Donald Wildmon is mainly just repackaging the day’s talking points from the Republican National Committee.
I get several Religious Right updates every day via e-mail. One of the most interesting is a daily roundup of tidbits of interest to Religious Right followers put out by the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association under the auspices of a phony news service called “One News Now.”
Wildmon and his gang use the term “news” in its loosest sense. Wildmon may include a few Associated Press dispatches in the roundup, but mainly he’s just repackaging the day’s talking points from the Republican National Committee. Let’s just say it’s not “fair and balanced.”
In fact, some of the stories on One News Now have been pretty out there. One item in September warned that if Barack Obama is defeated, African-Americans will riot in major cities.
As the election approached, One News Now morphed into “Anti-Obama News Now.” On Saturday, I received a special Wildmon bulletin informing me that Obama’s half-aunt is living in the country illegally. This was followed by a dispatch quoting right-wing activist David Horowitz, who implored John McCain to “knock enough sense in the heads of Jewish voters” so they’ll stop supporting Obama.
Yesterday the e-mail from One News Now carried this tagline: “Obama Plan Jeopardizes Thousands of Coal Jobs.” I was momentarily perplexed. Usually, the lead story in One News Now has at least some tangential connection to a “values voter” issue such as abortion, same-sex marriage or religion in public schools. Yet here I was being given a lecture on the coal industry.
Then I realized what was up: There are a lot of coal mines in Pennsylvania, and some polls had showed the race there tightening. Pennsylvania is a key swing state. You get the idea.
I don’t know who is going to win the election tonight. But I do feel confident that if Obama is elected, you can be certain that Wildmon, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson and the rest of the Religious Right’s top leaders won’t spend a lot of time crying over their losses. They’ll be back to work the next day, using One News Now and other vehicles to attack anyone, inside or outside of political life, who dares oppose their goal of “Christianizing” America. A bad day at the polls won’t shut them down.
I do wonder about one thing, however. Since the Religious Right claims to be a “Bible-based” movement that respects the authority of that book, I’d like to ask Wildmon and other leaders a question: If Obama is elected, will you respect the government he has been democratically chosen to lead, or will you seek to undermine it?
The book you champion suggests the course you ought to take. At this time of year, I am reminded of Romans 13: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”
How about it, Rev. Wildmon?
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