Brit Hume’s critics are thinking too hard about this:
To briefly review, on “Fox News Sunday,”Hume said
the golfer’s Buddhism is inadequate to deal with Woods’ personal
problems. The ostensible journalist said Woods can “make a total
recovery and be a great example to the world” if he’d only “turn to the
Christian faith.”O’Reilly asked a reasonably good question: “Was that proselytizing?“
“I don’t think so,” Hume said, before reiterating his comments from Sunday that Woods should convert to Christianity.
Hume said that given Woods problems, he “needs something that
Christianity, especially, provides, and gives and offers.” That
includes, he said, the chance for “redemption and forgiveness.” Later
in the segment, Hume said: “I think that Jesus Christ offers Tiger
Woods something that Tiger Woods badly needs.”I suspect for Fox News, dictionaries suffer from liberal biases, but “proselytize” isn’t a word burdened by nuance. Itmeans
“to induce someone to convert to one’s faith.” For Hume to deny that he
was proselytizing on the air is absurd. That Fox News considers this
incident consistent with its professional standards tells us all we
need to know about the so-called “news” network.
Was it proselytizing? How about this: Was it STUPID? How exactly is Jesus Christ supposed to keep Tiger from sticking his dick in women he’s not married to? How exactly does that work? Tiger is at the bar, getting eyes made at him by some adult woman, because who can blame her he’s Tiger Frigging Woods and though I don’t find him attractive I can see where girls want to hit that, and he’s thinking, “Hmm, maybe I ought to have sex with her despite my being married to another lady,” and Buddy Christ comes down and is all:
Because I don’t think it works that way. In the First Church of Athenae, God is not your traffic cop. God is not your mommy. God is not your Fuckup Insurance. Far too many fucking people seem to be all up in God’s stuff all day long asking Him to keep them from being assholes, and I just really … You being inspired by Jesus to be a good person doesn’t mean it is Jesus’s job to make you a good person, and this is a critical distinction a lot of evangelical practitioners of Consumer Christianity seem to miss.
It is no one’s job to make you a good person but you. It is your job to be that way. You can draw inspiration to not be a dick from anywhere you like, so
far as I’m concerned, and I’m not opposed to whatever makes you happy
being called God, but this constant acting like all it takes is a shot of the Jesus Vaccine to make your bullshit go away helps no one. It’s ineffective. It’s cheap.
So I don’t really care if it was proselytizing or not. It was goddamn dumb.
Pun intended.
A.