Paul Raushenbush: June 2009 Archives

Alec Baldwin wants me to move on and not pay attention to the Mark Sanford fandango.  I basically agree.  But over the last couple of days I have been wondering why the Mark Sanford affair rankles me more than, say, the Elliot Spitzer affair.  And it is, of course, because of Sanford's hypocracy. 

Mark Sanford has made a career of moralizing against other people.  The (until soon) Governor voted to impeach then President Bill Clinton for his moral illegitimacy and claims that marriage among gays and lesbians undermines the institution.  On the other hand, Elliot Spitzer never threw stones against other adulterers knowing full well that the shards of glass of his own house might cut him.  He also was a staunch supporter of gay marriage, perhaps because he was inspired by the determination of the gay community to be married in the face of all obstacles, when he could and did take his marriage for granted.

It is the bald hypocrisy of Sanford that makes me gloat over his downfall.  But it begs the question of the font of his hypocrisy.  Unfortunately, I think it may be faith.  Sanford is constantly described as a man of deep faith.  Instead of his faith giving him insight into the deep fallible nature of humans and fueling his compassion for others; his faith has been used as a moralizing bludgeon for attack and condemnation. 

Now that it is his turn in the shame spotlight he will assuredly use his faith to promote a repentance and forgiveness scheme for himself like the Ted Haggards.  But the damage he has done and his systematic judgment of others he used as the faithful ladder of his career has lost its power to elevate. 

All that Sanford and the other hypocrites like him can hope for is that God will break them of their arrogance and make them new as people of compassion and acceptance.  

"The whole world is watching" is a chant that many of us shouted as we marched and protested in vain to stop the Iraq war before it began.   The phrase indicated both a belief that it was important for the outside world to see that there was resistance within the United States to President Bush's reckless policies, as well as a fact that through the power of phones and video cameras that there was no act of aggression by the police that would not be recorded and put on the internet for world consumption.

Now President Obama has used that community activist phrase on the government of Iran in hopes that it might give heart to those protesting as well as a reminder to the Iranian religous and political figures that as much as they try to suppress information about the murder and incarceration of protesters  it will still be seen by billions of people around the world. 

Our President used another phrase that is perhaps one of the most striking progressive statements of the 21^st century. Offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., the proclaimation reads: The Moral Arc of the Universe is long but it bends towards Justice.   As an African American, only our current President could have the moral authority and personal witness to proclaim this truth to the Iranian people and not have it sound false or self serving (imagine if Senator McCain or President Bush tried trotting out this line). 

After the Lebanese electon and before the Iranian one I wrote about the Obama effect on Middle Eastern elections.   Tobin Harshaw of the Opinionator at the NYTimes reported that some Bush officials are now claiming that it was the hard power of the Iraq war and subsequent "nascent democracy" in Iraq that caused these protest.    The fact that hardlner Ahmadinejad was was elected over a moderate candidate after the invasion of Iraq and that Iran's power in the region has increased since the invason doesn't seem to phase this neo-con fantasy of history.  

Instead it is clear that it is the election and leadership of our current president with his history of opposition to the Iraq war and the triumph of justice that his election represents to our own country, which is supplying the soft power of hope that America is able to provide to the pro-democracy forces in iran.

The whole world is watching, hoping, and believing that the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.    America is now helping to bend the world in the right direction.

Chris Rock had a great riff in one of his early stand up comedy routines which basically said how he was scared to death of white teenage boys.  This was the time around the Columbine shootings and the joke was funny because it played off of a contradicting mainstream American fear of grown black males, a demographic of which Chris Rock is of course a member. 

For better or for worse (neither I guess) we have witnessed a leveling of the American fear field as predicted by Mr. Rock. The bread and butter American fears of people of color and of different faiths have been complicated by recent events. The Jewish community experienced violence threatened and actualized by extremists from across the rainbow of color and religion first at the Synagogue in the Bronx followed by the Holocaust Museum in DC. In between we have a Christian doctor gunned down in church by an anti-abortion Christian extremist.

There is a fearful current in America that is beginning to violently surface.  Fox News analyst Shep Smith spoke about his experience of this anger:

"...in the wake of today's shooting at the Holocaust Museum, Smith went on the air today to talk about the emails he's been receiving for "the past few months," and how they've been getting "more and more frightening."

SMITH: There are people now, who are way out there on a limb. And I think they're just out there on a limb with the email they send us. Because I read it, and they are out there. I mean, out there in a scary place...I could read a hundred of them like this...I mean from today. People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous."

He went on to read an email, filled with the usual paranoid "birther" nonsense, which included an admonishment to Smith. "This is, I promise, a representative sample of the kind of things that we get here," Smith said.

Much of the anger that Smith is talking about is coming from those who feel disempowered and fearful under the Obama administration.  Fears about his supposed racisim and socialism are fueled on the internet and by some unfortunate pundits and politicians.  Where there is frustration and a sense of powerlessness there is also a tendency towards violence. 

America's new awareness of the truth that violence can and has come from any group at any time demands our response.  No single group can look at another and say the problem is them, because every demographic has its own extremists  It forces each of us to take responsibility for maintaining and lifting others to a higher ground within whatever racial or religious identity we hold.  When we encounter extremists within our own community we have the duty to disabuse them of their disturbed fantasies, and when they are threatening violence we should contact the police.

Being equal in fear is not a religious or American goal, instead it is to be equal in justice and respect.  Its up to us.