No Sects Please; We're Fox News

The latest in unceasing bigotry from the Fox "News" Channel, courtesy of host John Gibson:

GIBSON [W]hat did they see when they went to the madrassa where Barack Obama went to school?

HOST: Kids playing volleyball.

GIBSON: Playing volleyball, right. They didn’t see them in any terrorist training camps?

HOST: No.

GIBSON: No. Um, but they probably didn’t show them in their little lessons where they’re bobbing their heads and memorizing the Koran.

HOST: I didn’t see any tape of that, no.

In addition, he also questioned whether the CNN reporter who visited the school hadn't maybe been a product of a madrasa as well, thereby of course implying that he must not be a very good reporter.

This is bigotry, pure and simple. Where someone went to school when he was SIX is somehow relevant to his presidential race? And the fact that Muslims move their bodies while they pray makes them potential terrorists? John Gibson obviously hasn't been to either my synagogue or to the Baptist church a few streets down from our house. If moving and bobbing while you pray makes you suspect, then we'd all better get ready to defend ourselves from charges of terrorism. No one but the Presbyterians are safe!

Barack Obama is a Christian. No matter what his parents were or weren't. No matter where he went to school as a child. Especially since the report was not even true. From the Obama campaign:
To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.

So. No matter what anyone says about his "weird sounding" name or his father's religious heritage, the man is a Christian. But how sad for our country that it even matters, that his campaign even had to release the statement above. If our current commitment to our religious belief system is to be doubted because of the beliefs of our parents and our early schooling, then quite a few of us are going to have a lot to answer for. Obama is being smeared, pure and simple. Specifically, he is being smeared by a network that usually has a soft spot for people who claim to have found Christ no matter what their background.

Unless, of course, those people are Democrats. Who are Black. With "foreign" names.

And Dick Cheney thinks questions about his daughter's pregnancy are "out of line"? How about questioning a man's faith and patriotism with not an ounce of evidence to support the charge--and in fact, copious evidence that the charges are false? How about questioning the human decency of some people simply because they pray differently than you? That's about as out of line as you can get and still retain some shred of a delusion that you are a "news" network.