Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (31 page)

Gore’s phraseology just happened to be more inept and convoluted than “invent.” Indeed, Gore’s inelegant speaking style invariably allowed his flacks to claim Gore was being “misquoted” when his lies were restated with greater clarity than he had been able to muster. Their position was that Gore could only be accused of lying if his lies were restated verbatim (which is at least an improvement over having to produce DNA evidence before accusing a Democrat of lying).

Gore’s claim to have “taken the initiative to create the Internet” was based on his having joined with a majority of senators, a majority of House members, and the president to support government funding for the Defense Department’s development of the Internet. Voting to fund the National Endowment of the Arts doesn’t make you an artist. (Though, come to think of it, receiving a grant from the NEA doesn’t make you an artist, either.)

Nonetheless, the media repeatedly asserted that Gore’s claim to have invented the Internet was a “myth.”
(He said “create”!)
It is a “myth” that had thrived despite the major media’s blackout. Liberals think that if they never admit to lying, there is no proof that they are lying. Gore misspoke, invented facts, and told lies. Thus, he was a genius—too damned smart to connect with ordinary voters. Also, the media was picking on him. Only Bush’s occasional slip of tongue was major news. Gore’s forked tongue proved nothing—except that the Bush campaign was mean for mentioning it.

This gives you some idea why the media is in a perpetual snit about “campaign finance reform.” They believe attacking politicians should be the sole prerogative of the press. A paid campaign ad might reveal unflattering information about a Democrat the media had been hiding.

NINE

shadowboxing

the apocryphal religious right

[Propaganda]proceeds by psychological manipulations, by character modifications, by the creation of feelings or stereotypes useful when the time comes. . . . The two great routes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflex and the myth.

jacques ellul,
Propaganda
¹

Like all propagandists, liberals create mythical enemies to justify their own viciousness and advance their agenda. There is no bogeyman that strikes greater terror in the left than the apocryphal “religious right.” The very phrase is a meaningless concept, an inverted construct of the left’s own Marquis de Sade lifestyle. It functions as a talismanic utterance to rally the faithful against anyone who disagrees with the well-organized conspiratorial left.

Despite the constant threat of the “religious right” in America, there is evidently no such thing as the “atheist left.” In a typical year, the
New York Times
refers to either “Christian conservatives” or the “religious right”

almost two hundred times.
²
But in a LexisNexis search of the entire
New York Times
archives, the phrases “atheist liberals” or “the atheist left” do not appear once. Only deviations from the left-wing norm merit labels.

The point of the phrase “religious right” or “Christian conservative” is not to define but to belittle. It informs the reader that the object of the sobriquet is presumptively insane by saying he is a member of it. The “religious right” serves the function of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s
1984:
“The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching.”
³

Though neither “religious” nor “right” nor even “religious right” are inherently insulting terms, they are thrown out as if they are accusations. The media is repelled by the people it believes these terms describe. Just as some people once spat out the word “Jew” as an insult (causing polite people to start using convoluted euphemisms like “person of the Hebrew faith”), “religious right” has become a slur by usage. In one of the most astonishing uses of “religious right” to mean “lunatic,” the
New York Times
explained that after September 11, 2001, leaders in Saudi Arabia were hesitant to crack down on militant clerics for fear that it “would have inflamed the religious right.”
⁴
In addition to jihad, do crazed homicidal Muslims support the devolution of power to the states?

Presumably demonstrating the sort of warm ecumenical tolerance the religious right would do well to emulate, California Congressman Vic Fazio calls Christian conservatives the “fire-breathing Christian radical right.”
⁵
President Clinton’s kindly Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders referred to citizens opposed to her condom distribution project as “the un-Christian religious right, selling out our children in the name of religion.”
⁶
Discussing the movie
Chocolat,
set in prewar France, the Reverend Jesse Jackson claimed it was a parable about the religious right: “You can just see the religious right narrowly defining the rights of others.”
⁷

If you threw a glass of cold water on a liberal in the middle of a sound sleep, he’d jerk awake denouncing the religious right.

During the 2000 election, the
New York Times
praised John McCain for attacking the religious right, saying his message was “badly needed” and “cannot be dismissed.”
⁸
Though the editorial did gently chastise McCain for having “withdrawn an earlier characterization of them as ‘evil,’ “ it went on to denounce the religious right for exercising a “bullying influence” on politics. Unlike the calm persuasion on display daily at the
Times,
the religious right was eroding “the spirit of tolerance.”

It is a thesis of long standing at the
New York Times
that the “religious right” is tyrannical because it has opinions at odds with the editorial page of the
Times.
In 1996,
Times
columnist A. M. Rosenthal denounced the religious right delegates (the “religious right” is now a state) for supporting Bob Dole at the Republican National Convention—provided they “control what he and the party do and say and where the party is going. That is agenda number one.”
⁹
Apparently other delegates were eagerly hoping to have their issues buried or forgotten by the party.

On a 1994 radio program titled “Christian Conservatives Defend Their Politics” (try to imagine a program called “Liberal Jews Defend Their Politics”) National Public Radio host Bob Edwards raised the issue of the religious right’s vast influence over the Republican party, saying “Christian conservatives showed their strength” by helping nominate a Republican gubernatorial candidate whose “platform is almost identical to the agenda of the Christian Coalition.”

Of course, another explanation for the similar “agendas” is that “Christian conservatives” have fairly conventional Republican views. The media might as well refer to anyone who favors lower marginal tax rates as the “Tax Nuts” and darkly warn of the growing influence of Tax Nuts on the Republican Party. News items would begin noting sinisterly that the Republican Party platform on taxes mirrors the agenda of the Tax Nuts. Gradually, some Republicans would gingerly state their support for a reduction in the marginal gains tax rate while loudly proclaiming that they hold the Tax Nuts in contempt and denouncing the undue influence of the Tax Nuts on the Republican Party. Reductions in the base points for calculating the capital gains tax would take on sinister connotations by virtue of association with the Tax Nuts.

Implicitly—sometimes quite explicitly—the devil-words “religious right” connote irrationality, inflexibility, simplemindedness, and judgmentalism. In 1993, the
Washington Post
informed its readers that the religious right—or the “Gospel lobby”—is composed of people who are “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”
¹⁰
A correction the next day admitted there was “no factual basis for that statement.” Attempting its own definition of the religious right, the
New York Times
reported in 1986, “Evangelical Christians are more easily led than other kinds of voters.” The
Times
cited a college professor as its authority.
¹¹

Without the pretend-accuracy,
San Francisco Chronicle
columnist Arthur Hoppe described the religious right as a woman named Maude who wants “to slog through the snow down to the Grange to pray for Pat Buchanan.”
¹²
Unlike Maude, Hoppe explained, left-wing sophisticates are “far too busy sampling restaurants, discussing films, or discovering the inner epicurean.” This sneering account of “Maude” was intended to explain how such a comically ridiculous bunch as the “religious right” kept winning at the polls. “Maude”—imaginary Maude—has nothing else to do, Hoppe explained: “Maude doesn’t jog, cruise the Internet, read Danielle Steel, play golf or otherwise waste her time.” (Or apparently “sample” restaurants.)

Revealingly, Hoppe added, “These folks certainly have a right to their beliefs.” Gee, thanks. Free speech is always a wildly counterintuitive concept for liberals. They believe free speech is something liberals magnanimously bestow on others. No matter how loathed Dan Rather is on the right, it would never occur to any conservative to proclaim that Rather, personally, on his own time, has a “right to his beliefs.” Having generously conceded that religious conservatives have a “right to their beliefs,” Hoppe immediately demanded to know “What can be done to save the country from this dedicated minority?”

A guest on National Public Radio described the religious right as “a very, very vocal minority with a lot of money that’s doing most of the unconstitutional stuff out there.” This was in contradistinction to the majority “who really don’t want to bother with how I believe and really don’t want to bother with forcing anybody to do anything that’s against their will.”
¹³

So the religious right is a “very, very small minority” whose goal is to force people to do things “against their will,” populated by an army of “easily led” corn pones. They are “fire-breathing,” sell out “our children in the name of religion,” and enjoy “narrowly defining the rights of others.” Also “evil.”

It’s hard to imagine that such an intolerant bunch would have much leverage no matter how “vocal” they are. But according to the frequent “religious right” updates in the press, this revolting minority possesses a staggering amount of influence—all the while operating under the watchful eye of a hostile media. So powerful is the left’s imaginary enemy, that Norman Lear, a multimillionaire TV producer, was said to have “walked away from his prime-time kingdom” to found People for the American Way for the sole purpose of “combat[ing] the political influence of the religious right.”’” (Imagine the Sturm and Drang if a conservative group purported to represent “the American Way.”)

Referring to the “powerful influence” of the religious right, the
Los Angeles Times
has estimated its strength at “a third or more of the primary vote in many states.”
¹⁵
The Economist
magazine put it at about a fifth.
¹⁶
In 1998
Fortune
magazine called the Christian Coalition alone the seventh most powerful lobbying group in Washington.
¹⁷

None of the figures about the religious right ever add up. The facts marshaled to demonstrate that this scary group is bent on total domination of America instantly collapse under the most cursory examination. And the members of the scheming religious right cannot be identified beyond the description of a fictitious character named Maude.

Eventually, the
New York Times
set its logicians to cracking how a small minority intent on forcing people to do things against their will could wield such vast power. The key to the disproportionate influence of the religious right—despite its universal unpopularity at the
Times
—was (1) money, and (2) a predilection to engage in bloc voting. These Christians, according to the
Times,
were using “bloc voting and substantial financial resources to single out politicians in both parties who do not share their religion-based views.” (Is that “Maude” with the deep pockets?) This set them apart from other Americans who tirelessly promote politicians who disagree with them.

For twenty years, evangelical Christians had been portrayed as toothless hicks preaching for a nickel in the Ozarks. Then—seamlessly, without remark on the shift in the Orwellian propaganda—they were transformed into Howard Hughes money men, expertly manipulating the system. Overnight, the Beverly Hillbillies became the Boys from Brazil. In fact, there is no possible method of calculating political contributions that supports the
Times’s
thesis about the “substantial financial resources” of Christian conservatives.

Using Federal Election Committee data, the Center for Responsive Politics compiled this list of the top twenty Political Action Committee (PAC) contributors to federal candidates, during the 1999-2000 election cycle:

National Association of Realtors $3,423,441

Association of Trial Lawyers of America $2,661,000

American Federation of State/County/ Municipal Employees $2,590,074

Teamsters Union $2,565,495

National Auto Dealers Association $2,498,700

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $2,470,125