Novak again ... Captain Ed:::: Novak's Despicable Column
{KLP Note: Tell me again the difference between the farright and the farleft???}
captainsquartersblog.com
Robert Novak has a long career in punditry, so perhaps he has written a more despicable column than today's effort to link Mitt Romney to a massacre -- in 1857. Novak uses the release of a film that depicts the early Western atrocity conducted by Mormons on a band of travelers that coincidentally happened on September 11th, 150 years ago:
Opening Friday, a motion picture called "September Dawn" depicts a brutal American massacre that has been forgotten. On Sept. 11, 1857, in Utah Territory, Mormons slaughtered more than 120 California-bound settlers from Arkansas. Retelling at this time the Sept. 11 carnage of 150 years ago does not help Mormon Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
The basic facts of the Mountain Meadows Massacre are not in dispute. Mormons mobilized Paiute Indians, accompanied by Mormons disguised as Indians, to attack a peaceful wagon train. The settlers beat back the attack but were left short of food and ammunition. They disarmed at the request of the Mormons, who said they would lead the settlers to safety but instead turned on them, murdering every man, woman and child above age 8. All that is in doubt historically is whether this was ordered by Brigham Young, president of the Mormon Church and territorial governor of Utah. "September Dawn" says he was responsible; the church denies it.
Today's Mormons, including Romney, cannot be blamed for those events. Nevertheless, the candidate has followed the church's example and ignored the movie. Romney will not comment on "September Dawn" and indeed will not watch it. That follows his decision not to defend his faith or actively fight religious bias that has impeded his candidacy.
I attended an April 11 screening of the movie at the Motion Picture Association of America headquarters in Washington hosted by its lead actor: Academy Award-winner Jon Voight (who plays a fictional Mormon bishop). A conservative, Voight said this was no hit on Romney. "I didn't even know he was running when we began this," he told viewers after the screening. But he said this terrible story is important considering America's war against terrorists.
It most certainly is not important in light of our war against terrorists, whatever that means. It has nothing more to do with Romney than the Inquisition did with John F. Kennedy, or the genocide of Native Americans do to today's political leadership. It took place 150 years ago, and everyone involved in the atrocity died decades ago, at the least. If Novak now takes his political direction from Jon Voight, that says more about Novak than Romney.
Novak's entire column wants to place historical blame for all ills of the Mormon church squarely on the shoulders of Mitt Romney. Novak, at the end of his piece, notes that Romney wouldn't discuss the movie with Novak, and apparently that annoyed the columnist to no end. I don't blame Mitt one bit. The movie has nothing to do with Mitt and nothing to do with the campaign -- and that's even if one could rely on Hollywood to handle history with any accuracy at all.
This is nothing more than an attempt to use a fear of Mormons to smear Mitt Romney, with all the subtlety of a brick blackjack. It's the worst kind of religious bigotry wrapped up in Novak's dire language that it relates to the current war against Islamofascist terrorism, a charge that Novak never even bothers to support in his column. It's designed to force Romney to start conducting Mormon apologetics on the campaign trail instead of talking about public policy and national security.
Novak should be ashamed of himself, and the Post should consider a retraction or at least an apology to Romney. This is one column that should have been deep-sixed by those series of editorial checks about which bloggers keep hearing whenever the national press wants to prove its superiority.
UPDATE: Be sure to read Hugh Hewitt's take on this as well.
[KLP note: see my attached post for Hewitt's column today} |
