Mister Darcy in ’08!

September 10, 2007 By

MrDarcyIt’s too bad that “Contrarian” is already taken as the name of a standing column in Time, because contrarianism has been Michael Kinsley’s default setting for decades. During his years as one of the hosts of Crossfire, Kinsley regularly dismissed pro-lifers with a Frenchman’s wave by insisting that they either should advocate jailing all women who had abortions or they lacked the courage of their convictions.

In this week’s Time, Kinsley complains about the prominence of Godtalk. Did you know that candidates are now “required to wear their religion on their sleeve”? Kinsley neglects to name the villain who is requiring this, or the penalties that candidates must pay if they wear their religion elsewhere on the body.

By Kinsley’s lights, even the saintly Mario Cumo is guilty — not just of pandering to believers, but of lying to them:

Catholic liberal politicians since Mario Cuomo have said they personally accept the doctrine of their church but nevertheless believe in a woman’s right to choose. This is silly. There is no right to choose murder. Either these politicians are lying to their church, or they are lying to us.

By the end of his column, though, Kinsley’s indignation reaches its — well, as he might call it, its logical conclusion:

The patina of age may explain why Jesus’ walking on water is easier to believe than [Joseph] Smith’s golden plates and magic glasses. But it doesn’t go far in justifying the distinction. For me, any candidate who believes in the literal truth of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon or the novels of Jane Austen is probably too credulous to be President.

Then again, Christopher Hitchens keeps insisting that he’s unable to find anyone — even in the gothic Deep South! — who really believes in the basic doctrines of Christianity, such as Jesus’ virgin birth.

I think we now have the killer question for the next YouTube debate on CNN.

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Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, Evangelicals, People, Politics
  • Jerry

    Did you know that candidates are now “required to wear their religion on their sleeve”? Kinsley neglects to name the villain who is requiring this, or the penalties that candidates must pay if they wear their religion elsewhere on the body.

    Doug, I can’t make up my mind if you’re really being very sarcastic or not. Or perhaps using sarcasm to indicate how upset you are about American’s attitudes indicating that strong belief (and belief that is seen to be strong, of course) being necessary to get many people’s votes.

    For anyone who missed that story

    Americans still believe that it’s important for a president to have strong religious beliefs, a new study shows.

    http://pewforum.org/news/rss.php?NewsID=14172

  • Dan LaHood

    I wish Mr. Hitchens would ask me. I really really believe in the Virgin Birth. For the longest time I thought Hitchens was trying to evoke the Christian version of his pal Rushdie’s Iman imposed fatwa. It seems, sad to say, that Missionary of Charity Hit Nuns have NOT attempted to poison his claret. After watching his big showdown with Rev. Al though I see what Chris hates more than Religion is Death. So in that lay Hope for Mr. H.

  • Ed Mechmann

    So, let’s see… St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Thomas More, Benedict XVI, John Paul II, not to mention Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, John Adams, and just about every great political thinker and head of state prior to the 20th Century, are all too “credulous” (i.e., stupid) for Kinsley to consider as qualified to be President.

    At what point does such open and ignorant anti-religious bigotry disqualify somebody from enjoying the respect of the mainstream media?

  • Maureen

    Chris Hitchens obviously doesn’t hang with Stephen Colbert, aka “Mr. Nicene Guy”. :)

  • http://onlinefaith.blogspot.com C. Wingate

    Of course this is really about Mitt Romney and only Mitt Romney. I expect that (to pull one from a hat) Hillary Clinton’s belief in the Nicene Creed is unexceptionally orthodox. And of course, all the Godtalk is the penalty for stepping into territory where the answers are all religious. But perhaps what this says most about is who Time thinks their audience is (and Newsweek, for that matter– the latter’s “God Is Really Dead This Time” annual Christmas issue says it all).

  • http://wwrtc.blogspot.com Art Deco

    At what point does such open and ignorant anti-religious bigotry disqualify somebody from enjoying the respect of the mainstream media?

    In Kinsley’s defense, he has been, over the years, a writer of some intellectual independence. The rap on his writings, for about twenty years now, is that they are clever, and that is all.

  • http://www.ecben.net Will

    Those Janeites, trying to impose their beliefs on us!

  • http://www.ecben.net Will

    What is the support for the claim that Lincoln was a Biblical literalist? In his day, he had a reputation as an “infidel” because he found all extant churches too theologically restrictive to join. (I suspect that if he was alive today, he would be Unitarian.)

  • http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2 Douglas LeBlanc

    Jerry,

    I was being sarcastic in response to Kinsley’s pairing the phrase “wearing religion on their sleeve” (a front-loaded pejorative reference) with “required.”

    There’s quite a difference between acknowledging that voters consider faith important and making it sound as if we live within the pages of The Handmaid’s Tale.

  • Jerry

    I was being sarcastic

    Sarcasm can be a problem as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm_mark explores.

  • http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2 Douglas LeBlanc

    Dear Jerry,

    I’d never thought before of using sarcasm marks, and I enjoyed reading about the variety of approaches to those marks.

    Would sarcasm marks clarified matters in this case, though? Your earlier comment suggested that you understood I was being sarcastic, but were not sure what I was being sarcastic about.

    I appreciate the challenge, which will prompt me to write more clearly — and probably with less sarcasm.

  • http://www.ecben.net Will

    Sometimes even THIS IS SARCASM–> is not enough, from my personal experience.