CBS The Good Wife smears Palin and the Tea Party

You know, I don’t watch network tv.  Never. It’s a waste of time. But CBS has a show called The Good Wife which apparently has a strong political bent. Such a bent that they now have a character who is a Tea Party member named Kurt McVeigh.  And what images does that conjure up for you? What do you suppose is the message that these writers are trying to send?

I guess if Tea Partiers aren’t going to really bomb federal buildings and kill Americans in masse, then they will create the illusion for the American public of it happening.

According to this article at FoxNews, they have taken more than one jab at Sarah Palin and this is another – at her and at the Tea Party at large. As I write this I see that Megyn Kelly will be taking up this topic on her show today. I hope you watch.

It amazes me that people actually watch network television. By watching it, it’s being supported and shows like this are being supported also. I can’t picket CBS corporate headquarters, I live in Arizona and the only other way to send a message to the networks is by boycotts – something I don’t really like unless we are talking about The View. But somehow the message needs to get through to these Hollywood elites that America does not appreciate their vision of our citizens and our nation.

Hate-mongering, gun brandishing, racists: the Patriot movement.

This is a must read. I pulled some interesting parts out but the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center is quite inflammatory.

Morris Dees, the founder of the SPLC was once a hero of mine. He brought down the Klan with a very innovative strategy of filing civil law suits against them and bankrupting their organization. Dees won a $ 7 million  judgment from the Klan for the family of a lynching victim in Alabama and brought down Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance the same way.

What could be more heroic than that?

But now his firm is coming after patriots. Their characterizations of the movement are inaccurate and provocative. This report comes dangerously close to comparing patriots to domestic terrorist, Timothy McVeigh.

I know no one in the patriot movement who carry the beliefs that are found in this report. And to drop blame on talk radio and television commentators and Rep. Michele Bachmann is typical and unacceptable.

The video below defines the Oath Keepers organization.

Rage on the Right from the Southern Poverty Law Center

“We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history,” Chip Berlet, a veteran analyst of the American radical right, wrote earlier this year. “We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage.”

…

As the [right wing] movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn). Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory — the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps — before finally “debunking” it.

…

Last year also experienced levels of cross-pollination between different sectors of the radical right not seen in years. Nativist activists increasingly adopted the ideas of the Patriots; racist rants against Obama and others coursed through the Patriot movement; and conspiracy theories involving the government appeared in all kinds of right-wing venues. A good example is the upcoming Second Amendment March in Washington, D.C. The website promoting the march is topped by a picture of a colonial militiaman, and key supporters include Larry Pratt, a long-time militia enthusiast with connections to white supremacists, and Richard Mack, a conspiracy-mongering former sheriff associated with the Patriot group Oath Keepers

What may be most noteworthy about the march, however, is its date — April 19. That is the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War. And it is also the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Evangelicals “The American Taliban”?

Fans of the apocalyptic books Left Behind and Evangelicals, as well as Fox News will be to blame if anything untoward happens to TheOne, at least according to this guy and Rachal Maddow. The right, still called extreme and dangerous has the new title of “American Taliban” leveled against them. Once again, they are being compared to Timothy McVeigh. You’re not crazy but at least deluded, according to Frank Schaeffer and he adds, very dangerous. “This [Psalm 109:8] is the Old Testament equivalent of calling for a holy war.”

“Let his days be few and let another take his office.” [Psalm 109:8]

Personally, I want his “days to be few” too – as in ONE TERM, voted out of office. The only other way to get him out of office is to impeach him and I just don’t see that happening with a super majority of HIS party in Congress.

And just maybe that’s what the designer of this merchandise had in mind, too. Take note that verse 9 of this psalm is not being quoted – only verse 8. Maddow is going to keep adding verse 9  (“May his children be fatherless, his wife a widow”) to this narrative, though to keep stirring up the anti-Obama sentiments and making the right look ever more extreme and dangerous.

But let’s take a look at the context of this verse.

What a novel idea, you say? Check the context – something you’d think that “journalists” would be doing and something you’d think a person who calls himself “a man of God” would already know.

Psalm 109 is a prayer to God by one who has been falsely accused. It’s a prayer by a just man to God against those who have done him wrong, falsely accused him. According to the explanation of this Psalm in my Bible ” the psalmist is apparently the victim of a slander campaign, potentially devastating in a society where reputation and honor are paramount.”

Verses 1-3: “Oh God, whom I praise, do not be silent, for wicked and treacherous mouths attack me. They speak against me with lying tongues, with hateful words they surround me, attacking me without cause.”

Verses 6-8: “My enemies say to me: “find a lying witness, an accuser to stand by his right hand, That he may be judged and found quilty, that his plea may be in vain, MAY HIS DAYS BE FEW, MAY ANOTHER TAKE HIS OFFICE.”

Obviously, the person who used this particular psalm and verse to pray for Obama’s short tenure as president, chose the wrong Psalm. This Psalm could actually be used as a prayer for a president whose supporters believe has been wickedly slandered by the right. There are plenty on the left and in the MSM who believe that Obama has been unjustly slandered, libeled and just all around mistreated by the religious right.

But more importantly, this is a prime example of what happens when someone picks and chooses a verse or a chapter from the Bible and tries to make it fit something entirely different. Most people fall for this and don’t question it. Whoever came up with this marketing campaign, not only made a big mistake in the Psalm and verse, but has done nothing to further the cause for which he seems to stand. In fact, he has harmed his own cause and the Christian right who would never dream of praying for this.  Just like once again, the crazy who killed Dr. Tiller (while in church, no less) is being trotted out as the specimen of Christian America. Just as abortion bombers don’t further the cause of the pro-life activists.

This kind of marketing hurts Christians and should be called out for what it is: stupid, misguided, dangerous and contrary to the cause of Christian Americans.