At best, this is offensive to Jews; At worst, this is offensive to American voters; At the very worst, this is offensive to a man's relationship with god.
From Today’s Wall Street Journal:
The other day Barack Obama was visiting Israel's capital, and he stopped at the Western Wall to partake of a Jewish tradition: He deposited a written prayer into one of the wall's cracks.
This set off a bit of a kerfuffle, as the Israeli newspaper Maariv published the prayer, purportedly filched by a seminary student.
Lord--
Protect my family and me.
Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair.
Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just.
And make me an instrument of your will.
Haaretz reports that "Jerusalem lawyer Shahar Alon asked Attorney General Menachem Mazuz yesterday to order a police investigation into the removal and publication of Obama's note":
"By making the note public," Alon wrote to Mazuz, "Maariv violated the law protecting holy sites, several clauses in the penal code and also infringed upon the basic rights of a person's honor and freedom."
Maariv's response: "Obama's note was published in Maariv and other international publications following his authorization to make the content of the note public. Obama submitted a copy of the note to media outlets when he left his hotel in Jerusalem.
Thus…"what initially seemed to be a journalistic scoop of dubious moral propriety now seems to be a case of an Israeli paper being played by the Barack Obama campaign." Obama's so-called prayer was at best an open letter to God--a sentiment intended for public, not divine, consumption.
[This] tale leads one to suspect that if Obama were really praying to God, he'd have asked for something more earthly: Lord, give me a landslide!
If Obama is insincere about his religious faith, that does not speak well of his character. Then again, it is reassuring in a way, given that wacko church he belonged to for 20 years.
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wow. okay, this will be easy:
ReplyDelete1. obama's campaign did not approve the publication of the prayer nor did they distribute its contents beforehand. it's clear the paper is trying to find a defense against their possibly-illegal violation of privacy charges. the offending student who took the note has since apologized and the note has been returned.
2. while despicable to me (as both a political junkie and a secular humanist) the politicization of faith in american politics is nothing new. see such exhibits as:
A. GWB's lying about his conversion with billy graham, in order to curry political favor with evangelicals and be elected president.
B. lieberman's embrace of a fundamentalist christian who preaches a gospel that praises the destruction and painful death of lieberman's very people via the rapture.
C. and most galling of all, mccain's complete and utter flip-flop regarding jerry falwell and other "agents of intolerance". i strongly support mccain's 2000 position on this issue. this reversal is most disturbing.
all-in-all, this entire "god triangulation" charge smacks of typical right-wing campaign smear jobs, where issues are not debated honestly (see: mccain's current crop of dishonest TV propaganda) and personal attacks on one's character substitute for political discourse (see: mccain's "would rather lose a war" nonsense).
EVR, i'm disappointed to hear your voice in that echo chamber.