SCREW THE EVANGELICAL VOTE!

Would someone who knows someone at CNN please pass on a request that they cease and desist from treating anything James Dobson says as news? This intellectual shitkicker may have puffed himself up enough to think he’s got enough moral highground to evaluate the authenticity of the candidates, but does CNN have to back up his bullshit by putting him on the air? Falwell may have gone and built himself a voting block once, but Falwell’s dead. And frankly he can take his flock with him. Let McCain lick the barbecue sauce off the jowls of the Robertsons, Hagees and Dobsons of the world, as he flip flops from calling them agents of intolerance to angels of support. In the best of all possible worlds, candidates and news organizations wouldn’t pander to the dumb vote. The moron vote. The ignorant vote. Instead they would say: screw ‘em.

Screw soliciting the opinions of anyone whose sense of values stems from the learnin’ they got at an institution as inherently oxymoronic as Bible College. Screw the literal-minded clods and their comically transparent efforts to wedge a pseudo science, whether it’s called Creationism or Intelligent Design into a school curriculum. Screw those whose brains have been washed from birth with notions of the Bible as history instead of metaphor and poetry, and who therefore can’t cipher their way to even the most simple of conclusions that if religion is to have any meaning at all, it must be grounded in compassion. Not intolerance. In knowledge. Not superstition. In morality. Not moralizing. In wisdom, not willful ignorance and blind obedience. Anyone… regardless of whether they call themselves Pastor or Reverend, and no matter how many million suckers are in their TV ministry… anyone who actually advances the notion that God wants you to vote Republican to protect the country against the abortionists and homosexuals should not be advising the electorate or counseling presidents. They should be strapped to a gurney in a sanitarium with a Lithium I.V.

How did this country become so colossally retarded? Sure, there will always be the lunatic fringe. The snake handlers and revival tent hucksters. But they belong on the fringe. Not playing host to presidential candidates. Or advising politicians. Or on CNN making any comment whatsoever that has to do with public policy. Unfortunately, that’s not our political reality. It’s clear Obama is reaching out for the evangelicals with words like values, and faith and family stitched into his latest speech. That’s fine. A vote’s a vote. And it should be obvious to anyone with ears that Obama is a moral man, which is why he may get many of those votes. But it’s not up to cartoon characters like James Dobson to evaluate the sincerity of his message. Nor is it the place of a news organization to stick him on TV as an authority, simply because morons listen to what he says.