On the Surprising Ability of Newts to Regenerate (and the Unsurprising Pandering of the Mainstream Media to the Right)

In a posting yesterday, I noted the (not surprising) way the mainstream media continue to fawn over Newt Gingrich, even as he represents no constituency, heads no major organization, and has been out of office for a decade, and so forth. Not only that, but Gingrich is being cited as an exemplary spokesman for “the” Catholic position on various issues, though he was resoundingly reprimanded (by a bipartisan vote of 395-28) when he served in the House.

Now I find today that Gingrich is being discussed all over the place at news sites I follow. Jim Martin devotes a posting to him at America, focusing on Gingrich’s recent conversion to Catholicism, and linking to commentary on this topic by Dan Gilgoff at his God and Country blog at U.S. News and World Report. (On that influential publication’s coverage of matters religious, see my comments about Peter Roff’s analysis of President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame this weekend.)

John Aravosis also comments on Mr. Gingrich’s ethic lapses (and his apparent confidence that voters’ memory of said lapses is hazy), as Gingrich seems to be setting himself up as an arbiter of matters ethical. Aravosis is linking to a Washington Post op-ed piece on this topic by Ruth Marcus. Marcus doubts that someone with Mr. Gingrich’s track record with things financial and marital is in a credible position to be dispensing ethics advice.

And at Talk to Action, Bill Berkowitz incisively analyzes Mr. Gingrich’s “seamy and steamy history,” while he tries “[t]o stitch together a coalition of disparate GOP forces that will back him for the Party's Presidential nomination in four years.” Berkowitz concludes that, for a GOP hemorrhaging badly, bereft of intellectual and moral foundations, and casting about for a savior, Gingrich is beginning to look appealing—again.

Looks like we should stay tuned for quite a bit more news about Mr. Gingrich in the future, as the interest groups who fund the media show continue playing for the right. The question is, though, whether the well-known ability of newts to regenerate is going to demonstrate itself in this case—such that the regenerated product is more engaging and morally persuasive than the previous one.

At the Crossroads: White House Meeting with Human Rights Groups Yesterday

A number of news reports today link to what I wrote yesterday about the divide between progressive idealist and pragmatist wings of the Obama administration and its supporters. I ended my posting with a prediction:

The energy and passion feeding the election of Barack Obama to the presidency have been extraordinary. The energy level behind the new president remains high.

I predict, however, that it will gradually diminish and slowly wane—and not only among gay citizens—if the president continues to listen to his progressive pragmatist advisors to the exclusion of his progressive idealist supporters. In coming months, we may see an increasing selectivity among the president’s supporters about offering support to his platform—particularly as he continues to back-step on his promises to address injustice to gay and lesbian Americans.

Waning energy when it comes to any aspect of Mr. Obama’s yes-we-can platform for progressive change, as the president chooses the pragmatist path over the idealist one: so it seems to be happening. As I blogged yesterday, I did not know that the White House had set an off-the-record meeting with human rights and civil libertarian groups to address precisely the problem I was outlining: the growing split between the president’s pragmatist and idealist supporters, and increasing loss of energy to support the president’s progressive agenda, as he appears to back-step on his promises to uphold human rights.

Rachel Maddow offered exclusive coverage of the White House meeting last evening. (Sam Stein also has a report today at Huffington Post.)

According to Maddow, the White House invited representatives of human rights and civil liberties groups to discuss disappointing backsteps by the administration as it addresses human rights issues. These include, Maddow notes, the decision to maintain a system of essentially lawless detention in the legal no-man’s land of Bagram Air Force Base, the refusal to appoint an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration’s violation of laws against torture, reneging on the promise to release additional photos of prisoner abuse, and the continuation of the previous administration’s cobbled together system of military tribunals at Guantanamo.

Maddow notes that these steps backwards on human rights issues have been an “escalating series of disappointments” for human rights supporters and civil libertarians. Her sources also tell her that the administration is concerned about the disaffection of many of the president’s staunchest progressive supporters, and called the meeting because it feels the need to reach out and bring these supporters back into the fold.

Maddow reports that yesterday’s meeting was at times tense. One of those present told the president that he is now making Mr. Bush’s policies on human rights his own, and is accepting some of the premises of that administration.

According to Maddow, the president was “demonstrably not pleased with that characterization,” and gave no ground. In Maddow’s view, the president’s relationship with his supporters on the left has never been more strained than it is at present, because of his perceived reversals on human rights issues and his refusal to move forward on his campaign promises.

Newsweek journalist Michael Isikoff joined Maddow to discuss yesterday’s meeting. He noted that the meeting included Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Attorney General Eric Holder, advisors Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, foreign policy hand Dennis McDonough, and counter-terrorism chief John Brennan. Among the human rights and civil libertarian groups represented at the meeting were the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Isikoff notes that the choice of the White House to call this meeting, and to invite to it these White House staff, is an indication of how seriously the administration takes the “rebellion from the left” it is experiencing at the same time it’s being pummeled by the right.

I’m fascinated in particular by some of Maddow’s and Isikoff’s analysis, because it so strongly reflects the analysis I offered in yesterday’s posting on the practical consequences facing the administration (and the country), as the new administration appears to choose a pragmatist rather than an idealist path for its policies.

For instance, Maddow and Isikoff report that when the human rights representatives pressed Mr. Obama on his refusal to establish a truth commission to investigate torture under the Bush administration, the president characterized this pressure as a “distraction.” He noted that congressional deliberations are taking place regarding these matters.

And when the progressive spokespersons invited to the meeting urged the president to consider criminal prosecution of those who broke the law under the previous administration, as a symbolic gesture that our nation will not tolerate this kind of activity in future, the president “curtly dismissed” the proposal.

Several of those present were struck by the fact that Mr. Obama looked at Mr. Holder, the attorney general, at this point, but did not solicit a statement from him. According to Mr. Isikoff, this gave some of those present the impression that the steps the president is taking about issues like prosecution of lawbreakers in the previous administration are his own steps, and not those advised by his staff. As Mr. Isikoff notes, Mr. Obama has stated publicly that questions about prosecution of lawbreakers in the Bush administration should be referred to Mr. Holder. What he seemed to say in private in yesterday’s meeting stood in contrast to these public statements.

Mr. Isikoff sketches some of the pragmatic considerations that appear to be underlying Mr. Obama’s waffling on these human rights issues. As he notes, there seems to be a strong determination not to alienate the Republicans and the right. In Mr. Isikoff’s view, however, these are not helpful considerations, when law-breaking is at stake.

I’m struck by several points here, because of their parallels to what is happening with the administration in that other arena of human rights, the rights of gay and lesbian citizens. First, there’s the insistence that the president should defer to Congress before moving forward on these human rights issues. In the area of gay rights, this insistence is striking many observers as a punt, one that tries to kick hot issues to Congress, rather than asserting presidential leadership in these areas.

Underlying this appears to be some political theory that consensus is necessary, if we expect to move forward productively in any area, and that such consensus needs to be demonstrated by legislative vote before the president stamps that consensus with his approval. As I have noted repeatedly on this blog, that theory overlooks the important role that the presidency has played throughout the history of our nation—particularly in the area of human rights—when it comes to charting the course and pointing the way. A leadership role, which pulls resistant groups forward into a consensus that they will otherwise continue to resist, and which they will express by legislative votes: matters of human rights ought not to depend on votes.

I’m also struck by the president’s statement (assuming the veracity of these reports) that it would be a “distraction” to move forward on some of these human rights questions now. In my view, that statement starkly reflects a pragmatist approach to human rights issues, which evacuates those issues of their moral force.

As I have noted previously on this blog, this is also an insistence that seems strong in the new administration’s justification for its dilly-dallying and backsteps on human rights for gay citizens. There is the suggestion that, in addressing gay rights issues, the administration is attending to an insignificant distraction as the country faces “real” challenges like the economic downturn. There is also the intimation that, in addressing issues like gay rights, the administration is furthering, rather than eclipsing, the culture wars, with their tendency to distract us from what is important.

In all these areas, I detect a sidestepping on issues of human rights that is deeply worrisome to me as a progressive supporter of Mr. Obama who sees strong connections between all human rights issues, and who happens to believe that those issues (all of them) have a moral centrality that cannot be overlooked, if we expect to maintain any moral center at all for a progressive agenda.

And lacking a moral center, we will lack the energy to do what is clearly right, when the choice confronts us. In my view, the new administration finds itself already at a significant crossroads, and everything depends—for its future and that of the nation—on the path it chooses to take. That's what moral crossroads are all about: everything, absolutely everything, depends on the choice we make, when we arrive at them. Including (and above all), the future . . . .

Thought for the Day: Alice Miller on Facts That Do Not Count--At First

Again and again, I am deeply affected by facts that do not count for others—at first.

Alice Miller, The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness, trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum (NY: Doubleday, 1989), p. 11.

Ideas Have Consequences: Progressive Pragmatists, Idealists and the Future of Obama Administration

In my wrap-up posting about Mr. Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame, I concluded,

If there is going to be a resurgence of progressivism under this administration, that resurgence is going to have to come from the public itself, insofar as citizens become fed up with the cultural, political, and religious stalemates the right has produced for us for too many years now, while liberals appease the right and refuse to stand up, or to imagine a truly democratic society.

Which is to say that the moral backbone of progressive change in the Obama era is going to have to come, I believe, from progressive groups themselves, and not from the president and his advisors. I believe the president himself has that backbone, though I also believe he is, in many respects, a classic liberal who is willing to ignore strong moral considerations as he engages in pragmatic balancing acts. And it seems increasingly evident to me that he has surrounded himself with advisors who, to an even greater extent, are tone-deaf to the moral underpinnings of the agenda of change they talk about, and willing at every turn to ignore those underpinnings as they tinker, try to anticipate the winds of change, and seek to remain on top through it all.

And in a subsequent posting on the same theme, I noted that the power of the political and religious right to play unholy culture-war games remains strong. I pointed to the continuing ability of economic elites who benefit from the culture wars to disseminate lies through the mainstream media. And I noted the concern of those elites “to combat the emergence of a new coalition of progressive people of faith at this point in our nation's history.”

As a follow-up to these observations, I’d like to note some significant recent discussion about the diverging strategies of progressive pragmatists and progressive idealists (or, as Frederick Clarkson’s critique of centrist orthodoxy notes, using Mark Silk’s terminology, priests and prophets) in the Obama era. The pragmatist-idealist distinction is Chip Berlet’s, in an important recent article entitled “Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War.” Frederick Clarkson highlights this essay in his latest posting at Talk to Action.

Berlet centers his analysis on the concept of “frames.” He argues that the fundamental struggle going on among progressives who support the new president, but who divide along pragmatist-idealist lines, is the question of how to frame the debate for the progressive agenda.

Progressive pragmatists are persuaded that progressive movements have no choice except to reach out to evangelical voters of the center and moderate right at this point in history. In the view of pragmatists, poll numbers demonstrate that Obama won the elections—and will continue to enjoy success as a leader—by forming a coalition that joins progressives and evangelical voters. The decision to give a high profile to Pastor Rick Warren at the inauguration reflected the intent of the new administration to follow a pragmatist course with outreach to the evangelical community.

Berlet agrees that outreach to evangelical voters is important, if progressives expect to use the mandate for change represented by the presidential election to move their agenda forward. However, in his view the pragmatist stance concedes too much to the religious right: it allows the right (and its centrist-to-moderately right evangelical supporters) to frame the discussion.

In Berlet’s view, before we talk about building a progressive coalition that holds together evangelicals and progressive groups, “we need clearer criteria to determine who we seek to work with”:

If one wants to work in coalition with Christian evangelicals, perhaps it would be better to start by talking with Progressive Idealists, the religious left, and a variety women’s rights and gay rights activist groups to line up our support. Then together we can analyze the source of the ideological opposition (in this case the Christian Right) and develop a counter-frame. Finally, we can reach out to moderate and mildly conservative evangelicals using our counter-frame in a way that emphasizes common interests.

A counter-frame: as Berlet notes, social thinkers including Erving Goffman, Charlotte Ryan, and George Lakoff have argued persuasively that, when we allow our opponents to frame a discussion, we lose. We lose more than we gain when we permit the opposition to provide the terms that frame how we see our challenges and what we decide to do about those challenges. In Posner’s view, “[t]hat’s what the Christian Right has foisted on Democratic centrists—a rigged frame.”

Posner notes several debilitating consequences of the progressive pragmatist move to the center. One is that many liberal Democrats have allowed themselves to be convinced that “there is something inherently unseemly about advocating for reproductive or LGBT rights,” because continued advocacy for these causes in the face of fierce opposition from the Christian right prolongs the culture wars.

Another consequence of permitting the Christian right to provide the frame within which progressives approach issues like reproductive and gay rights is that we are led to see these issues as “problems” to be solved, rather than as challenges in which human rights are at stake. The alliance with evangelicals results in a weakening of the rhetoric of rights—human rights—in the Democratic party, such that progressives begin avoiding the very phrase that provides moral underpinning to their progressive causes.

As in a pre-election Huffington Post article on this theme, Berlet notes that people who expect to be taken seriously as moral agents cannot reduce human rights to political commodities. When we submit human rights issues to pragmatic considerations that diminish the force of our commitment to rights, we yield valuable moral ground—moral ground necessary to any viable program of progressive change:

. . . [I]it is clear that strong Democratic Party positions that stress community values as intertwined with social justice trump Christian Right campaigns against abortion and gay rights, even within the evangelical community. There is no need for Democrats to compromise on issues that reflect basic human rights. And to do so is morally wrong, even if it is pragmatically expedient.

And: “. . . [S]ince Reagan, the numbers do not suggest that compromise with the Christian Right even makes pragmatic sense—much less moral sense.”

And so, where to go with this analysis? Not to the White House, it appears: as I have repeatedly argued on this blog, even if Mr. Obama is attuned to the moral dimensions of these human rights struggles (and I continue to believe he is), the president is clearly persuaded by his pragmatist advisors that taking the moral stand in the struggles will hurt him politically. And, as I’ve noted, nothing compels someone who has made promises to combat injustice done to others to deliver on those promises. Other than that person’s conscience that is . . . .

No, as the opening section of this posting notes, I have come to the conclusion that the moral backbone of progressive change in the Obama era is going to have to come from progressive groups themselves, and not from the president and his advisors. Chip Berlet ends up at the same point:

This is more than just a squabble over who among the religious gets to claim the name progressive, it’s a struggle over whether or not the Obama administration will follow the path blazed by community organizers seeking social, economic, and gender justice. This will not happen unless there is sufficient pressure on them to do so. Social movements pull political movements toward them, not the other way around.

As Jacob Weisberg recently noted at Slate, Mr. Obama “sees the middle ground as high ground.” But this is a pre-moral conviction, when the moral insight one attains through listening and dialogue does not translate into solid moral commitment—commitment to do something in the face of injustice, when one can do something:

This is a wonderful instinct that is bettering America's image and making domestic politics more civil. But listening is not a moral stance, and elevating it to one only highlights the question of what Obama really stands for. The consensus-seeker repudiates torture but doesn't want to investigate it; he endorses gay equality but not in marriage or the military; he thinks government's role is to do whatever works. I continue to suspect him of harboring deeper convictions.

We are at a tipping-point moment in the framing of issues like the human rights of gay human beings as moral issues. For a number of decades now, neoconservatives and their religious apologists have succeeded in capturing the term “moral,” particularly when it comes to issues of gender, sexual orientation, and reproductive rights.

Now, the right’s exclusive ownership of the term “moral” is being hotly contested not only by progressives, but by the center itself. In the case of human rights for gay persons, two cultural developments in the waning part of the 20th century and the opening of the 21st century have radically shifted our culture’s perception of where the moral frame should be placed.

The first of these is the growing awareness of the public at large of the humanity of—and thus, the indefensible brutality of discrimination against—gay and lesbian persons. Too many of us have made our lives and stories public now, for the right to continue its malevolent depiction of us as sub-human and perverse—to continue that depiction successfully, that is. We are brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, co-workers, those sitting in the pew next to everyone else: we have a face, and that face does not correspond to the demonic one the right wishes the public to see, when it smears homosexuals.

The second important development shifting the center’s perception of the moral frame in discussions of gay people and gay human rights at this point in history is the increasingly evident moral bankruptcy of the political and religious right. People who have exposed themselves as immoral agents have a hard time convincing others, when they claim to be spokespersons for morality.

As Stuart Whatley notes in a HuffPo discussion today, conservatives' current strategy of making same-sex marriage the centerpiece of their challenge to Obama is not without significant risk—and that risk lies precisely in what the public at large, the center, may well come to think of the morality of this political strategy:

If conservatives wish to elevate their fight against same-sex marriage to primus inter pares without a smarting backlash, they will have to somehow justify this exclusive denial of rights as something other than hidebound bigotry. Indeed, a mis-tackle of this issue could very well transform the soi disant “moral majority” into an immoral minority, considering that an increased percentage of people will consider such a position to be driven more by social sadism than personal righteousness.

Ideas have consequences, as neoconservative thinkers have never tired of reminding us, echoing Richard M. Weaver. Faced with the waning power of the religious and political right to define the moral center, progressives may well decide to continue yielding moral ground to the right by “reaching out” and broadening the progressive center—even if this means muting progressive rhetoric about and commitment to human rights.

If progressive pragmatists choose to continue down that road now, under the Obama administration, however, there will be some pragmatic consequences to their decision. While it may be true that nothing can compel me to behave morally even when I see clearly the moral thing to do in a situation, persistent morally obtuse behavior on the part of leaders who claim to be all about progressive change siphons off my energy for progressive change, when pragmatist politicians finally declare the time is now right to move ahead.

Though my moral commitment to change in a number of important areas of contemporary culture—including the areas of gender and race—will not wane even when I detect moral betrayals and moral waffling in leaders in those areas, my energy for solidarity and for commitment does shift. Moral betrayal and moral waffling among leaders committed to change grounded in moral values impede my willingness (and, I suspect, that of others) to commit myself and act.

Ideas have consequences. Not very long ago, a friend of mine looked for the second time in a few years at an opening with the Sojourners organization founded by Jim Wallis. Wallis is at the center of the movement to join the energies of progressives and evangelicals. Wallis has also been notably resistant to gay rights, for much of his career.

My friend happens to be gay and in a long-term relationship. Before he looked at this job seriously, I advised him that, were I in his shoes, I would find out what Sojourners says and does about gay people and gay rights. Does Sojourners, for instance, have a policy of providing partner benefits for a gay spouse or gay partner?

On both occasions when a position at Sojourners opened, my friend took my advice. He asked. He was told both times that there are no partner benefits. The first time my friend approached Sojourners was before Obama’s election. The second time was after the election.

It appears that nothing has changed at Sojourners following Mr. Obama’s election—not, that is, for gay people. And, as a result, I find my energy for an organization in whose goals I wholeheartedly believe, and to which I have offered support in the past, significantly diminished.

Ideas have consequences. Lack of commitment to human rights for everyone on the part of groups claiming to stand for progressive moral change siphons off energy for the very changes those groups advocate. My second story has to do with the Notre Dame events last week.

Shortly before the president came to Notre Dame, I received an email request from Catholics United for the Common Good, asking if I would give financial support for an ad to appear at the time of the Notre Dame speech, which would underscore the widespread support the president has among Catholics.

Normally, I would have clicked through the menu of choices and made a donation—strait as our financial circumstances are now. After all, I am passionately committed to broadening the Catholic witness about issues of justice and peace. But I am committed to doing so precisely because I believe that groups committed to human rights deserve my support. It is that very same passionate commitment that compels me to distance myself from the Catholic church today, insofar as it betrays its clear witness to human rights in its teachings and its behavior.

When I got the recent appeal from Catholics United, I ignored it. I did so after deliberation. In moral decisions, one must think things through and weigh choices carefully. I do not break solidarity lightly with groups to whose causes I’m committed. I try to build into my moral decision-making checks and balances, including checks against my own rash judgment or propensity to act out of pique when I’m angry, hurt, off-kilter.

After careful reflection, I decided to ignore this appeal from an organization whose goals I support, for a cause very important to me. After all, only last Friday—a day before the Catholics United ad reached me—I noted in a posting on this blog that Frances Kissling recently called Catholics United to get their statement on the Harry Knox story, and was told they would get back to her.

I noted then that the Catholics United website contained no statement I could find about the attack of the Catholic right on Harry Knox. I’ve just visited it again. If any such statement is there—or has been made—I have not found it.

Ideas have consequences. Groups, including political coalitions, that claim to be acting on moral principle, but which have conspicuous blind spots about some key moral principles (e.g., the claim to human rights of gay persons), undermine my energy for collaborative action. In a world full of needs and causes, I decide to commit myself selectively. I have to do so. I have only so much energy and so much passion.

The energy and passion feeding the election of Barack Obama to the presidency have been extraordinary. The energy level behind the new president remains high.

I predict, however, that it will gradually diminish and slowly wane—and not only among gay citizens—if the president continues to listen to his progressive pragmatist advisors to the exclusion of his progressive idealist supporters. In coming months, we may see an increasing selectivity among the president’s supporters about offering support to his platform—particularly as he continues to back-step on his promises to address injustice to gay and lesbian Americans.

Newt Continues His Reign: Eric Boehlert on Mainstream Media's Reliance on Gingrich for Catholic Stories

In my assessments of President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame this past weekend, I noted that the mainstream media continued its usual pimping job for the right in its coverage of this story. I also proposed that there is tremendous fear on the part of those who determine the slant of mainstream media coverage about letting the public know of the considerable support the president enjoys among a majority of Catholic voters.

My postings on this theme note that “the mainstream media have given a voice to a handful of extremists who receive attention out of all proportion to their numbers, attention that their tactics and positions do not warrant.” As I observed the reporting on the Notre Dame events, I concluded, “It's . . . clear that the owners of the mainstream media are going to keep on doing all they can to suggest to the public at large that American religious groups lean overwhelmingly right and resist movements for social justice and progressive change.”

In light of what I wrote about Obama and Notre Dame, I’m interested to read Eric Boehlert’s article today at Alternet, focusing on the mainstream media’s continued lionization of Newt Gingrich. As Boehlert points out, Gingrich is still quoted as gospel in the mainstream media, despite the fact that he has no constituency and no position of leadership in a major organization, was forced out of office ten years ago, has dreadful public approval numbers, and has not been re-elected to office.

Why, then, Boehlert asks, did the New York Times, UPI, and the Christian Science Monitor all turn to Newt Gingrich during the Notre Dame events for soundbytes about Mr. Obama’s purported betrayal of Catholic values? Why invent a story that wasn’t even there, of embattled Catholics at the barricades fighting Notre Dame over its choice to honor the president in its commencement ceremonies?

Well, part of the answer to that question, it’s clear, is that Newt Gingrich got the ball rolling on the manufactured Notre Dame “controversy” back in March. Within days after Notre Dame’s announcement that it had invited the president to campus, Mr. Gingrich tweeted, “It is sad to see notre dame invite president obama to give the commencement address Since his policies are so anti catholic values.”

And that’s the tweet that got the ball rolling, the tweet that framed the invitation as a show-down between the president and Catholic values. It was clear to me at the time this tweet went out that Mr. Gingrich, who is ever the political animal and careful in his calculations as he undertakes any strategy, was acting in collaboration with many others on the religious and political right, who had decided to use the Notre Dame events as one in a series of test cases of the new president’s strength and level of support.

Well-organized, well-funded, and powerfully connected cabals of those bitterly opposed to the new president are casting about for any way possible to expose a weakness in the president’s flank of political support. The Notre Dame events probed the president’s support among Catholics, and found it continuing to be strong—as it was on election day.

They also probed the continuing usefulness of abortion as the wedge issue that can most be counted on to move voters to the right. In my view, the reaction to the bizarre, over-the-top protests at Notre Dame have proven that most American voters—including and perhaps especially those at the center—are beyond weary of the nasty baby-killer rhetoric, and of the claims of men of the ilk of Randall Terry to represent the best in contemporary Christianity or contemporary Catholicism or contemporary anything.

This being the case, why do the mainstream media continue to fawn over Mr. Gingrich and to give a voice to the likes of Mr. Terry? Why do they allow those who can clearly no longer declare that they represent the prevailing viewpoint of their own religious communion to lay claim to the right to speak on behalf of that communion?

What hidden channels of money and powerful influence keep compelling our mainstream media, with their pretense to stand for objectivity and the pursuit of truth at all costs, to continue collaborating with the far right in the production of non-stories about non-events? Well, perhaps the channels are not so hidden, and that is surely part of the answer to this question. As my previous postings (here and here) on the thick ties between the Catholic right and various right-wing political groups demonstrate, in the final decades of the 20th century, the American Catholic right and its political allies worked hard (and adroitly) to corner the media market and gain control of media coverage of Catholic stories.

They did so by establishing a virtual media empire throughout the United States, buying up telecommunications organizations and establishing those organizations as “the” Catholic voice, always kindly at hand when the mainstream media need a Catholic soundbyte. These Catholic media outlets work hand in hand with the numerous, well-funded think tanks of the political right, many of them concentrated in the Beltway area, to assure that, when a story touches on Catholic issues, the media will call someone within their network for “the” Catholic position on whatever is being discussed.

The mainstream media—which have not always been conscientious about refusing lavish dinners, trips to “retreats” in exotic places, and other perks (aka bribes) from such think tanks—is now so thoroughly enmeshed in the network of interests and commitments represented by those think tanks, that it cannot easily extricate itself from their control. If we expect better coverage of many issues—including the interface of religion and politics—at this point in our history, we are going to have to turn to citizen bloggers for that coverage.

Which is to say, ourselves . . . . When a story can prove the dominant discourse so glaringly wrong as the reception of Mr. Obama at Notre Dame this weekend proved the religious and political right—and its mainstream media shills—wrong, we have no choice except to develop alternative channels of communication to get accurate information to the public. Particularly when the mainstream media are willing to stoop to the Newts of the world for “religious” news . . . .

Thought for the Day: Telling Truth Yields Doing Truth

It takes two to speak the truth,--one to speak and another to hear.

Henry David Thoreau, A Walk on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

2922 Days (8 Years and 2 Days): When Will Coretta Scott King Be Heard?

And, today, I want to reissue this appeal once again. I am doing so now in light of continued discussion (here and here and here) of Mr. Obama's hesitancy to fulfill his promises to address injustice and denial of rights to gay citizens.

As African-American blogger Pam Spaulding has recently noted, Mr. Obama's silence on gay lives and gay issues following his election hurts the president's own attempts to address homophobia in the black community, even as polls indicate that, in New York, black voters are opposed to gay marriage 57% to 35%, while white voters favor gay marriage 47% to 45%. At the same time, African-American pastors in New York reject their African-American governor David Paterson's inistence that gay rights and African-American rights are linked, and reject the witness of African-American leaders including Coretta Scott King, Bayard Rustin, and Mildred Loving that the movement for gay rights is an extension of the movement for African-American rights.

And so, once again, my appeal for action:

On 8 June 2001, Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., issued the following call for a national campaign against homophobia in the black community:

Homophobia is still a great problem throughout America, but in the African-American community it is even more threatening. This is an enormous obstacle for everyone involved in AIDS prevention, treatment and research. … We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community.

On 20 January 2009, the United States inaugurated its first African-American president, Barack Obama. Immediately following his inauguration, our promising new leader activated a federal website outlining an agenda for important new programs in the area of civil rights, including LGBT rights.

It is now 119 days from the inauguration of President Obama. It is 2922 days (8 years and 2 days) after Coretta Scott King called for a national campaign against homophobia in the black community.

As a member of the gay community who has long supported and worked for the civil rights of my African-American brothers and sisters, I call on the African-American community to respond to the appeal of Dr. King’s widow.

As I have stated in a posting on this topic, “The need is great. And it is growing. Where is the intent to address that need, as Barack Obama becomes president?”

Who will hear Coretta Scott King’s words and respond to them? Problems within the African-American community should be addressed first and foremost from within the community. The African-American community does not need mentors from outside instructing people of color about how to carry on their business.

When will African-American leaders, in this historic moment in which our nation has an African-American president, take seriously Coretta Scott King’s call for a national campaign against homophobia in the black community?

The need is great. It is now 119 days after the inauguration of President Obama. It is now 2922 days (8 years and 2 days) after Coretta Scott King issued her challenge to the black community.

I continue to commit myself to addressing and eradicating racism in the white community at large, and in the white gay community, as well.

When will African-American leaders respond to Coretta Scott King’s call to address black homophobia in a national campaign?