A caller to the Rush Limbaugh show (2d Hour, 18 March 2008) objects that it is illegitimate to broadcast the brief portions of Pastor Wright’s sermon as exemplary of what Senator Obama has been listening to for twenty years. Take the following now-famous example:



(H/T: Anthony Bradley)

According to this caller, the whole thing needs to be heard in order to know and properly appraise Wright’s positions.

Perhaps, he’s correct. But how much more than this does one need in order to think that, while one does not possess exhaustive knowledge, one does have sufficient knowledge of Westboro Baptist Church?




Now, Anthony Bradly thinks Wright is being treated unfairly, saying, “To take a 3-minute sound bite and project that onto the whole church and to Obama is unwarranted. While one might not agree with Wright (and rightly so for many reasons) is it right…to treat both him and Obama the way the media has?” No, it isn’t. I think he’s correct. And I also think that an uncritical patriotism is not the test of a Christian’s orthodoxy. So even if this three-minute clip did adequately represent Wright's ministry, there is no reason for a preacher in a free country to be silent about his nation’s sins -- even if we don't care for the (shall we say) rhetorical devices employed.

But then, as Bradley also correctly observes, “[T]he religious left is…getting a taste of the treatment the religious right gets all the time: sound-bitten caricatures!”
One hopes not that this affair will somehow damage Senator Obama's campaign but that this whole business of "sound-bitten caricatures" will cease one day soon.