Friday, April 3, 2009
By the Way / Crazy Crap / Hannan / Politics Conspiracy of the Week: Obama Appoints Wife-Beating Advocate
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 6:47 AM
On AM 760, Christian Talk on Trevecca Nazarene University radio, Janet Parshall was talking about President Obama's supposedly controversial appointment of Yale Law dean Harold Koh for State Department legal advisor. Had I owned something cool like an iPhone, I could've Google'd Janet Parshall. There I would have found her 2006 appearance on Larry King Live, where she claimed gay adoption amounted to state-sanctioned child abuse. Then I could have turned my radio off.
Unfortunately, when I re-up with Verizon I go for the free phones. So I kept listening.
According to Parshall's guest, Koh once said that the Islamic law known as Sharia could be applicable in U.S. courts. Holy crap, I thought, does this mean we'll be stoning Muslim women for showing their face at 100 Oaks Regal? Parshall wondered the same thing (kind of).
"We better warn anyone thinking about stealing from a 7-11," she said. "They better be prepared to have their hands chopped off."
Crazy, racially-charged comments aside, there is precedent that would make Koh's comments incredibly creepy...
Britian has been struggling with how to adapt to a growing Muslim population. Last year, the Bishop of Canterbury told the BBC that the adoption of some types of sharia law was "unavoidable." Backlash was inevitable -- in some interpretations, sharia would make such joyous at-home activities like wife-beating legal.
Of course, that was all based on the fact that Koh actually said what he did. Which, five minutes of internet sleuthing later, proves not to be true.
Slate's Dahlia Lithwick dutifully traces the Koh-as-extremist-Muslim-supporter meme to its origins: the comments of one lawyer present at a Yale Club dinner where the appointee spoke. Those comments have since been refuted by the White House, the dinner's organizer and several people in attendance. In other words: It's bunk.
One more reason to keep the lights off those dark corners. And to stay on FM.
Comments (4)
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You should prolly reserve your appreciation for FM, I was channel surfing and heard the same thing mentioned on that wellspring of truthiness we know as WTN (DelGiorno I think, but I don't remember for certain ... I try not to linger at that cesspool for long)
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Caleb Hannan doesn't have his facts straight. Dahlia Lithwick did not debunk anything about Koh's prefference for "transnationalism" in deciding domestic legal cases or issues. Koh's the last person who should be advising the state department on legal issues. Janet Parshall is a well respected Christian proponent. She is normally on the correct side of any issue. She is on the correct side of this issue as well. This is a Christian nation. I don't want anyone with another ideology to advise this country on anything. Think about it ... do you ?
Truman, I am a Christian. But this is not, nor has ever been, a Christian nation. And it is not something that a real Christian should even strive for. The worst thing that ever happened to early Christianity was the "conversion" of Constantine because it politicized the faith. Many of the founders knew this (ever heard of the establishment clause- "congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion") and most weren't even Christian in the notion that we see things today. There were quite a few Deists (and at least two atheists) among them. We should fight the notion of the U.S. being a Christian nation, not endorse it. Politicizing Christianity is what people like Parshall and James Dobson strive to do today and it is why Christianity is in such dire shape. Parshall is well-respected in the right-wing community. I have listened to her and don't find her all that Christ-like and don't believe she is on the correct side much. But that's just me. I think the deterioration of faith in this country is the fault squarely of the Religious Right. We are just following the same path that led Europe to become so secularized. Namely that Christianity became too politically powerful and turned the masses off.
"I don't want anyone with another ideology to advise this country on anything. Think about it ... do you ?" I certainly don't want pseudo-Christians like Dobson or Parshall using Christianity as a weapon.
