The Christian Candidate, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #185

August 30, 2010 Mike Gold 0 Comments

If you’re reading this Monday morning, then I assume you’re awake. That’s probably one-up on me, as I should be in bed after driving back from the Baltimore Comic-Con. So I’m writing this Wednesday night, a tad earlier than usual. Just in case something happened in the interim.

Earlier today I listened to Pat Buchanan, über-conservative, columnist, wag, former Nixonite, and former conservative presidential candidate. And he sounds scared shitless – over Sarah Palin. He makes a good case for why she would get the Republican presidential nomination, should we remain frozen in time between today and the 2012 primaries.

Pat’s focusing on the fact that Palin’s not running as a Republican, not as a tea bagger, not as a conservative, but as a Christian Woman (double-caps intentional). Palin’s got the support of 76% of all Republicans polled by Gallup a month ago – and that’s 11 points higher than the runner-up. The poll was before her victories in last week’s primaries; having shown to have coat-tails, it is logical to assume she’s even more popular now.

Is that what the Republican Party has come down to? Has religious freedom deteriorated so badly that a pathetically ignorant candidate who treats every question of substance as an attack against her gender, her race, her faith, and America’s founding fathers can command the lion’s share of support in her party? Really?

54% of Republicans, as opposed to 27% of Democrats, have a negative view of Islam. They say they like Freedom of Religion, but they don’t want to allow Muslims the same right to build their house of worship under the same terms they grant to Christians. I’d say Jews as well, but fellow columnist Martha Thomases headed that off in an email to me noting a 1999 effort to prevent building a synagogue in New Rochelle, New York, the suburban home of Robert Petrie. But even a great many of those who claim they do not have a negative view of Islam are opposed to the location of a mosque near the World Trade Center and that is a clear-cut position in opposition to Freedom of Religion. If you think the mosque – funded by the second largest shareholder in Fox News, oddly enough – shouldn’t be built there, then you are a bigot, pure and simple.

And you do not understand what the American democracy is all about. The Bill of Rights was written and passed in order to protect the rights of the minorities, and without the Bill of Rights the Constitution would not have been ratified. That’s historical fact. In other words, if 54% of all Americans felt that blacks should be sent back to Africa, that doesn’t mean blacks can be sent back to Africa. If 54% of all Americans feel Jews should be put to death for killing their savior and starting the Plague, that doesn’t mean that Jews can be put to death in America.

Running as a Christian Woman, Sarah Palin is running as a blatant bigot. By backing her by such an astonishing margin, the Republican Party has defined itself as a bigoted party.

That used to be un-American, you know.

Media metaphysician and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every day at the same venue.