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Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.

Monday, October 27, 2008

SBC, Land and Palin Deconstructed in NY Rev Books

Here is the link in a seminal article by Frances Fitzgerald in the current New York Review of Books.
When you go to this collection of essays you will want also to pay particular attention to the efforts of Joan Didion and Garry Wills, especially Wills Closing flourish.
But here is what's at stake, and where too many numb minded but otherwise good Southern Baptists continue to send their money.
Let's hope here in Alabama Gary Fenton and Bob Terry and Rick Lance will explain why they continue to fund the rascal Richard Land of the SBC ERLC, and maybe in Georgia Susan Shaw will send a letter to the Rome News Tribune, and Jonas Glenn and Tony Cartledge to the Fayetteville Observer.
What is Rob Riley thinking about all this, the Governor's son?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22017#fitzgerald

Some excerpts:

Now, if McCain won, they could claim credit for bringing out the evangelical vote and demand the kind of power they had had in the Bush administration. As for Palin herself, she was almost too good to be true. Her positions on abortion, gay marriage, domestic partner benefits, stem-cell research, abstinence, and the teaching of creationism in the public schools were their own. She was for guns and low taxes, and, as she demonstrated at the Republican convention, she could reignite the politics of populist resentment. She was one of them in a sparkling new package. "Sarah Palin is God's answer," Dobson declared.[9]

The enthusiasm of religious right leaders for Palin had its incongruities. Eight years ago, the Southern Bap-tist Convention, under the leadership of Richard Land and other conservatives, had for the first time adopted the positions that women could not serve as pastors and that wives had to "submit" to their husbands. Then, too, many religious right leaders—James Dobson most prominently—had spent most of their careers insisting that working women, along with permissiveness toward children, had led to the decline of American civilization.
No matter. Palin was a walking advertisement for "pro-life" policies, and, for reasons somewhat mysterious to them, she thrilled the women in their churches. "They were absolutely giddy,"

Land said of the women in his office. "There's something going on in the conservative independent sisterhood that I can't tap into. I can't comprehend it, but it's there."[10] Like other women, many of these sisters were struggling to raise families and to make ends meet with low-paying jobs. Palin, the baby-juggling hockey mom, was both someone they could identify with and the fulfillment of fantasies: a beauty queen who took power by bucking a corrupt male establishment. Here was the new American Idol—and the solution to a problem religious right leaders did not know they had.

And this is pretty strong as well:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amb-richard-c-holbrooke/why-the-nation-and-the-wo_b_138299.html

3 Comments:

Blogger bapticus hereticus said...

whereas for Land et al. (e.g., SBC) the end of theology has occurred, thus the past must be prologue, thereby precluding a fresh wind of God's spirit to transform a people for a unique period of history. thus for Land et al. there is a real fear that the future will not be the past, and given this, the present must be denied its integrity in order to conform to a past which increasingly loses it potency for providing meaning.

Rove et al. learned of SBC and Land, that is, better to have 50 + 1 and rule authoratively than to engage in consensus-seeking behavior which often necessitates a questioning of assumptions and reconfiguring the coalitions of power. McCain has learned from Rove et al. that for the republican party the end of politics has occurred, notwithstanding McCain's denials that he has broken from said belief. instead of allowing the past to serve as an important precursor to a new, engaging future, he weds himself to tired and insufficient ideas and policies that are providing less and less sustenance and meaning for the American public. from Land, Rove et al. learned that when you don't have a vehicle that allows you to keep up with the movement of history, align your vehicle to impede traffic and then claim you are setting the pace. people eventually understand the problem, and sometimes must, responsibly, act without deference to those that hinder the future.

bapticus hereticus

12:12 PM  
Blogger foxofbama said...

Thank-you Hereticus for a very articulate and perceptive comment.
Here is what the world of Richard Land and Karl Rove has done to a noble public servant like Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
from the current New Yorker mag

Quoting:

For Hagel, almost as disturbing as Palin’s lack of experience is her willingness—in disparaging remarks about Joe Biden’s long Senate career, for example—to belittle the notion that experience is important. “There’s no question, she knows her market,” Hagel said. “She knows her audience, and she’s going right after them. And I’ll tell you why that’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because you don’t want to define down the standards in any institution, ever, in life. You want to always strive to define standards up. If you start defining standards down—‘Well, I don’t have a big education, I don’t have experience’—yes, there’s a point to be made that not all the smartest people come out of Yale or Harvard. But to intentionally define down in some kind of wild populism, that those things don’t count in a complicated, dangerous world—that’s dangerous in itself.

“There was a political party in this country called the Know-Nothings,” he continued. “And we’re getting on the fringe of that, with these one-issue voters—pro-choice or pro-life. Important issue, I know that. But, my goodness. The world is blowing up everywhere, and I just don’t think that is a responsible way to see the world, on that one issue. And, interestingly enough, that is one issue that stopped John McCain from picking one of the people he really wanted, Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge”—the Independent senator from Connecticut and the Republican former governor of Pennsylvania. (Both men are pro-choice.)

Several of Hagel’s close friends told me they believed that if McCain won the election he would ask Hagel to serve in his Cabinet, as either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State, and that Hagel would agree, despite their differences. In February, 2006, in an article in the Times Magazine, Joseph Lelyveld asked McCain whether he would consider asking Hagel to be his running mate or a member of his Administration, and he quoted McCain as saying, “I’d be honored to have Chuck with me in any capacity. He’d make a great Secretary of State.”

I asked Hagel whether he would accept a post in a McCain Administration, and he said that he had thought about it. “But I don’t see John changing his position and direction and concept of the American role in the world, to adjust to mine,” he went on. “I’m not going to change mine to adjust to his. And I serve at the pleasure of the President. So it wouldn’t work.” ♦

1:56 PM  
Blogger Stephen said...

Very interesting....One observation / question - Is it really Richard Land or is it a total abandonment by Baptists of scriptural knowledge, pushed, of course by Land? Does he and Rove, et al really have that much power? I guess I prefer to look at the grassroots folks for change. Until the SBC (full disclosure - I attend a SBC church and am glad for the autonomy of the local church thing) revamps its mission to get out of politics and back in the scriptures, little will change. See my post on America's Civil Religion.

5:18 PM  

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