Light Brings Salt
Volume 3, Issue 31 July 31, 2005
Iron Range Bible
Church
Dedicated to the Systematic Exposition of the Word of God
Liberal Media Lashes Out at
Christians
-- Has Political Success Triggered
a Jihad?
Ed Vitagliano, AgapePress
This bulletin just
in: The culture wars have turned nastier than ever. And if Conserv-ative
Christians are offended by being called insane, stupid, sinister - or even the
next incarnation of fascist storm troopers -- they'd better get used to it.
The news media is a
major player in these cultural conflicts, and if there was ever a pretense of
impartiality when it came to liberal versus conservative, or secular versus
religious, that disguise has been stripped away.
Off the Charts
Over the last few
years, it seems as though more members of the media have been willing to admit
that real bias exists within the journalistic community. For example, in his
2001 book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, former
Emmy-award-winning CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg plainly said the
news media is biased against conservatives and Christians. For his honesty,
Goldberg was blasted by many of his media comrades.
But that seemed to
open the door enough to allow others in the media to come clean. Recently
Michelle Cottle, senior editor for the liberal
magazine
Others, like New
York Times' veterans Steve Roberts and R.W. Apple, and William McGowan, who has
written for Newsweek, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, have
said the same thing.
However, in the
months approaching, but especially in the months following, the 2004
presidential election, the liberal media bias against Christians seems to have
gone off the charts.
Liberal media fury
toward believers seemed to reach its apex when Christian pro-family groups
joined together in April for a televised event called "Justice
Sunday," which focused on the threat of activist judges. Numerous
columnists raged against even the concept of such a program.
'Enraged and
Paranoid Disciples' Perhaps the most vile attacks on conservative Christians
showed up in the May issue of Harper's magazine, which ran a series of cover-story
articles under the headline, "The Christian Right's War on
Harper's editor
Lewis H. Lapham began the foul festivities -- which
were worthy, at least verbally, of Nero -- with his mocking and vitriolic
article, "The Wrath of the Lamb."
Roasted on Lapham's spit was the National Association of Evangelicals,
after the group announced the release of its theological manifesto outlining
Christian responsibilities in society. The document was, Lapham
said, "a bullying threat backed with the currencies of jihadist
fervor and invincible ignorance."
The Religious
Right, in his view, consists of "increasingly large numbers of
increasingly enraged and paranoid disciples who came together as a political
constituency" just in time to get George Bush re-elected. The Christian
cultural agenda consists in "stupidity" resulting from "the
gospels of fear and hate" espoused by believers. Apparently left with some
ink in his printer cartridge, Lapham also declared
that the ideology of the Christian Right "has engulfed vast tracts of the
American mind in the fogs of superstition."
Also in Harper's
was "Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters
(NRB)," an article by Chris Hedges, an author and former journalist. The
story is based on his observations at the NRB's
annual convention. Addressing his concerns about "the new militant
Christianity," Hedges spends his 5,000 or so words mischaracterizing and
maligning believers in the worst way. What conservative Christians really want,
he apprises the reader, is to "dismantle the democratic state."
In the end, Hedges
uses what may be the worst type of slander known to the modern mind: comparing
Christians to the Nazis. He recalls the words of his
Hedges wrote:
"But fascism, warned
Mainstream Malice
Such sentiments are
common among mainstream media pundits, who lately seem much more open about
posting their malicious attacks so all can see.
Bill Maher, host of
HBO's live commentary show Real Time With Bill Maher,
seems to have a deeply-rooted disdain for religious folk in general. On MSNBC's
Scarborough Country, he told host Joe Scarborough: "I think religion is a
neurological disorder."
For some in the
media, the words Christian and dumb seem to be synonymous. CBS' 60 Minutes'
professional grouser Andy Rooney is quite open about this. After the 2004 election,
Rooney -- a self-professed atheist -- told a group of students and faculty at
In response,
Christian columnist Cal Thomas said, "That Rooney still holds his job
after stereotyping and disparaging Christians sends a message of bias, even
bigotry, to a substantial audience that CBS had mostly lost and obviously does
not care if it wins back."
When it comes to
spewing anti-Christian venom, however, columnists at the Washington Post and
New York Times are gold-medal winners. For example, in an article entitled
"What's Going On?", the Times' Paul Krugman wrote about "the threat posed by those whose
beliefs include contempt for democracy itself."
Guess who that is?
As opposed to Islamic extremists who exist as a minority in nations like the
Krugman's hysterical piece ends with this
warning: "
So Hedges likens
conservative Christians to Nazis, Krugman to Islamic
terrorists, indicating that many liberals in the media seem anxious to dredge
up every well-known villainous type they can think of and slap the label on
believers.
Washington Post
columnist Colbert I. King also has the itch to stereotype. King didn't like the
promoters of "Justice Sunday," claiming in a column that "there
is no depth to which they won't sink in their campaign to seize the
country."
The leaders of the
Religious Right, he said, "are not now and never will be the final
arbiters of Christian beliefs and values. They warrant as much deference as
religious leaders, as do members of the Ku Klux Klan, who also marched under
the cross."
At either
newspaper, however, the head man on this media hit squad has to be Frank Rich.
A talented writer, Rich unfortunately seems to relish opportunities to smite
conservative Christians with his wrath.
In his columns,
Rich has called members of the Christian Right "moral zealots" and
"God racketeers," and says they "will stop at little if they
feel it is in their interests to exploit God to achieve" their ends.
Likening them to those who burned witches at the stake in Salem and to the
Taliban in Afghanistan, Rich believes Christian conservatives are simply
"bullying" the majority into submission, having launched "a
full-scale jihad" and "McCarthyism in God's name." They are like
the fictional, fraudulent preacher Elmer Gantry, and use "the rhetoric of
George Wallace and other segregationists."
Haranguing Against the Competition
Anyone who has paid
the least bit of attention to politics over the last 40 years knows that these
diatribes by liberal media pundits are sheer hypocrisy.
Conservative columnist Don Feder, who is Jewish,
remarks, "When any other group (environmentalists, feminists, peace
activists) organizes to effect political change through education, lobbying,
and get-out-the-vote efforts, it's called ... democracy. When Christians (as
Christians) try to exercise their right as citizens, it's called sinister, an
attempted hijacking of the political process -- theocracy! ... Theocracy
(replete with heretic-roasts) is just around the corner."
However, a
politically active Christian community in the
Still, what is
driving the sheer hysterical anger of the liberal media concerning conservative
Christianity? Feder said that "the Left has come
to see evangelical Christians as the principal obstacle to the realization of
its social agenda, hence the embodiment of evil. Correspondingly, attacks on
'fundamentalists' have grown increasingly shrill."
In other words,
Christianity is the main competitor to the liberal dream of a secular paradise.
Who else would radical leftists harangue against, if not the opposition?
It is one thing for
Christian ideals to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from secular
liberalism -- that is, a competitive idea only in the abstract. But
conservative Christians are not just more involved, they're becoming more
successful in competing with secularists.
Thomas noted,
"This isn't really about religion. It's about results
.... [L]iberals fear their earthly power is
slipping away. They are less able to impose a secular leftist worldview on the
country."
For the sake of the
generations to come, Christians must continue to resist the secularization of
Ed Vitagliano, a regular contributor to AgapePress,
is news editor for AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family
Association. This article appeared in the July 2005 issue.
(c)
2005, Agape Press