Explaining Obama’s Inaugural Invocation Rickroll
Posted on December 18, 2008 at 9:09 amSo you were expecting a Unitarian Universalist? A woman from some enlightened liberal mainline denomination, perhaps?
For all those upset about Barack Obama picking evangelical pastor Rick Warren to do the inaugural invocation, I have two questions.
One, who exactly did you think we elected President of the United States?
And two, what about the election results leads you to believe that Barack Obama will be looking to satiate your every liberal longing?
First things first, Barack Obama is nothing if not a politician. He may have run as a revolutionary, fresh-faced change agent but he didn’t get where he is by being stupid or naive. He did not get where he is by kowtowing to some narrow liberal ideology. He got where he is by surveying the landscape looking for an in and then proceeding to do what was necessary to stay in.
This is a man who became editor of the Harvard Law review, the first African American in that position, not by playing to his base, not by rewarding those who by necessity have to back him in the end, but by reaching out to those who may oppose him.
Barack Obama got to be the editor of the Harvard Law review by exploiting who he was and who he was imagined to be, sure, but he also reached out to the opposition in order to either gain their support or, just as good, quiet their animus.
Remember who received the payback once Obama was installed as editor at Harvard. It was not the campus liberal and blacks, at least not exclusively, it was the conservative Federalist Society.
This is man with a history of moving away from his base once he has achieved power. Because, in the end, it wasn’t really the activists and strong Democrats who gave him his margins of victory in 2008.
They voted for Mondale, Duakisis, Gore and Kerry, after all. And they all lost.
Obama’s margin of victory came from those independents and Republicans who, after eight years of disgrace, took a chance on the new, fresh-faced Democrat.
Despite the “enlightened” agnostic, humanist views of his more vociferous supporters, this country is still a very religious place and that religion, while certainly not the strident theocratic nonsense of Pat Robertson, is not an unconservative one.
Politics is not just about getting elected and then proceeding to enact and advocate immediately the policy wishes of your base. It is about establishing a mandate. It is about marginalizing your opposition.
Choices like this one will do just that. Rick Warren’s presence at the inauguration will make conservative leaders look out of touch and unhinged every time they try to paint Obama a cultural alien. That has power.
Obama is not a man looking to just get by politically. His 50 state strategy proved that. He doesn’t just seek to govern, he means to rule. To do that, he needs not only his base but the support of those who either did not or reluctantly pushed that button for him. He needs his opposition marginalized and declawed.
This choice does all that symbolically while in real terms does nothing to change policy. It changes only perception.
And interestingly, despite the bile coming from the Left over the decision, it is this traditional religious and, yes, conservative perception that Obama will need if he is ever to change hearts and minds on the issue of gay rights and other social issues.
Just as it took a fervent anti-communist to open the door to China, it will take a man who takes religion seriously to ever transform evangelicalism into a progressive force for change.
Liberals may not like this decision viscerally but after somber reflection they must give credit to Obama for the political masterstroke here and recognize that, in the end, he made the only choice that could ever serve to advance the liberal agenda on the very issues they are now so up in arms about in regard to Rick Warren.
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Comments
24 Responses to “Explaining Obama’s Inaugural Invocation Rickroll”
Amen.
- Matthew
Nail, meet hammer.
[...] who exactly did you think we elected President of the United States? [...]
One more thing: A+++ on the headline. Would read again.
“Never gonna turn around and desert you…”
It’s just a little extra slap-in-the-face for the LGBT community in CA, already smarting from the perceived slight w/ Prop H8. It’s a little bit like Bob Corker telling UAW workers that they have to take a pay cut because Rick Wagoner needs his $16M salary.
Its not as if I went home and cried my eyes out whilst scraping off the Obama bumper sticker. I’m sure ol’ Pastor Rick will give a fine invocation free of socially conservative rhetoric…but Obama has been a member of one of the more liberal Christian denominations in the country for 20 some odd years. He chose his church in large part because of its political activism. It would just be nice to see him acknowledge the other forms of Christianity out there other than Southern Baptist Evangelicals that have reigned for the past couple decades in American politics.
Totally disagree with the characterization of O as would-be “ruler”. He’s a leader, but not a ruler. There’s a big difference, and it’s not wasted on Obama. Bush was a “ruler”. Bob Corker is a “ruler”. Lamar Alexander is more of a leader.
Choices like this one will do just that. Rick Warren’s presence at the inauguration will make conservatives leaders look out of touch and unhinged everytime they try to paint Obama a cultural alien. That has power.
I would use different words and could argue semantics but what Obama has done is tell religious conservatives that he cares about them too. In return, religious conservatives will be more open to Obama and his ideas.
religious conservatives will be more open to Obama and his ideas
Or they’ll just ostracize Rick Warren.
This isn’t going to stop your average religious conservative from seeing Obama as a Marxist Muslim though. I’d imagine most of them would see it as a cheap attempt at pandering. And it is. If this action really does “marginalize the opposition” for any length of time, I’ll be shocked. I’d be glad to be proven wrong over this, but somehow I don’t think this is going to matter to the average conservative who believes Obama to be the Anti-Christ.
However, my issue with Rick Warren isn’t so much that I disagree with him politically, it’s that he’s turning religion into Religion (TM, All Rights Reserved). He’s more of a businessman selling a product than a pastor.
[...] 2. I know I should be outraged, but I just can’t work up the effort to give a shit. There shouldn’t be ministers invoking or benedicting or praying or asking some god’s blessing at the inaguration period. I don’t care if it’s some rabidly homophobic jackass like Rick Warren or some old guy who looks like a peanut M&M like my dad. Does it grate that there’s going to be some homophobic zealot jackass speaking for and to his god at the inaguration like the difference between homophobic religious zealots who want to control women and everyone else is just a difference of opinion? Yes. But why is any minister there in the first place? Wake me up when we’re having that discussion. [...]
Relax. Warren won’t be praying for Obama. He will be praying to Obama.
Ok, so who should he pick, folks?
…
…
*crickets*
…
That’s what I thought. Oh, wait a minute - what about Oprah?
- Matthew
Bishop Desmond Tutu.
I wish he’d stop playing games and bring in the minister that he really admires and that is of course Rev. Wright . The good rev could get up and just let loose. All you kkka honkies out there I hope you freezeeeeeeeeee your white hine ends off. WE WON HAHAHA!
But isn’t the bigger point that there shouldn’t be anyone there at all? We don’t have a state religion so why are the Christians included in this at all?
Dan,
I wish he’d let Wright do it as well, it would certainly be a better invocation.
Aunt B.,
Because an Atheist has yet to win the Presidency.
I don’t understand the point of an invocation *and* a benediction. Joseph Lowery is giving the benediction, he’s a progressive, and his participation has been completely overlooked in the uproar over Warren (and perhaps that’s the idea). But having both seems redundant. Is Warren there to appease the righties or something?
Why not have a representative of a variety of religions? Have a rabbi and imam and a wiccan and everything.
Just not getting it. Obama is a Christian, and I can see why he would want his inauguration to have a spiritual element but it’s weird to me that he has to have a “conservative” and a “liberal” Christian there.
[...] [...]
[...] much has to have a higher opinion of those California voters, since they voted for him! Plus, a Rickroll? [...]
The bile is coming from elsewhere. The way to change hearts and minds on the gay issue is not by respecting and reinforcing indoctrination against gays but through daylight — that is, in Americans’ getting used to and unthreatened by average-folk uncloseted gays in public positions, including media. Reality will force questions.
No one is going change the fundamentalist churches that have a hold in the South and elsewhere — the people who don’t like it just leave.
Newspapers have fallen down on the job on the gay issue. Example: My local paper plays to an audience it chooses to play to and publishes regular columns by two rigidly religious people who use the endorsed editorial space to further indoctrinate against and demonize gay people — with no counterpoint or balance offered by the paper. Few have spoken up, and I am banned for criticizing the paper!
Obama has made several really bad decisions lately, and this is just the most recent. Yes, he should hold out olive branches to the other side, but they shouldn’t be completely random or obvious pandering. They should make sense.
Keeping Robert Gates, for example, made sense. Rick Warren for invocation (amongst others but I won’t go off onto a tangent) makes no sense. At best it’s a blatant pander. At worst it’s a slap in the face to the gay community.
Obama really needs to tread carefully here since he already pulled that stunt with the “gay turned straight” bigot. Homosexuals are also the only group, liberal or otherwise, that voted for McCain more than they did for Bush.
Overall, not just in this specific instance, Obama needs to stop with the blatant panders and stop shooting himself in the foot. It is possible to cross the aisle with appointments that make sense.
I just want to say one more thing about this. This sort of thing is very damaging to gay teenagers, who are trying to figure where and how they are going to fit into this world. They look at reinforcement of what is essentially assault against them, all around them, and all of it, at a vulnerable, confusing time in the teen years, affects self-esteem; emotional, mental, and physical health; and sometimes the desire to go on with life itself.
I lived through all this with a gay sibling a year younger than I. One thing about the South, about our families: When you attack one of us, you attack us all.
I kinda have to agree with Aunt B on this one. Why are we mixing church and state in the first place? It just seems really weird to me that a country that states separation of church and state in its constitution can’t make it stick. Screwy