At some point you would think that the mind-control mavens at Fox News would stop and ask themselves if their overtly contradictory messages were going too far. You would, however, be wrong to have such a naive thought.
President Obama and his family spent Easter Sunday this year at their neighborhood St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. By most accounts it was a pleasant outing that celebrated the holiday in a conventional manner. So leave it to Fox News to abandon convention and find something nefarious with which to attack the President.
It seems that Rev. Luis Leon offended the Fox martinets of virtue by including in his sermon a message that just happens to comply with the church’s beliefs:
Leon: “I hear all the time the expression ‘the good old days’. Well, the good old days, we forget they have been good for some, but they weren’t good for everybody. You can’t go back, you can’t live in the past. It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back. For Blacks to be back in the back of the bus; for women to be back in the kitchen; for gays to be in the closet; and for immigrants to be on their side of the border.”
Standing up for the oppressed in society is something that many churches regard as obedience to the teachings of their Savior. But to Fox News it is an affront to their Teabaggery and they simply will not have it. Consequently, they set out to disparage Rev. Leon, his church, and even the President (who had nothing to do with the sermon). On Fox’s America Live, Megyn Kelly hosted a panel that deemed the affair a “Controversial Easter Sermon,” and criticized the Rev. Leon for “blasting conservative Christians.” Over at the lie-riddled Fox Nation, it was characterized as “Another Obama Pastor Problem,” a stale reference reaching back to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Oddly enough, Fox had no problem when a conservative doctor named Ben Carson took to the podium at the National Prayer Breakfast and abandoned the spiritual theme of the event to rattle off a right-wing diatribe about taxes and debt. To the contrary, Fox glorified him as a hero of liberty and began laying the groundwork for his presidential campaign, and/or canonization. Fox described him as “Stealing the Show,” while Fox Nation gushed “Amazing Conservative Speech Upstages Obama At Prayer Breakfast.”
The divergence in presentation of these two events is more than hypocritical. The comments by Dr. Carson were totally inappropriate at a public religious event that for decades was respected as a gathering of harmony where partisanship was set aside. Carson breached that tradition to foist his views on the audience and was exalted for it by Fox News and other conservative outlets.
On the other hand, Rev. Leon was speaking in his own church to his own congregation whom he knows well. The Episcopal Church is regarded as a comparatively liberal denomination that advocates for gay rights and has ordained women and gays as ministers. Leon’s sermon was in keeping with the values of his church and parishioners.
Nevertheless, Fox News chose to exploit this private service to advance their political agenda. And by complaining about the content of the sermon they are effectively conceding that Leon was correct in criticizing “the captains of the religious right [who] are always calling people back.”
Well, as Jesus told Mary “You can’t go back.” And as much as Tea-publicans may pray for it, African-Americans are not going back to the back of the bus; women are not going back to the kitchen; and gays are not going back into the closets. As for immigrants, if they were all to go back there would be no one left here but Native Americans – a scenario that some may regard as preferable.
