by John McG - November 17, 2007
How does a man claiming to speak for Christians come to endorse a candidate who advocates torture, preemptive war, and considers himself pro-choice on abortion while the field is still open?
How do sports fans who claim to honor fair play and sportsmanship come to embrace a team that routinely runs up the score in response to being correctly caught and punished for cheating?
What the hell do these questions have to do with each other?
In last Friday's column, Bill Simmons managed the difficult task of exhibiting the most obnoxious habits of both winning and losing football fans -- gloating over a big victory, and whining that his team was treated unfairly. It's almost as if he's accepted a dare to see how much of his following he can maintain while reminding everyone of their least favorite sports fans. It's a neat trick.
Once you get past the whining about the officials and how the world has not greeted the ascendancy of the Patriots as anything but the greatest development in the history of football, Simmons reflected on how he can support a team behaving in ways he would otherwise despise. He hates trash talking and running up the score, but he finds himself cheering on every "eff you" touch down.
Simmons explains his sympathy for the Patriots as follows:
One of the smartest scenes in "Sopranos" history happened in the first episode of the final season, when a drunken Bobby Bacala sucker-punched an even more inebriated Tony and the two guys squared off. Even though Tony started the brawl by repeatedly insulting Bobby's wife, and even though Bobby was a better person and a better family man, you know who we were rooting for in the fight? Tony. He might have been a flawed and unredeemable person in almost every respect, but we were more invested in him. Deep down, we liked Tony. We forgive him for all his sins. What separated those final two shows from anything else in television history was the simple fact that we really, really, REALLY didn't want him to get killed. So what if he was a terrible, selfish, evil guy? We didn't care. We wanted him to live. That's what made "The Sopranos" such a groundbreaking show -- rooting for a bad guy was a totally new way to watch television.
Now, there is a point to be made here. Kidding aside, the Patriots aren't "evil." (and contra Simmons, the Colts and the NFL aren't analogous to Nazis, either). They're a football team, not likely much different in moral fiber than the other thirty one teams in the league. They tried to skirt the rules to give themselves an edge, they got caught, and paid the consequences. Now, they seem to be taking a little extra enjoyment in their dominance. That's not great or laudable, but there's a lot worse going on in the world today than professional football teams being exposed as grossly inferior to the Patriots.
Also last week, Pat Robertson, who has been on of the leading voices of the Christian Right, last week endorsed a pro-torture, pro-choice, pro-same sex marriage candidate for president.
How could we get to this point? How could a religious reader endorse a candidate whose every position seems diametrically opposite the one suggested by the Gospels?
Like Bill Belichick and the Patriots, politicians like Bush, Cheney, and Giuliani are not mustache-twirling villains. Their positions may be wrong, but they are wrong likely out of a misguided notion of what's necessary to protect the nation from terrorism. As much as someone like me might abhor abortion, I must assume that those who support it do so for noble reasons, not some vicious malice toward unborn life or a desire for consequence-free sex.
We can all benefit from seeing things from others' perspective. Maybe if we got to know some death row inmates as people, we wouldn't be so eager to execute them. If we were more familiar with people in Arab nations, we might not be so quick to invade those countries and wreak havoc on their lives. And if we know the Patriots as a football team rather than as an enemy, we might not be so quick to condemn them.
But this doesn't change that the death row inmates still committed murder. And that the Patriots running up the score is still poor sportsmanship. And that the policies advocated and carried out by Bush, Cheney and Giuliani are in direct conflict with professed Christian (and American) values.
During the 2000 and especially the 2004 elections, socially conservative Christians were instructed that they must base their votes on "non-negotiable issues" like abortion and same sex marriage rather than matters of prudence like the war in Iraq. Since John Kerry had a perfect score from NARAL, the leading pro-choice lobby, and Bush professed to be pro-life, this was all but an explicit command to vote for Bush.
After making a decision, people tend not to welcome evidence that they made the wrong decision. Thus, when Bush's decisions were subject to criticism, the first reflex for those who voted for him was to defend him. After 9/11, Americans were desperate to believe that their leader was competent and steady, leading to even stronger identification with Bush. Add in the somewhat unhinged nature of some of the criticism of Bush (Bush = Hitler?), and there was a firm base of support hat would not waver.
Christians who followed this path ended up defending policies like the preemptive invasion of Iraq, expansive executive powers, curtailing of civil liberties, and cultural and legal acceptance of interrogation techniques that they would consider torture if performed by anyone else. They have wandered far away from why they initially supported him.
So we now have a bloc of voters who have spent much of the past four years defending and excusing preemptive war and torture. And it is time for them to choose a candidate for 2008. Naturally, they seek out a candidate who voices the same ideas that they have been defending for the past few years. Now, abortion isn't as big a deal as confronting "Islamofascism." And if that means we have to torture some people, well, this is war, after all. So, a pro-choice candidate like Giuliani can enjoy mainstream conservative support, while Ron Paul, who voices ideas that were orthodox conservatism 10 years ago, is dismissed as a fringe candidate because he is not hawkish, and wants to shrink rather than expand the powers of the federal government.
And now we're here. Fans who love sportsmanship find themselves embracing running up the score. And Christians, who profess the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life, support a pro-choice, pro-torture, pro-war candidate for president.
How do we get out of here?
John McG is a father and software engineer living in St. Louis, MO. He blogs at Man Bites Blog.