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I spent tonight as I often do, yelling at Fox News. But I had the strangest delight when--just for shits and giggles--I didn't quickly reach for the remote when Van Sustren opened her fugly trap. Talking about Father Michael Pfleger, the new "radical" clergyman loosely associated with Barack Obama, she said "I have a vastly different opinion [of him] than the people who know him and have lived with him in Chicago. But, so it is." I don't think that to say the statement is troubling, is quite enough. But it seems to encompass the entire strategy of the right for the last month or so. And so I thought I'd think a little with my fingers about that at little.

I'm having a hard time following along with the argument. Really. But I think it goes something like this:


1. Barack Obama associates with radical clergy

(Therefore,)

C: Barack Obama shares the radical views of these clergy members

Now, don't get bogged down in the irony of the right attacking a Democratic candidate for his religion--because it really just is too much to bear. Even my C logic students will recognize the argument as enthymematic--it's missing a premise that connects the premise to the conclusion. Something like, "One shares the views of whatever clergy member you listen to."

Now this is all very strage. First, because many sects of American Protestantism--in a real sense, both economically and socially--has been on the forefront of social change. Except for slavery (God! Did the Anglicans fuck up on slavery!), from the Quakers to the Southern Baptists, you find the churches in the forefront of the movements. So in this sense, "radical preacher" seems a little redundant. AS far as I can tell, if you're not radical, you don't really understand the gospels. But I digress--

Can a preacher have a different view than the parisioner? Surely. The most fundamental tenet of Protestantism is that the individual can interpret scripture him or herself, without awaiting the Papal edit from up high. So isn't the role of the preacher to provoke thought, such that one brings the lessons of the sermons to their understanding of scripture? But certainly not its content! Unless, of course, one were to make every Protestant church as several mini-Cathloic Churches, with dozens of "Popes."

But perhaps the best part of this argument is the blatant and fallacious use of guilt by association. Barack listened to them, therefore he is them. And Hannity is quick to retort "He sat there fro 20 years listening to this." Really? How did he find the time to go to law school, much less have children, if he never left the sermon for 20 years. Was it 20 years? Or was it (as it is for most people) a bit more like a few Sundays before and after Easter and Christmas. And did he treat it like most also do, snoozing through the service, spending more time looking at our watch than our sins? Did he go to a mediocre bourgeois church in the suburbs, where the preacher is more like Rick Warren than Martin Luther King?