"Farrakhan's Support For Obama? Hugely Controversial. Hagee's Backing Of McCain? No Problem.

By Eric Kleefeld - February 28, 2008, 5:11PM

Barack Obama was questioned at Tuesday night's debate by Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton about repudiating Louis Farrakhan's endorsement — which Obama said was unsolicited — in the strongest terms possible. He was repeatedly badgered by Russert, and was forced to disown Farrakhan over and over again.

The very next day, John McCain appeared onstage in Texas with Pastor John Hagee, an influential activist in the Christian Zionist movement. Hagee's comments about world affairs can make Farrakhan seem pedestrian at times: He eagerly awaits the Armageddon, considers the Catholic Church to be the Anti-Christ, and has said that Jews brought their own persecution upon themselves.

But when it came to McCain's rather controversial backer, the press hardly batted an eye. Seems like a pretty clear double standard, right?

Some readers might remember Hagee from this video put out last year by Max Blumenthal, from Hagee's Christians United For Israel conference. During the event, Hagee proclaimed that the United States must consider a preemptive strike on Iran, and also said that Jews had been responsible for their persecution throughout history because of a failure to properly accept God:

Blumenthal only scratched the surface here — Hagee is a colorful character, to say the least. More available after the jump.

Very much like Farrakhan, Hagee has regularly made remarks about current events and other religions that many would find alarming. But unlike Farrakhan, he has never truly faced the scrutiny of the mainstream press, and major politicians like Joe Lieberman and John McCain have freely associated with him.

In 2006, Hagee laid out his views on eschatology in a book called Jerusalem Countdown, in which he claimed that sources had told him a year earlier about world events to come — and amazingly enough, all those predictions had come true over the past year. Next on the agenda, according to his March 2006 interview in Human Events: Israel would go to war with Iran before May 2006. And from there, Hagee eagerly anticipated an all-out world war against Iran and Russia, followed by the Second Coming.

On the right, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is objecting Hagee's extremist writings, particularly his denunciations of the Catholic Church. For example, Donohue pointed to instances in which Hagee has referred to the Catholic Church as, "The Great Whore," an "apostate church," the "anti-Christ," and a "false cult system." Is Tim Russert going to repeat any of that to McCain, in the same way he read out Farrakhan's "gutter religion" line about Jews?

"Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot," Donohue wrote. "McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee."

So here's the question: Will the same media outlets who have hammered Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan's uninvited endorsement now ask John McCain to denounce and reject the support of John Hagee, which was actually sought and publicly accepted?"



Neat article I felt was worth posting to this thread.