Beat the Press
By Chris Weinkopf - The American Enterprise
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The Media's Fear of God
"Do most Americans realize just how fervent the President's evangelical faith is?"
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So asks the New York Times' Alessandra Stanley, in her review of the PBS <font color=blue>"Frontline"<font color=black> documentary, <font color=blue>"The Jesus Factor,"<font color=black> which examines the role of faith in George W. Bush's life and Presidency. Stanley believes that Americans would be distressed to know that Bush engages in such outlandish behavior as daily Bible-reading, prayer, and allowing his spiritual life to inform his political one. After all, she is.
Among members of the establishment media, Stanley is not alone. In its review, the Los Angeles Times describes the President as possessed by <font color=blue>"a fervor that might take everyone, even [Bush's parents] by surprise."<font color=black> The New York Daily News calls <font color=blue>"Jesus Factor"<font color=black> filmmaker Raney Aronson <font color=blue>"impressively open-minded and objective,"<font color=black> but concludes that, <font color=blue>"based on the evidence presented, the same cannot be said of President Bush."
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It's hard to imagine similar treatment of other major
politicians. No one would ever suggest that Joe Lieberman
is, well, too Jewish for the Presidency. Nor did the press
ever much fret that being Baptist might have rendered
Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton immune to critical thinking.
The media typically portray Senator John Kerry's heterodox
brand of Catholicism as a badge of honor.
But Bush is different--a devout, observant, conservative
believer. As far as the establishment media are concerned,
he might just as well be from Mars.
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Still, <font color=blue>"The Jesus Factor"<font color=black> goes to great lengths to portray Bush's faith evenhandedly. It is not the documentary that speaks ominously of Bush's <font color=blue>"fervor,"<font color=black> but its reviewers. Why could that be?
Well, consider what Aronson said, in an NPR interview, about people's responses to an anecdote in her film: <font color=blue>"Secular people, when they heard that the President felt called to run for the Presidency by God, felt very alarmed. What I found on the religious side was, well, they weren't alarmed at all. In fact, they were comforted by this idea."<font color=red>
As with an inkblot test, reactions to <font color=blue>"The Jesus Factor"<font color=red> say more about the viewer than the documentary itself. People with religious faith, and those who bear no animus toward them, found the program's depiction of Bush inspiring. Diehard secularists found it frightening. And while the American public might straddle that cultural divide, the media elite almost uniformly fall on the anti-religion side.
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Even PBS can't avoid a certain sense of bemusement in its descriptions of these earnest Bible-thumpers. At times, its documentary takes on the same curiously detached tone of a National Geographic special on African bushmen, describing in fascinated detail the strange, alien beliefs that, to much of the American public, are simply part of everyday life.
The announcer explains, in that serious, public-broadcasting voice: <font color=blue>"Conservative evangelicals consider the Bible to be the word of God, and without error…. To evangelicals, it is not their Christian denomination that connects them but a series of beliefs. One of the most important is committing yourself to Jesus Christ, or being 'born again.'"<font color=black>
You almost expect him to continue: <font color=blue>"While the men are out hunting lions, the women fashion nose rings from the bones of small rodents." <font color=black>
But to the blue-state, secularized urbanites who dominate
most major media, an evangelical--or, for that matter, a
devout, conservative religious person of any kind--is
truly a foreign creature. Thus the confusing, often
contradictory reporting about Bush's faith. Depending on
the story, he's either a self-righteous true-believer who
won't let anything stand in the way of his mission from
God, or he's a phony who invokes <font color=blue>"the Almighty"<font color=black> to score
points with the much-maligned Christian Right.
Yet for all the mainstream media's consternation over Bush's religion, the American public takes a decidedly different view. <font color=blue>"The Jesus Factor"<font color=black> notes--to the dismay of some reviewers--that the two Bush Presidencies prove that a candidate can lose every other demographic and still win the White House on the strength of the evangelical vote alone. <font color=red>Lost on the producers, and for that matter, the critics, is an understanding of what that means: These odd religious creatures aren't radically outside the mainstream; they are the mainstream.
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Yes, the American people know how religious the President is. The real question is, do most reporters realize just how <font color=red>"fervent"<font color=black> the American public is? <font size=3>
Chris Weinkopf is editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Daily News.
Published in One America September 2004
This information was found online at:
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