{"id":1771,"date":"2012-10-30T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-can-jeremiah-wright-and-joseph-smith-teach-us-about-the-american-presidency.html"},"modified":"2012-10-30T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T16:00:00","slug":"what-can-jeremiah-wright-and-joseph-smith-teach-us-about-the-american-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-can-jeremiah-wright-and-joseph-smith-teach-us-about-the-american-presidency.html","title":{"rendered":"What Can Jeremiah Wright and Joseph Smith Teach Us about the American Presidency?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

L<\/span>ast Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan\u2019s post at\u00a0The Daily Beast<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>highlighted what he believes to be the double standard the American media has applied to the racially charged sermons delivered by President Obama\u2019s former Pastor Jeremiah Wright\u2014replayed in a constant loop in 2008\u2014and the relatively scant coverage the history of racial exclusion Mitt Romney\u2019s Mormonism<\/a> has received in 2012.<\/div>\n
\u201cIt is a fact,\u201d Sullivan writes, \u201cthat Mitt Romney belonged to a white supremacist church for 31 years of his life \u2026 which retained white supremacy as a doctrine\u00a0until 1978<\/em>.\u201d With this in mind, Sullivan asks his readers to engage in a thought experiment: \u201c[C]an you imagine the outrage if Obama had actually been a part of a black supremacist church?\u201d<\/div>\n
Sullivan intended to provoke. And provoke he did. At\u00a0Religion Dispatches<\/a><\/em>, Joanna Brooks noted that while he got many details wrong about race and Mormonism, \u201cSullivan is right to point out that there is a tremendous double standard at play\u201d when it comes to linking Wright to Obama and Mormonism to Romney. Yet in private, other Mormons\u2014even those sympathetic to Sullivan\u2019s analysis of their church\u2019s troubling past\u2014thought the timing of the piece was more provocative than its content. Sullivan\u2019s post was more a manufactured \u201cOctober surprise,\u201d or even \u201cblatant political demagoguery,\u201d as one Mormon politico told me, than serious media criticism. At\u00a0The American Conservative<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>this was more or less Rod Dreher\u2019s assessment. While sharing Sullivan\u2019s \u201cdisgust for the legacy of the anti-black theology [of] the Mormon church<\/a>,\u201d Dreher asserted that Sullivan \u201craises this because the election is very, very close, and his candidate, Obama, is in trouble.\u201d \u00a0<\/div>\n
I too found Sullivan\u2019s piece to be provocative. But unlike Dreher, and some of my Mormon friends, the lessons I take from the questions that Sullivan raises have less to do with the last two weeks of this presidential campaign, and more to do with the past four years of the Obama era. \u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0Here are three such lessons.<\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan\u2019s post at\u00a0The Daily Beast\u00a0highlighted what he believes to be the double standard the American media has applied to the racially charged sermons delivered by President Obama\u2019s former Pastor Jeremiah Wright\u2014replayed in a constant loop in 2008\u2014and the relatively scant coverage the history of racial exclusion Mitt Romney\u2019s Mormonism has received in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Can Jeremiah Wright and Joseph Smith Teach Us about the American Presidency?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan\u2019s post at The Daily Beast highlighted what he believes to be the double standard the American media has applied to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-can-jeremiah-wright-and-joseph-smith-teach-us-about-the-american-presidency.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Can Jeremiah Wright and Joseph Smith Teach Us about the American Presidency?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan\u2019s post at The Daily Beast highlighted what he believes to be the double standard the American media has applied to\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-can-jeremiah-wright-and-joseph-smith-teach-us-about-the-american-presidency.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-30T16:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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