Even Some Libs Are Outraged

How dishonest are the Obama super pacs' campaign ads? They're so bad that even the folks at CNN and MSNBC are disgusted by them. It takes a lot to make Mika Brzezinski recoil from anything associated with President Obama, but after the ridiculous "felon" business and the Bain capital attacks, the latest ad where a steel worker seems to blame his wife's death from cancer on Mitt Romney, she's apparently had enough:

Here's Wolf Blitzer at CNN raking Bill Burton over the coals for producing such an egregious piece of propaganda. The video is a little long, but it shows the ad and it affords a good idea of what the controversy is all about and why the ad is inaccurate. Even more, it shows that the folks at these liberal outlets are not happy with what's being done on behalf of Mr. Obama's candidacy:

Christian Terrorism

An academic by the name of Mark Juergensmeyer foists this bit of flapdoodle upon readers at the blog Religion Dispatches:

The killing spree by Wade Michael Page on the Sikh Gurudwara in Milwaukee that left seven dead including Page’s own death in a hail of bullets is an act of Christian terrorism. Page was a member of a skinhead band, End Apathy, that advertised the evils of multiculturalism and advocated white power.

It is fair to call Page a Christian terrorist since the evidence indicates that he thought he was defending the purity of white Christian society against the evils of multiculturalism that allow non-white non-Christians an equal role in America society. Like the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and the Norwegian militant, Anders Breivik, Page thought he was killing to save white Christian society.

Though there is no evidence that Page was a pious Christian, that is true of many religious terrorists. If the hard-talking, swaggering al Qaeda militants can be called Muslim terrorists, certainly Page can be called a Christian terrorist.

This is just silly. Muslim terrorists often are indeed very pious and claim to be acting in the name of Allah and Islam. As far as is known at this point Page has made no such claims, but the silliness doesn't end there.

Despite acknowledging that there's no evidence that Page (or McVeigh or Breivik) was a "pious Christian," despite the fact that - as far as I know - there's no evidence that any of these men were Christians in any genuine sense at all, nor that they were acting on behalf of "white Christian society," the writer goes on at some length repeating his assertion that Page was acting on behalf of "white Christendom."

I hope this is not the sort of thinking that passes for erudition in Mr. Juergensmeyer's field of sociology. It amounts to this: Page was an American, America is somewhat Christian, ergo Page "was killing to save white Christian society." Not only does this chain of "reasoning" perpetrate a brutal abuse of Aristotelian logic, it also demonstrates either an amazing ignorance on the part of a sociologist as to what Christianity actually is, or it evinces an astounding level of intellectual sloppiness on the part of someone who fancies himself an intellectual.

In either case, to suggest that Page is to Christianity what the al Qaeda terrorists were to Islam is ridiculous, and to insist that people like Page are somehow spawned by Christian belief is perverse.

Class and No Class

American Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones finished fourth the other night. Jones is a 29 year-old Christian who has publicly acknowledged that she's "saving herself" for marriage. This has made her an object of derision in some precincts on the left, particularly at the New York Times. Times writer Jere Longman wrote this about Jones:

Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.

He went on to compare her to tennis player Anna Kournikova as just an empty suit.

Why? Why be so unkind to a young woman who has done nothing but succeed with class and grace throughout her career? I can't prove it, but I suspect that what's at play is the same irrational disdain that causes people to despise Tim Tebow and Carrie Prejean. They're good people who are trying to live according to the values prescribed by their Christianity and the secular world hates them for it. Their willingness to share their faith and values publicly is an indictment of a secular culture that devolves daily into deeper levels of sleaze and violence. If Jones had been involved in the debauchery taking place in the Olympic village she'd probably be ignored and the media would turn its attention back to women in bikinis playing volleyball on the beach.

Rob Doster at National Review offers this opinion:

Naturally, Jones was stung by the coverage, making an emotional appearance on the Today Show the morning after her loss and offering a passionate self-defense. “I have the American record. I am the American record holder indoors, I have two world indoor titles,” she said. “Just because I don’t boast about these things, I don’t think I should be ripped apart by media. I laid it out there. I fought hard for my country and I think it’s just a shame that I have to deal with so much backlash when I’m already so brokenhearted as it is.”

No, like Kournikova, Jones is merely a world-class athlete who has failed to check the right boxes to satisfy the Times’s sensibilities.

As this episode has made clear: They might not be champions, but both Jones and Kournikova are far better at their craft than Longman is at his.

They're far better at being human beings, too, I might add.