Dick Armey's bitch slap of James Dobson finally gets pasted on page one of the New York Frickin' Times. (Friday's issue)
To avoid Times Select, here's the skinny from Blue Bayou at the Houston Chronicle, emphasis mine:
In the interview, Armey responded pointedly when Sager asked why he thought Christian conservatives seemed more powerful now than in the 1990s.
"To a large extent, because Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies," Armey said. "I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid. There's a high demagoguery coefficient to issues like prayer in schools. Demagoguery doesn't work unless it's dumb . . . These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic."
Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana commented on Armey's statement:
So why would Armey lash out? One theory Souder advanced is that his former leader hadn't really been committed to the social-conservative agenda.
"I heard him talk about his faith, and I heard him talk about these issues, and I have a tough time reconciling how he wanted to do things for the Christian conservative movement with turning around and calling us 'thugs,' " Souder said.
Oh, I don't know, he read a Bible and looked at the actions of groups like Focus on the Family and saw a bit of a disconnect?
Repubs "not really committed" to the social-conservative agenda. Ya know, the D for "duh" file gets thicker every single day.
I was wondering how long it would take for (at least a few) sincere Christians to desert the Dobson ship. But why aren't they deserting in droves?
ReplyDeleteA tad less hypoChristian than way too many, way more hypocritical than he should.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.counterpunch.org/armey0502.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/211/000024139/
What would Jesus do?
Call Dick just that.
Get him to talk about Diebold machines and then there's real news.
The "democracy" is dead, and the split spat among the Rethugs are just crumbs falling to the gound waiting to be interpreted for a bright future like Turkish coffee grinds.
Along with Nixon and Cheney, he'll still just be another evil Dick.
"But why aren't they deserting in droves?"
ReplyDeleteBecause the future is scary. Because many people look at how crass and obscene the present is, compared to rose-tinted memories of the past. Because people my age are parents now. Because people of good faith are genuinely concerned about issues of sexual morality and abortion. Because many people feel marginalized and ridiculed by liberals and the media. LBJ once famously said that if you can convince the lowest white man that he is better than the best black man, he'll never notice you picking his pocket. Likewise, in this context, the tele-Pharisees convince people that they can protect them from the future, then they whore the Church to the GOP, providing a religious fig-leaf to cover a fundamentally anti-Christian, un-American economic policy of (ironically) social Darwinism.
Damn straight, Crank.
ReplyDeleteYour email also brought up this quote on gmail:
Anais Nin - "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
Scared, most of all to think for ourselves.
There are plenty of sincere Christians who were never with Dobson & co. in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear someone who was considered an insider speak out about the nasty, coercive tactics of some in the religious right.
I always thought that Dick Armey sounded like a good name for a gay bar. He was an alumni at the college I went to, so we had to listen to quite a bit of his bleating...
ReplyDelete