Straight Talk Express still tempted by the 'great whore'

Straight Talk Express still tempted by the 'great whore'

Don’t you hate it when your moral compass points toward magnetic idiot. Only a brief mention on this site over John McCain’s own pastor problems, even those some of the folks on here had a heck of a time with Obama’s similar issue.

So if you didn’t notice, McCain has had a busy week backing away from his collection of religious lunatics. On Thursday, the Republican nominee finally got around to rejecting a months-old endorsement of Texas preacher John Hagee after an audio recording surfaced in which the preacher said God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land. A chunk: "Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun, and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. ... How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, 'My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.’

Thanks, Hitler. Wow. Hagee had already branded Catholics “the great whore,” so you knew the guy was due for another revelation.

Talk about your Straight Talk Express.

I guess Team McCain finally ran the numbers, lots of Catholic and Jewish voters in those important Northeastern states as well as the all-important Florida. So, he finally called Hagee’s comments “crazy and unacceptable” … after about 100 days of defending the guy. Wonder if W. Administration shills like Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who tried to score so many point with Obama’s own pastor liability, still feel the same way about the “very good things” Hagee has done, especially his “support for Isreal.”

Hours later, in an Associated Press interview, McCain backed off support from Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher who called Islam an "anti-Christ religion,” branded the Muslim prophet Muhammad as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil" and volunteered his belief that the entire faith should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Wow.

Attempting to shake off Parsley, McCain told the AP that “there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America.” Except in the primary when he was eating these endorsements up.

In McCain’s defense, these endorsements came during the Republican primary which forces its candidates to suck up to every religious nutjob who can deliver the most votes from his megachurch or television show. It’s a matter of pews, not views when it comes to gathering votes on the GOP side.

Funny, we’re just not seeing the traction for these examples as we did when the rants of Obama’s pastor started making the rounds. Even this site posted some “funny” posters about Obama, but near silence on McCain. Part laziness, part fear, the national media doesn’t dare want to question the important evangelical demographic. Honestly, who would watch CBS if that happened? Combine that with the fact that a predominately white media is scared by what goes on in the black churches – where the seed of a necessary revolution where planted a few generations ago – and you have a recipe for the relative silence on McCain’s problem with pastors.

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Take five minutes out of your day to join Executive Editor Jason Winders at onlineathens.com, the online publication of the Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald or read his Morning Meeting blog there each morning. Stand up and be counted.