Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (35 page)

Notwithstanding the kind, generous, sometimes self-deprecating responses of the “weak-minded,” to say nothing of the universal acclaim for Ventura, somehow he was portrayed as the victim. One columnist concluded that the whole affair demonstrated that “America is most virulently intolerant of one group: the irreligious.” Ventura, she lamented, “was greeted with a torrent of criticism and a plunge in his approval ratings.”
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He got flowers. What does he want? Sex? It wasn’t enough for Ventura to emit fashionable pieties of the day. He must be hailed as a martyr when he insults the powerless on behalf of the powerful.

In 1994, the Reverand Jesse Jackson blamed the Christian Coalition for the Holocaust. (Seriously: “The Christian Coalition was a strong force in Germany.”)
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While he was at it, he blamed the Christian Coalition, formed in 1989, for slavery, too. Not only that, but, Jackson said, Martin Luther King had gone to the South specifically “to fight the Christian Coalition.”
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Jackson refused to apologize, the Clinton White House refused to comment, and David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, took the occasion to criticize the “religious right.” Saperstein said religious right leaders had uttered “hate-filled statements, intolerant statements, and I think the religious right needs to be held accountable.”
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If it seems unfathomable that Heaven’s Gate cult members could have really believed a spaceship riding shotgun on Comet Hale-Bopp was coming to take them to heaven, consider that half the populace believes that a vast band of religious radicals is overrunning a nation—a nation that seemingly never tires of primetime sitcoms celebrating lesbianism, rampant promiscuity, and the perennially hilarious girl-faking-orgasm routine. Half the country not only believes in the “religious right,” but deeply fears and hates it.

The religious right is a totemic symbol, a permanent terrorizing influence on the brainwashed masses. Interrupting reports on advances by the indefatigable enemy, there are frequent bulletins breathlessly announcing its final defeat. As Orwell described the endless, phony war in
1984,
despite “the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war— one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive.”
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The “vast shadowy army”
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of the religious right can never be defeated. Periodic, apparently decisive victories against the “religious right” serve merely to inspire liberals in the absence of an inspiring ideology. Every few years, the religious right is defeated, but then always manages to stage a comeback with no explanation or reference to its earlier total annihilation.

You read the follow-up reports on the religious right and constantly find yourself wondering,
Didn’t we beat those guys a few years ago?

During its ten years in existence, the Moral Majority seemed to be constantly losing clout, interrupted on occasion by hysterical reports of its burgeoning influence. At its inception in 1980, a columnist in the
Washington Post
was already anticipating victory, rhetorically asking, “Will the 340,000 members of the Moral Majority have as much impact on the election, for example, as the approximately 16 million labor union members who are registered to vote?”
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But then one year later, the
Washington Post’s
David Broder was anxiously reporting that an “intensely religious minority was shaping “our politics and government.” They were doing so because of their “penchant for activities that make them politically influential.” (The infernal bloc voting and financial resources again!) Broder’s information was based on a public-opinion survey, the results of which he said had “flabbergasted the people who took the survey.”
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And then in 1983, the religious right was faltering.
Newsweek
stated religious conservatives were trying to “rebuild their influence” after being “frustrated” by a series of electoral losses at the local level.
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By 1984, the wily “religious right” was back! It had returned and was more powerful than ever. The
Christian Science Monitor
cited “civil-libertarians, academics, and other observers,” who declared the religious right “‘better organized and funded than in 1980.” It was a “powerful force capable of getting its conservative social agenda enacted.”
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A few years later, in 1989, the official dispatch arrived: The Moral Majority was closing its doors. The
Boston Globe
gleefully reported that Falwell “acknowledged the Moral Majority was never a large membership organization.”
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USA Today
reported that the “Moral Majority lost clout after the PTL and Jimmy Swaggart scandals undermined confidence in televange-lism.”
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It quoted “Falwell expert” professor Robert Alley of the University of Richmond as concluding, “Closing down the Moral Majority is somewhat like closing down an abandoned house.”
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Everyone, especially “experts,” agreed that the closing of the Moral Majority meant the religious right was D-E-D, dead.

But then—just a year later—the religious right had to be vanquished all over again! This time the focus was Pat Robertson, head of the Christian Coalition. Reviewing a book that told the story of this final glorious victory over the religious right, a
Los Angeles Times
headline proclaimed “Fierce in the ‘80s, Fallen in the ‘90s, the Religious Right Forgets Politics.” It could finally be declared: The wicked witch was dead. There was even a book about it.

The battle against the religious right had been a nail biter. The
Los Angeles Times
reminded readers of erstwhile presidential candidate Pat Robertson’s “war chest” of $17 million.
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To put that “war chest” in perspective, labor unions alone gave $15 million to Gore in the 2000 campaign. A “Republican” operative recounted the heyday of the religious right, saying the Robertson campaign was “what a Nazi pep rally would have been like. The group was whipped into a froth, it was a real mob mentality; they were like sheep.” In short, he said, it was “scary.”
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But that was over now. Sleep peacefully, liberals. The
Times
cheerfully reported that fully 80 percent of Robertson’s followers had dropped out of politics entirely. In what turned out to be one of many premature eulogies for Christian conservatives, the article concluded, “A return to politics-as-usual could have been predicted. The overarching trend in American politics is moderation.... Perhaps the religious right believed too strongly.” This was written in 1990.

And yet, somehow, Christian Conservatives emerged again. In 1993— three years after the headline “Religious Right Forgets Politics,” and four years after the Moral Majority was shut down like an “abandoned house”— the religious right had gained strength again! The “power of the religious right,” according to the
Washington Post,
“shook official Washington.”
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Congressmen were quoted as calling the religious right “intimidating,” saying it was “more influential than the bankers, more influential than the real estate industry and as powerful as any single labor union in America.” All this despite the fact that—as was duly noted in the exact same article—the “Gospel lobby” consisted of flocks that are “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”
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These must have been some easily intimidated congressmen.

By July 1994, the religious right was an impotent carcass again. In
USA Today,
a columnist declared, “The influence of conservative evangelicals within the Republican Party is probably weaker today than at any point in the past 15 years.”
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Even more so, evidently, than when it was shut down like an abandoned house in 1989 and then again in 1990. Later that same summer, the
Washington Post
confirmed that the religious right had thrown in the towel. The Christian Coalition had basically morphed into Christie Todd Whitman Republicans. “[I]ts leaders in Iowa and nationally are looking to move toward the center.”
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But by November of 1994, the religious right was back in the saddle, trying to impose its values on others again.
ABC World News Tonight
ran a show ominously titled “Christian Coalition Gaining Strength.” The highlight read, “The Christian Coalition is among the most powerful and well-organized political movements in the U.S., dominating the GOP in more than a dozen states. Critics say it wants to impose its values on everyone.”
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And then, two years later, the religious right was routed! The
New York Times
reported in 1996 that eight in ten Republican primary voters “do not think of themselves as members of the religious right political movement.” Forty-nine percent of all Republican voters attacked religious conservatives as divisive.
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The all-out public relations war portraying the “religious right” as vicious, intolerant oppressors had finally succeeded.

By 1998, they were out again, so they must have snuck back in since 1996. As explained in an article on conservative Christians titled “Coalition’s Political Power Ending”: “1998 might be remembered as the year that began their exile from the promised land of the Republican Party.”
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But the religious right bounced back to exercise inordinate influence on President George W. Bush. This time they went so far as to infiltrate the Department of Justice, appointing one of their own as attorney general.

Yet and still, after Pat Robertson resigned as president of the Christian Coalition in December 2001, an op-ed column in the
New York Times
announced that victory had finally been achieved. Noting the “declining importance of the man and his movement,” the column cheerfully stated, “the Christian Coalition has been losing members and financial support for “107

years

Not only is there no meaningful definition of the “religious right,” there is no coherence to its life span. It is uncanny how Orwellian it is. The “religious right” cannot be defined beyond the broadest generalities; its leaders are unknown; it exercises vast, inexplicable influence; and it is constantly being vanquished—only to rise again.

Having created a mythical enemy and trained the public to reflexively hate it, the myth can later be deployed to discredit anyone by saying he is a member of the “religious right.” Thus, instinctively, the entire talking-head cabal knew just what to say about John Ashcroft, Bush’s nominee for attorney general. He was religious right, Christian conservative, archconservative, far right, mean-spirited, wing nut, and divisive.

Liberals are like cats; they have a pre-programmed set of strictly limited behaviors. They all have the same twitches, the same tropes, the same paranoias. It is fascinating how consistent it is.

The
Los Angeles Times
described Ashcroft as “a champion of the religious right” and noted that “despite his religious beliefs,” he said “his mission as attorney general will be to enforce the law.”
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According to “observers,” the article continued, the key issue with Ashcroft was “how his strong beliefs and political ties on abortion might shape his performance as attorney general.”

NBC’s Tom Brokaw referred to Ashcroft as a “Christian activist.”
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NBC anchor Brian Williams opened the
Nightly News
on December 22, 2000, saying that Bush’s selection of Ashcroft “calms the far right politically.”
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Newsweek
assistant managing editor Evan Thomas called the Ashcroft nomination “a sop, I assume, to buy off the wing nuts.”
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Watt Street Journal
executive Washington editor Al Hunt called the nominee “mean-spirited” for voting against spending taxpayer money on government programs supported by Al Hunt.
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CNN’s Margaret Carlson said the Ashcroft appointment “thrills the right, in particular the religious right” because he was “way to the right” on issues like “Violence Against Women”
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In fact, as a senator, Ashcroft was a co-sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act, which was such a feminist lunacy that it had already been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dispensing with the pretense that “divisive” means something other than “conservative,” columnist William Raspberry called Ashcroft “highly divisive” on the grounds that Ashcroft received 100 percent ratings from both the Christian Coalition and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum.
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The “division is ideological—even theological,” Raspberry continued. Ashcroft’s “theological” divisiveness consisted of his opposition to abortion, support for the death penalty, and—most intriguingly—his support for school vouchers and a flag-burning amendment.

In a particularly comical article in the witch-hunt tradition, the
New York Times
ran a banner headline: “Religious Right Made Big Push to Put Ashcroft in Justice Dept.”
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Taking a slightly more prominent above-the-fold position than the other two front-page articles that day also attacking Bush nominees, the article nervously warned of the power of the “Christian right.” As proof that Ashcroft represented the “Christian right,” the
Times
used the phrase “Christian right” approximately eighty billion times. The Church of the New York Times was invoking its infallibility to proclaim: “Ew, yuck, he’s icky.” Enumerating the policy positions that demonstrated Ashcroft’s “outspoken support for the agenda of the religious right,” the
Times
included his opposition to public funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. If you oppose the federal government taxing waitresses in Des Moines to subsidize the New York City Opera, you must be some sort of Jesus freak. Other positions evidencing Ashcroft’s “deep religious commitment” was his support for the death penalty and opposition to gun control.