I'm not going to defend Rick Warren; well, not too much. I am going to defend Barack Obama, at the risk of looking like a hack to my friends and colleagues.
There are many reasons why the controversy over Obama's selection of Warren to perform the inaugural invocation is stupid. I plan to list every single one of them.
First, the invocation is ceremonial. It's publicity, theater, a show; to the cynical, it's marketing. It isn't policy. It won't change anyone's life. So, as a sometimes-angry gay, I'm going to take a deep breath and calm down....
Second, as publicity, it's not half bad. Since 2004 Obama has talked about ending the blue state/red state divide. Are people really surprised by this? The hoopla over Warren shows that message needs to be restated, because the divide persists. People in the media must have no idea how popular Warren is....
Third. Okay, so Rick Warren opposes gay marriage—who cares? Most people do. Rick Warren is pro-life and in many other ways a social conservative. So what? A lot of people are...
Obama is doing his job. He's saying to the country: I want to be the president of all of you, not just the ones who agree with me. This is the mistake Hillary Clinton—and a lot of Boomers—made when she ran healthcare reform in 1992. It was "us" versus "them."....
Fourth, any attempt to imply an Obama policy shift from the Warren selection is pure hypocrisy from the left, who argued against Rev. Wright as a relevant campaign topic...
The best part I liked was that, this proves that Obama is not Bush. A left wing Bush, I mean. After eight years of extreme polarization in the political discourse, and eight years of triangulation before that, I'd rather see some engagement between the poles.
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