Wonkette reports on a gathering of religious leaders at the Center for American Progress to help the flagging Democrats with their Faith Problem. These leaders, along with Democratic bigwig John Podesta, reportedly sang "You Have the Whole World in Your Hands." That's strange, when we were young we always sang a song called "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." In our version, the referent of "He" and "His" was clearly the Lord God Almighty, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Is the CAP's version intended to be addressed to the Democratic Party, who has the whole world in its hands, if it just believes? Maybe we're reading too much into this, but it sounds to us like these "religious leaders" seem to view faith primarily as self-affirmations -- religion as self-deifying pep rally.
File under "They Just Don't Get It."
UPDATE: On second thought, maybe it's just yet another awkward way of making traditional texts "gender neutral." If so, it's still revealing of the faith stylings of the Democratic Party.
UPDATE: Wonkette has put a correction on her site. They got the song right after all. Figures. If you can't trust Wonkette with an election, can you trust her with a hymn?
Thursday, December 09, 2004
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2 comments:
Interesting that you chose this story to highlight today (though I am a Wonkette fan).
I think that the Rumsfeld event, the rumors and indecisiveness around Snow and the debate about the Kerik nomination are more in line with your subject line
I didn't highlight the Rumsfeld story for several reasons: one, anyone who turns to Page One of the New York Times will see this story, whereas the Wonkette entry is bound to be forgotten. Two, the Rumsfeld non-story can be summarized as follows: Rumsfeld held a "town hall" style meeting with soldiers at a transit camp in Kuwait, and a soldier complained about a shortage of proper armored vehicles. A shortage of materials during a war? The Times (and many other outlets) led with this "Dog Bites Man" story. In a similar way, it was big news that the military was asking for 3000-5000 troops a month ago, and it played with a tinge of desperation (not enough troops!), but that story wasn't cross referenced when the U.S. actually committed was 12,000 additional troops. Finally, sure, I could have complained that the Republicans were "tone-deaf" to our troops, but considering that those troops voted for Bush by a better than 2-1 majority, whereas religious people shunned Kerry, I'd have to say that the empirical evidence says that if the Republicans are tone-deaf, they're tone-deaf like Mozart.
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