Stupid Statement of the Week

Senator Barack Obama took a giant step toward putting the mini-controversy surrounding his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, behind him this week. But John “100 Years War” McCain has done next to nothing to denounce or silence his own spiritual adviser and supporter, Texas pastor John C. Hagee, who has his own wacko ideas of how things work in America. To quote from Bruce Wilson of the site Talk to Action:

In a sermon given at his San Antonio, Texas Cornerstone megachurch that was telecast and available in up to ninety million homes worldwide, controversial pastor John Hagee, who has endorsed the presidential bid of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, Jr., claimed that American public schools provide abortion services. Hagee stated, “Your daughter can get an abortion in public school without telling you but she can’t get an aspirin without your approval.” The pastor also claimed that public school teachers can force their students to study a “precursor to witchcraft” and suggests that America has invited “satan” and demonic spirits into its public school systems by failing to display the Ten Commandments on classroom walls. Presidential hopeful John McCain, Jr. has said he is “glad to have” Hagee’s support and “admires” the leadership of the Texas pastor--who has declared God has cursed and doomed America.

The video can be found here.

This is the same Reverend Hagee, you will recall, who claimed that Hurricane Katrina’s clobbering of New Orleans was divine retribution (“All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”), said that “The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty,” and has demonstrated an unbelievable level of sexism in his “jokes” (“Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”). Yet McCain hasn’t demonstrated anywhere near Obama’s level of courage by condemning Hagee for his offensive statements. The closest he’s come was in relation to criticizing Hagee for anti-Catholic statements, when McCain said of the Texas preacher, “He says he has never been anti-Catholic, but I repudiate the words that create that impression.” In other words, McCain claims not to be responsible if other people take Hagee’s bigoted statements the wrong way.

So why do media pundits press Obama to denounce Wright’s ideology, but not force McCain to do the same thing with Hagee?

READ MORE: “Top 10 Outrageous Quotes from McCain’s Spiritual Advisers,” by Katie Halper (Open Left); “Three Candidates, Two Sets of Rules--Is It Racism?,” by Bob Cavnar (Houston Chronicle); “Voters Far More Concerned with Bush than Jeremiah Wright,” by Steve Benen (The Carperbagger Report); “Kerry Rips MSNBC on Wright: ‘You People Need to Let Go of This,’” by Jason Linkins (The Huffington Post).