Get Religion Didn't Get It This Time

I've been a regular reader of GetReligion.org for a long time. Without checking, I'll assume their link is still somewhere on the bottom left of this page. I originally went over there because Terry Mattingly, one of the more interesting, conservative voices in religious journalism, was critiquing how the press covers religion news, the reporting of which has been my part-time vocation for some time now. Mattingly is Antiochian Orthodox and a damn fine journalist. I read his column "On Religion" for many years. He assembled a pretty good media critique group at Get Religion, including Mollie Ziegler, one of my favorites over there. Lately, the whole crew seems to have lurched toward more traditional/orthodox/conservative lenses when critiquing the news (and I have no idea which word to use because they are all so vague). It's possible that I've lurched farther left, and they've stayed planted, like a tree by the water...sorry. This isn't about the conservatism though; rather, it's about Mollie's last column.

I'm sure no one who pays attention has missed the Sanford debacle. And I'm equally sure that almost no one is surprised. I've yet to put together how the local news in SC knew about the year-long affair earlier than the rest of us, but that may be a matter of me not paying attention or them waiting to get their sources and facts in order. Mollie, articulating one of the reasons I have a journalism crush on her, writes that she loves a good scandal, especially a sex scandal. And who doesn't? As an independent, I get to wallow in schadenfreude no matter the party, but I confess to giggling with slightly more impish glee when it's a Christian, Republican, Promise Keeper, Conservative, etc. Sanford fits almost every category. I mean every category, including demagogue—famously refusing stimulus package funds while his state gets the shit kicked out of it. Meanwhile, he can apparently afford to carry on an affair in Argentina. Ah...Christianity as political language game and politics as Christian form of life. Delightful. Oh that Wittgenstein were alive to see this.

Back to Mollie. After her admission, she goes on to write:

And yet what struck me about the media coverage was how it seemed to miss what I found most interesting about the press conference. Sanford will get what he deserves, I’m sure, but have you ever seen such a display of real flesh and blood and torment? Usually when politicians confess to cheating on their wives, they remind me most of robots. I’m still not convinced that John Edwards, Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer and Jim McGreevey are actual humans. All the emotion seems manufactured. If the speeches aren’t scripted by a high-priced damage control firm, I’d be shocked. But this? This was real. It was downright uncomfortable to watch someone be so honest about their horrendous moral failings. He was visibly shaken by the damage he’d caused his family.

Yes, I've seen it before. Jimmy Swaggart crying while confessing, "I have sinned..." while his poor wife and kids watched him ham it up for Jesus. Jim Bakker. Ted Haggard. (By the way, avoid Christian leaders with a double, repeating consonant in their last name.) There are others I'm sure. Agreed, these men weren't politicians, although I'm pretty sure Haggard fancied himself as someone who was important in politics. The point is that there is no reason to talk about a conservative Christian showing emotion at a press conference, even when that man is a politician. I'm not sure who takes claims of faith and fallenness seriously anymore. Christians have insisted for so long that it's a matter of accepting Jesus into your heart or believing the right doctrine that people finally believe them and expect them to be utter hypocrites. Had they been insisting all along that it was a matter of living like you believed in the resurrection or that death didn't matter or that a transformed life was the evidence of faith, then his press conference would have been riveting. As it is, it was just pathetic. The banal stories, the oblique justifications, the "I'm a bottom line guy" shit when it took him nearly ten minutes to get to the bottom line. All of it was tired theater. Like a movie with a canned plot that looks so familiar: remove actor, replace with younger actor, update set and fashions, voila.

What would have been fascinating would have been for a reporter to say, "Enough of the God's law nonsense. You broke a promise to your wife. We needn't introduce your absentee God, nor his tawdry preoccupation with sex, nor explanations of sin and grace or human frailty for you to say very simply that you fucked up." It is time for reporters to stop acting like Christianity has anything to do with Christian politicians who adopt the culture and values of White Dixie Fundamentalists and can't list the ten commandments, no matter how many granite monuments they approve. I may be cynical, but this has nothing to do with religion, except as a cautionary tale for those who actually do use some god's name in vain.

Comments

[cheek]

I did find it interesting that he basically confessed to wishing he could leave is family and job to go be with this woman. Not many politicians admit to loving "the other woman" in these situations. I'm not sure that it makes him any better, and there's a way in which it is worse as it must be awful for his family to hear that on tv.

It's beginning to seem like every remotely attractive male politician is bound to be cheating. Does this mean it's only a matter of time for Obama?

[Leighton]

I'm actually surprised at his going AWOL and lying to his staff and lieutenant governor about his whereabouts for six days. The affair, not so much; anyone who takes so much of an interest in what other people do in the bedroom is probably coming at the issue from the perspective of "I'm miserable, so you should be too," and will likely drop everything he claims to believe at the first hint of real passion. But the job abandonment doesn't fit any pattern I'm aware of. And while I'm pretty disgusted at widespread coverage of sex stories I consider to be none of my business* (excepting figures like Spitzer whose indiscretions ran afoul of the law), I'm even more disgusted at the two threads of coverage I've seen: one, like Ziegler's, is gobsmacked by the show of sincerity, and ignoring that the honesty was most likely a very last-minute forced decision made without time to consult PR professionals; the other, pointing out that this affair has killed his political career, without mentioning that the affair shouldn't be the biggest issue. It bothers me that the latter thread is probably right. The conservative base won't vote for him because of his adultery**, rather than refusing to vote for him because he's the kind of person so estranged from himself that spurts of emotion cause him to abandon his responsibilities entirely.

* I'm on the fence about whether this is or not. As a rule I don't care what other people do, be they public or private figures, but it does seem relevant when people who bang the drum about protecting the sacred institution of marriage turn out not to give a shit about their own.

** The dealbreaker is likely getting caught in adultery rather than the adultery itself, since providing good PR for conservative Christianity is much more important for public figures than actually living well; but that's a complaint for another time.

[Leighton]

Yay, more Sanford goofiness: he won't resign because King David didn't resign over Bathsheba. Given that he has abased himself and gone out of his way to apologize for exactly the wrong thing, it makes sense that he reads David's murder of Uriah as irrelevant and unworthy of mention next to the somehow more grievous sin of sleeping with his wife while he was away at war.