Okay, someone help me out here. Surely there’s a way of interpreting this story from yesterday in a way that doesn’t reflect horribly on the McCain campaign. I just can’t figure out what it is.
So a minister serving as a pre-McCain speaker at an event says this:
I also would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god–whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah–that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and election day.”
I won’t even go into the silliness of this – or even point out the weirdness of his invocation of “Hindu” as a god. Suffice to say that the McCain campaign identified this as a problem virtually immediately. But the press release they put out “distancing” themselves from it reads as follows:
While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama’s judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief.
Bear in mind that “religious background of the candidates” was mentioned nowhere in the speech being disavowed. Now, given that, how am I expected to read this as anything other than a statement that “it shouldn’t matter that McCain is a Christian and Obama is a Muslim.” Right? That’s what the statement says, isn’t it?
I’m trying to be charitable but I can’t figure out how to decipher this as anything else. But they can’t possibly be that stupid. So what’s the deal?
Anyways, at a time like this, I think we all could use a little bit of Swedish electro-pop from The Lovekevins. Don’t you agree?
Tamagotchi freestyle (radio edit) – The Lovekevins