Democratic Diva

Possible McCheating and McLying at the Faith Forum

17 Aug 2008 09:52 pm
Posted by: Donna

I figured something was fishy about Purpose Driven Pastor Rick Warren’s forum last night. It was bad enough that the majority in attendance had paid upwards of $1000 per ticket. Nothing like that good old supply side Christianity. Warren’s schtick is the Gospel of Prosperity. Thus it wasn’t hard for his well-fed acolytes to squeeze through the eye of the needle and fill the pews of the swanky Saddleback megachurch for the forum.

I could tell it wasn’t going to go well for us. Obama was politely received by the audience, and he answered the questions thoughtfully and carefully, even getting some sparse applause. He did okay but it was a tough crowd.

Then it was McCain’s turn. I was stunned as I watched him rattle off the answers to questions that were supposedly unknown to either candidate. His execution was crisp and he was chock full of pithy witticisms and anecdotes about his experience as a POW. Something didn’t smell right from the minute he stepped on stage. No one is that good off the cuff, least of all McCain. I was watching a rerun so I logged on to read what the blogs were saying. The blogosphere was on the case, with lefty sites like Huffington Post and Daily Kos poring over the transcripts and finding curiosities like McCain anticipating a question about the Supreme Court before it was asked. The keyboards were afire with speculation.

The curiosity has been solved, as it’s been revealed that the supposed “cone of silence” that Pastor Rick assured the audience McCain was in backstage was neither silent nor a cone. It turns out McCain was actually en route to the building. In his motorcade where I’m sure there were no TV’s, radios, or Blackberries broadcasting Obama’s portion. Right. Even CNN was forced to call Warren out for his false statement. Today he was interviewed about it and gave a weaselly answer about how he “trusts the integrity of John McCain” when McCain tells him he didn’t hear any of what was said in the first half hour. Sure, Pastor Rick.

McCain’s totally unprepared and extemporaneous answer to the question of his personal faith contained a touching story about him sharing a moment with a prison guard over a cross the guard drew in the dirt. He’s recounted it many times in the past but it’s been gradually changing to the point where we are now supposed to believe that a North Vietnamese prison guard was a practicing Christian. There’s even some doubt as to the entire authenticity of the story.

Hmm. Perhaps someone needs to alert John to this obscure little reference in the Scripture to “bearing false witness”.

UPDATE: It has come to my attention, via the McCain camp, that the GOP nominee is a POW and therefore incapable of lying. Quoth a representative of the Straight Truth Express:

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan blows a major hole in the narrative, pointing out that McCain was transferred from the prison camp where he’d initially encountered the compassionate guard he’s talked about (for decades) before Christmas of 1969, when the cross drawing allegedly took place. Read his entire post, there’s a lot of other stuff there about previous tellings and variations of the cross-in-dirt story.