, taking jobs as catering waiters to pay the rent. But it was all just a set up to get to songs written by some of the biggest hit writers on the decade.

  122. 122.

    Triassic Sands

    …he is a lot dumber than his father (who was also a jerk bigot).

    The bigot doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  124. 124.

    Schlemizel

    @jonas:
    But oddly enough the old church, up until at least row v wade (maybe even after) said life did not begin until the “quickening” which is something like 8-10 weeks in.

    If the rules are eternal why did this one change?

    Also anyone who thinks God is against murdering unborn children has never read the OT. He does it several times en mass and individually when it suits His momentary desire.

  127. 127.

    Schlemizel

    @Raven:
    I can believe that. Their harmonies would be killer to try to produce on stage, live. I think you can do it in a studio with good headphones & retakes or you have to count on the audience being more stoned than the performers.

    Add in age which is not kind to voices & it probably is something to be skipped. Can’t imagine those were cheap tickets either

  129. 129.

    Schlemizel

    BTW – did everyone know that The Monkees had Jimi Hendrix open for them once?

    The crowd HATED him so they let him go. It was the Monkees idea & Don Kirshner was livid about it but pretty much has washed his hands of them when they stopped kissing his platinum ass.

  130. 130.

    Schlemizel

    @piratedan:
    yeah, the early stuff is fun & all but the late stuff is actual talent.

    It was Kirshner that made them but they died when Columbia stopped supporting them because they wanted to be actual musicians. Its too bad, I think they could have been OK.

  131. 131.

    gex

    @McWaffle: PZ’s crowd is probably very well represented here. Both good places to destroy libertarian arguments as well as religious ones.

  133. 133.

    Villago Delenda Est

    “The whole purpose of this evangelistic experience is fundraising,” Cornwell says to Billy Graham. “I know who you are and you are not that place. It’s a mockery. People are going to laugh. Please don’t be buried there.”

    Mammon is their God. Pure and simple. Jehovah cannot compete with Mammon. Jesus cannot compete with Mammon.

    Mammon is their fucking God. Plain and simple.

  134. 134.

    wrb

    @Schlemizel:

    Opened seven dates. The girls screaming for Davey drowned him out.

    The publicity (aided by a false press release that said that he’d been dropped due to pressure from the DAR) broke open the American market for him.

    He would sing “Foxy” and they would scream “Davey” – “Foxy”– “Davey…” Oh, man, it was a seriously twisted moment.

  136. 136.

    gex

    @Svensker: Perhaps. But counting the number of sects that are progressive on women’s issues verses the number of people belonging to those sects verses the standard anti-woman sects, and there’s an overwhelming majority of Christians in the anti-woman sects.

  138. 138.

    Svensker

    @gex:

    and there’s an overwhelming majority of Christians in the anti-woman sects.

    Probably. But the Quakers, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterians and the Reformed Church in America all allow women to be ministers and rise through the ranks. Not sure about the Methodists, but I think they do, too. Quakers are small, as are the RCA, but the other guys are pretty good sized outfits.

  139. 139.

    PurpleGirl

    @Svensker: Add in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Formed in 1988 by the merger of three (liberal) Lutheran synods, it has had woman ministers from the beginning. Indeed two of the founding groups (LCA and ALC) have had women ministers since the late 1970s, I believe.

  141. 141.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    Sorry, no, chemical abortions have been around for centuries, if not millennia—women who drank pennyroyal tea knew what they were doing. And surgical abortions have been around pretty much as long as civilization, with some techniques dating back to 2700 BCE.

    Points noted. However, simply abandoning children and infanticide have also been around as long. There is clear evidence of this, from Sparta to Rome in the West, and civilizations around the world.

    Abortion has been around for as long as women have been bearing children, and men have been trying to control it for just as long.

    And yet even the Wiki notes that ancient civilizations had varied reactions toward abortion, so you can not easily link it to men controlling women.

    And it doesn’t appear that in the West the Catholic Church had a definitive opinion on the matter until the 16th century:

    In Christianity, Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) is noted as the first Pope to declare that abortion is homicide regardless of the stage of pregnancy; the Catholic Church had previously been divided on whether if believed that abortion was murder, and did not begin vigorously opposing abortion until the 19th century.

    Evangelicals and Rick Santorum like to pretend that there has been consistent, uniform, and universal opposition to abortion, but this is nothing more than a tiresome lie.

  143. 143.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Ruth Graham’s final wishes, signed in the presence of witnesses:

    “My Final Wishes Concerning My Burial Site” says, in part: “Since it is impossible for me to be buried at my ‘first home’ in China, my next choice is the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina which I have loved and where I have lived for the past 60 years.”
    A number of years ago, the document continues, she and Billy “agreed that we would be buried together near the chapel at The Cove. The Memorial Garden at Chatlos Chapel was prepared for that very purpose. My final wish is to be buried at The Cove. Under no circumstances am I to be buried in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
    In an interview with The Washington Post, Keith said, “Ruth wants to be buried next to Billy, first and foremost.” When asked about her objections to Charlotte, he replied, “In her physical condition, she agrees with the last person who talked to her.”

    Only when she’d fallen into a coma was a statement was issued saying that she’d end up in the themepark after all. Nice work, Franklin. You fucker.

  146. 146.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    “He knew what he was doing, even though he is a lot dumber than his father (who was also a jerk).”

    A masterpiece of understatement. The old man never met a Republican he didn’t like, nor a White House meal he could turn down. I have never seen the fascination with these people and their spin on Christianity. Just a bunch of right wingers with the same old garbage.

  148. 148.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Evangelicals and Rick Santorum like to pretend that there has been consistent, uniform, and universal opposition to abortion, but this is nothing more than a tiresome lie.

    On this, we can agree. The funny thing is that it was the advancement of science and embryology that caused the Church’s opposition to continuously move the “allowed” window backwards — the whole “life begins at fertilization” thing didn’t get touted as God’s Eternal Word until science let us all in on how fertilization works.

  149. 149.

    Jebediah

    @jonas:

    @asiangrrlMN: Psalm 139 is also a major scriptural touchstone for pro-lifers, where the psalmist talks about God “creating [his] inmost being” and “knitting [him] together” in the womb.

    “Knitting” implies an ongoing enterprise, not one that is completed. The life isn’t created till that “knitting” is done, when born the baby is. Therefore, post hoc propter hamhock ergot summa cum loudly, our side wins, free choice and bodily autonomy for all women. Whew! I didn’t know it was going to be so easy!

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