First off, I have a lot of respect for Reverend Michael Pfleger, the white pastor of Saint Sabina Catholic Church, a primarily African American congregation on the south side of Chicago. He has been a passionate activist in those neighborhoods, working to make life better for the people there for decades now. That said, I think his recent comments about Hillary Clinton, accusing her of being a white elitist and possible racist, were totally wrong and inappropriate.

Nevertheless, I'm sick of the media making a huge deal out of yet another shocking thing said by some pastor, and trying to pin it on the candidates he supports. I'm especially fed up with the huge double standard in the media. Conservative religious leaders (Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Dobson, etc.) have been saying crazy and offensive shit for years and yet usually it barely makes the news and of course almost never sticks to whatever Republican candidate they are backing. And yet all of a sudden the news media has discovered that liberal pastors have passionate opinions too, and sometimes express them in rather extreme ways, and have apparently decided that Democrats, and Obama in particular, need to be held accountable for every wacky thing these ministers say, regardless of the politicians' own views are or how often they denounce said pastors.

Enough already. Let the politicians speak for themselves and let the pastors fill their necessary role as prophetic voices to those in power, without assuming that either one represents the other. The news media needs to find something better to talk about - like howabout the actual issues for a change? (Which is why I was glad to see that the Obama campaign chose to spend yesterday talking about their Iraq policy rather than give undue attention to this largely irrelevant story.)

Labels: Obama, politics