The Mitt Romney camp has launched a free media campaign aimed at getting the Mittster's poll number up where his fundraising and debate performance stats are. The vehicle: one Reverend Al Sharpton, who in a debate this week with noted drunkard atheist, author and friend to Kurds everywhere Christopher Hitchens, said the following:
"As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation..." Now that would be perfectly awful, if Sharpton were going after Mitt's Mormonism. But wait, there's more to the story...
Team Romney culled the comment (audio here) from a New York Times blog entry, and went whole hog with it yesterday (it wound up in the Miami Herald this morning.) Said the Romnettes:
"It is terribly disheartening and disappointing to hear Reverend Sharpton offer such appalling comments about a fellow American's faith," said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. "America is a nation of many faiths and common values, and bigotry toward anyone because of their beliefs is unacceptable." Aw...
Well, thanks to our regional P.D., we got Rev. Sharpton on the line this morning on the big radio show, and he 'splained the context behind his comments on Mitt. According to Sharpton, he had just been pelted by the anti-religious Hitchens with a stream of invectives against religion in public life including a diatribe about the fact that in Hitchens' estimate, it's an outrage that we have a Mormon in the race for president whose religion advocates such things as the separation of the races. Sharpton says he responded that there's no need to worry about that, because "those of us who believe in God (as contrasted with Hitchens) would defeat that Mormon."
Context is everything.
Labels: Al Sharpton, Christopher Hitchens, religion |
