poke in the eye

[anotheranon]

This is the reason that while I supported Obama, I never thought he was the second coming.

This is apparently an effort to "reach across the aisle", and one might argue it's better an anti-gay, anti-choice fundie reading the invocation at the inauguration* is better than one being appointed to a position of power, but it still stings. I think Ezra Klein nailed it when he wrote:

The tolerance Obama is asking for, in other words, is not from Warren. It's from the LGBT community, and women. He is asking them to be tolerant of Warren's intolerance. It's a cruel play, framed to marginalize the legitimate anger of those who Warren harms and discriminates against.

I would like for once to see an elected Democrat that doesn't feel the need to appease a hateful religious right that is never, ever going to be in his/her corner.

I'm still glad Obama's elected, I just think his feet should be held to the fire for backhanding his base.

*I won't even get into why there's an invocation of any kind at the inauguration.

Comments

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

The best inauguration I've ever seen was when governor Ritter of CO, had a native American holy man do a ceremony over him and his wife in front of the capital.

yeah, but...

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

...the principle of the thing is separation of church and state - no religious ceremony of ANY kind should be happening, IMHO.

Re: yeah, but...

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

I agree, it's just that that ceremony didn't feel (or sound) religious at all..more like a gesture of historical healing and bonding.

[fencerchica.livejournal.com]

100% agreed. If Obama is doing this as an attempt to gain political bargaining power with the Right, I'm highly skeptical it'll actually achieve anything except making him appear weak in their eyes. And the attempt comes at the expense of alienating some of Obama's staunchest supporters. However, hopefully he'll prove our skepticism unfounded -- I would be willing to forgive and forget all if he follows up on this ASAP with a gesture of goodwill towards the GLBT community such as, say, pushing legislation to remove the so-called DADT policy in the military, and/or something such as reversing the Bush policies requiring abstinence-only for foreign aid programs.

Publius over at Obsidian Wings made an effort at playing devil's advocate for Obama's decision re: Warren, but I'm still not convinced. http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/12/wedge.html

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I read the article, and I do kinda see what they're saying - as fundies go, Warren's a lot more moderate than, say, Phelps. It's picking the lesser of two (or more) evils in an effort to please both left and right yet seems to end up angering both.

Democratic willingness to court the "batshit crazy" fundie vote has always staggered me, even more so when it's not in an election year/the Dem in question is comfortably in office (like Obama) - this doesn't work because no matter how many religious noises the candidate makes it's never going to be enough for these people.

I will wait and see. Obama is the politician, not I, and I'm willing to grant that he may have something up his sleeve to counter this.

[belfebe.livejournal.com]

Even Perez Hilton said "This shouldn't have happened if Hillary had won."

Oh, well. I guess he will learn in time. One can only hope . . .