The AP interviews a bunch of people who don’t know shit, News At Eleven:
“It’s important that people of faith are being listened to just like other constituencies, that we’re not marginalized,” said Alexia Kelley of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which haspressed the party to support policies aimed at reducing abortion rates. “Just because we’re participating in the process and engaging people who may not agree with us doesn’t mean we’re just a mascot.”
Emphasis mine. They already do. They always have.And for at LEAST four years and probably longer, they’ve been packaging those programs specifically as abortion prevention, and marketing them that way, not that anybody gives a fuck when there’s a cheap and easy storyline to reinforce. I’m not asking that we agree. I’m just asking that we pay marginal amounts of attention to the actual shit going on in the actual world.
And then we have this:
Donald Miller, a 37-year-old author from Portland, Ore., is little known to most voters but revered among many young evangelicals for his best-selling spiritual memoir “Blue Like Jazz.”
Miller was a loyal Republican but said he left the party, in large part, because he thought Republicans pandered to evangelicals on abortion and gay marriage to win votes without accomplishing much.
Democrats are “reaching out to us, and I’m not naive as to why — they want our votes,” said Miller, who gave a two-minute prayer to close Monday’s convention session. “But they won’t get them and keep them unless they continue the momentum of adopting policies that promote the sanctity of life.”
Miller cited progress along those lines — including on abortion. His other priorities — poverty, global warming — also reflect a widening evangelical agenda that might benefit Democrats, if not in large numbers in November then in future elections. Miller also said he’d leave the party if some Democrats keep mocking people of faith.
“I’d like to see Obama address that — say that voice is no longer welcome,” he said.
As to what that mockery might be (one dude in an Obama T-shirt somewhere maybe says he dislikes fundamentalist whackjobs and that counts as some kind of official statement by Democratic Party that we hate Christians, or something?) we don’t know. The AP either didn’t ask Mr. Miller, or didn’t think it was necessary to support that contention with facts. As per usual.
I just really wish the people making these arguments — Sullivan and Rauschenbush on Monday, Miller today — would differentiate between an official party statement and individual people being dicks. There are rude assholes in the Democratic Party, who will call you names. There are rude assholes in every party on earth, in every job, everywhere. There is a world of difference between somebody being a rude asshole (even on a blog) and “The Democrats” doing anything, but the so-called progressive religious commentators called upon for stories like this seem to love using a pointless anecdote or two about somebody calling them names to reinforce a destructive and incorrect meme about Democrats needing to get their religion back.
The reason it makes me so insane is that it’s no different from the Republicans who use a pointless anecdote or two to make their arguments against social programs, or affirmative action, or (yes, Amy) abortion. They knew somebody once who cheated the government out of welfare, so we should drown government in a bathtub. It’s lazy thinking and lazy argument, which I expect from professional jackasses like Jonah Goldberg, but hearing it from “our” side offends me. Who do I have to pay to getRMJ orGrandmere Mimi in one of these stories?
A.