Monday, November 23, 2009
David Stokes is no fan of President Barack Obama. The only way the conservative Virginia pastor would vote for Obama is if his opponent was “Harry Reid, or Boss Tweed.” Stokes is convinced that “the president and his advisors have a socialist bent” and that their health care reform and global warming agendas are not what the American people want. But don’t joke about Obama being assassinated because there’s nothing funny about that.
As was the case during the Clinton and Bush years, opponents of the president like to “pray” for an untimely end to the commander-and-chief’s term by quoting from the Book of Psalms 109:8: “let his days be few; and let another take his office.” But such partisan cracks are tasteless, Stokes insists. “…A president can be opposed and criticized—even in an animated way—without resorting to the kind of meanness that crosses the line of civility,” he writes.
“I have no problem with partisanship—even a little fiery rhetoric here and there. America is better when our politics are feisty. But, come on—using the Bible to make a joke about the man dying before his term is up?”
Stokes adds, “the use of Psalm 109:8 as a joke applied to President Obama is not only a beneath-contempt expression of ugliness, it is also a profoundly ignorant use of the Bible.” And he urges people to “fervently pray for President Obama and all those in authority—and not in tongue-in-cheek petitions.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
A Joke Too Far (by David Stokes, The New Nixon)
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