Category Archives: Politics

God, Church & Stuff, Politics

Billy Graham Gets Political

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A story broke last week that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (where I worked about a decade ago) had removed mentions of Mormonism as a cult from its website following a meeting between the 93-year-old Billy Graham and Republican presidential candidate (and Mormon) Mitt Romney. Then a spokesman said they did it because “we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign.” Uh, I think you just politicized it.

If you’re a Christian and you want to vote for Mitt Romney, go for it. But don’t suddenly change your views on Mormonism and say it’s not political. Not three weeks before the election. Can we at least be honest enough to admit this is politically motivated? And for what? Who’s going to change their vote over this? (Maybe people will vote the other way!)

It’s basic communication. And it’s why I’m plenty busy at Church Marketing Sucks (and now my long quiet Billy Graham blog, Billyspot).

Let me be clear: I don’t think Mormonism is a cult. It’s probably a good change the BGEA made. But the timing is just horrible. And the explanation is ridiculous. It seems unfair to call a religion of 14 million people a cult. That’s a loaded term and it has no place in the kind of loving outreach that’s defined Billy Graham’s ministry. Though we should also be clear that Mormonism is not Christianity.

Let me also say: I don’t think it should matter. The fact that we have to ask whether or not a Christian can vote for a Mormon is kind of disturbing. As Franklin Graham says, “Americans must remember that while our nation was founded upon godly principles, we do not have a state religion.” Of course then he goes on to say, “We need something like what Jerry Falwell did in the 1980s. We need a ‘moral majority'” Sigh.

Apparently evangelicals like Graham (Which one? Good question: Christianity Today explores Billy Graham’s recent politicism and Steve Knight wonders if Franklin is speaking for his father) will choose politics over theology when it works for them. All so they can somehow wiggle around the language and support a candidate who supports “God’s principles.” Never mind that it’s a rather different view of God. But not too different… we’re not supporting Muslims. Or atheists. Egads, no!

Meanwhile my generation has grown tired of religion constantly warring with politics. We’ve recognized that in the pluralistic society we’ve grown up in, it’s OK to work with, befriend, even vote for somebody who is different than you. And most of us don’t need to scrub our websites or write editorials to do so.

Business & Marketing, Politics

What Do Political Yard Signs Accomplish?

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Are pint-size political billboards worth the paper they’re printed on? I’m thinking no.

“I love watching people waste their money on signs. It’s great. Keep spending your money that way. What do you learn from a sign? What does a sign tell you?” Democratic consultant Judy Stern says in a Sun Sentinel story. “Signs don’t vote.”

But popular wisdom says that name recognition, especially in local races, is valuable. When you’re voting for a bunch of folks you’ve never heard of for city council, it helps if you’ve seen one candidate’s name around town.

“You don’t even really think about it,” says Marietta College psychology professor Mark Sibicky in The Plain Dealer. “It’s a classically conditioned response. All things being equal, we like the familiar name.”

Another report backs up the name recognition theory and suggests it also has more to do with the person putting up the sign. They say each sign is worth 6-10 votes, not because of the sign, but because the person putting up the sign is likely to encourage votes in other ways.

But knowing who’s running doesn’t help you make an informed decision. In national elections that name recognition is kind of useless. No one puts a Romney sign in their yard to make sure their neighbors have heard of him.

It seems like the problem is that political yard signs generally don’t communicate a message. It’s simply a name. All they’re getting is awareness. It doesn’t communicate your reasons for voting. It doesn’t contain any message that could persuade other voters. It’s merely a badge of pride, a flag of identification, letting people know where you stand. At best, it gives people the illusion of popularity (“There are bunch of Joe Jones sign in my neighborhood, I bet he’s going to win!”).

That works for U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich: “This is better than a paid billboard, because it’s a personal endorsement. It shows that I have support at the neighborhood level.”

I wonder why candidates don’t put any slogans or messages on their yard signs? I’ll admit you couldn’t fit much of a message on any yard sign and it’d come down to bumper sticker slogans, which might not be any better (why don’t campaign bumper stickers have, um, bumper sticker slogans?). But wouldn’t that at least communicate something? According to the experts, that’s a rookie mistake. According to sign printer Dale Fellows in The Plain Dealer, political signs should feature the candidate’s name as big as possible. The fewer words the better.

Bah. I wish signs actually communicated something.

On the plus side, it’s likely they’re not a decisive factor: “Well, I think that it would be very unusual if any of these tactics actually were decisive in elections,” says Costas Panagopoulos, professor of political science at Fordham University in an NPR story. Well, not usually: “But at the margins, mobilizing voters can be very important. And particularly in close, competitive races, they can make a difference in determining the outcome of an election.”

I guess election marketing just sucks.

Politics

Voting on Marriage: What If I’m Not Traditional?

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Minnesota is in the midst of a political battle over marriage. In less than a month we’ll vote on a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman, disallowing gay marriage (which is already what Minnesota law says).

I’ve dreaded the debate this amendment would bring. And I’m reluctant to talk about it. It’s very polarizing and a good way to lose some work (I’ve been blacklisted for far less). It’s also a good way to lose some friends. I was more vocal than I should have been in the 2008 election and said some things I regret. Since then political discussions on Facebook often make me cringe (if not shudder). Sometimes I wonder who these people are that I once called friends. I don’t want to come off that way. Hopefully I don’t. If I do, I hope you’ll forgive me and we can talk about it instead of my words making you mad or scaring you away.

However.

This is also an issue that’s hard to be quiet about. This week I came across a Google ad on my site that pointed to the pro-amendment camp. I was curious what kind of advertising they were doing, so I clicked on it and came up with this landing page:

Minnesota for Marriage Google ad landing page (click to view larger)
Minnesota for Marraige Google ad landing page (click to view larger)

What I found makes me very uncomfortable.

There’s no mention of homosexuality or gay marriage at all. Instead they’re advocating for traditional marriage (the typical “we’re not anti-gay, we’re pro-marriage” line). What makes me so uncomfortable is that argument leaves no room for, well, life. I think traditional marriage is great. But it rarely happens. I think kids should have parents—plural. But that doesn’t always happen. I think dads should be involved in their kids’ lives, but to say that marriage is what keeps a father “nearby”? That’s kind of, well, icky.

I think what I find so difficult here is that there’s no attempt made, no caveats, no nod toward life happening. Divorce happens. Death happens. Adoption happens. We’ve got single parents, divorced parents, re-married parents, step parents and adoptive parents. None of them fit very well in this view of traditional marriage as presented by this ad.

Using the word “biological” as a norm is unsettling when you have kids who aren’t biological.

Let’s face it: A lot of families out there are weird. They don’t look very traditional. I think that’s OK. But it’s important that we include these different situations. Inclusiveness is important. It’s harmful to kids to hold up this traditional model as the only way to go and not acknowledge that there are other families who look different, even weird, but that they’re still OK. They’re not defective or somehow less of a family. To do otherwise communicates to an already confused kid that their family is defective, and by extension, they are. This is the crux of diversity training and a driving force in Sesame Street for the last, I don’t know, 40 years.

Maybe what I’m dealing with here is a communication issue. Nothing more. The text is pulled from this page on the campaign site, which gives a little more context.

I hope that’s the case. I hope they’re not being intentionally exclusive. But that’s hard to believe. You don’t spend millions on advertising without being intentional. Especially when you could make the same point with inclusive language.

It’s probably not hard to guess that I’m opposed to the amendment. I guess I could just ignore the messaging of the “other side,” but I guess being a writer I’m curious about why they’re communicating this way.

Politics

The Freedom to Disagree

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I just finished reading Held at a Distance by Rebecca Haile. It’s a memoir about a woman who lived in Ethiopia until she was 10. Her father was wounded by the Derg in the aftermath of the revolution and her family eventually had to flee Ethiopia. The memoir is her experience returning to Ethiopia as a 36-year-old American.

I’ve been reading the book with the backdrop of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that has sent people into a tizzy—either expressing dismay at how the country is going down the toilet or complete euphoria that justice is coming to health care.

Full disclosure: Personally, I’m happy with the Supreme Court decision, though this doesn’t seem like a perfect law that’s going to fix the mess that is health care. I hope it’s a step forward. But I find the reaction to the decision more interesting than the decision itself. It makes me wonder how people have reacted to other historic court decisions. Were people this dismayed after the landmark 9-0 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that overturned segregation? (I’m not trying to compare this decision to that one in historic terms, just wondering how people have historically reacted)

All the cries of America going down the tubes seem especially disheartening to me. If anything, the will of the people has spoken. A law was passed by a Congress elected by a majority (multiple times—senators and representatives), signed into law by a president the majority elected, and upheld by a Supreme Court made up of justices appointed by past presidents from both parties and approved by a Senate controlled by both parties. Whether or not you agree with the decision, democracy happened. Complain all you want if you don’t like it, but this is government of the people, by the people and for the people. The law is constitutional, if you don’t like it you have all the legal power of democracy to change it. [Sidebar: And I hope my stance in this last paragraph would be the same no matter how the decision came out. It’s easy to make this statement when “your side” wins.]

Back to Ethiopia
I say all that because that’s what was going through my mind as I started reading about this family torn apart by military and socialist revolution in Ethiopia. When the government was overthrown in 1974, military rulers took over and imposed socialist ideals on an impoverished country. But it was really just a dictatorship disguised as socialism. Anyone who disagreed with the new government was seen as a threat. They were targeted, harassed, attacked and in many cases killed. The Derg’s iron-fisted rule continued until 1991 when they were overthrown. The government that followed is, according to Haile, less violent but more of the same. Dissenters are still arrested, censorship continues and the press is not truly free (I should note here that my understanding of Ethiopian politics is extremely limited and I’m basing all of these statements on Haile’s 2007 memoir. Take it with a grain of salt.)

An obvious lesson from Ethiopian history would be that when you can no longer disagree well with your political opponents, you’ve got a problem. When you vilify your opponents, you’re in trouble. You’re just a step away from outright attacking them. And when that happens you’re no longer pushing for a democratic ideal, you’re forcing your own opinion on someone else.

Today, the Fourth of July, is about celebrating our American Independence. As we celebrate and approach an election in the fall, we seem more divided than ever. But in our division, we must find a way to be united. We must find a peaceful way to disagree with our opponents. Disagree all you like, but democracy means that we come together and the majority rules under the Constitution (i.e., the majority might not have voted to end segregation, but it was still deemed unconstitutional).

Because the end of our independence happens when we’re afraid to disagree.

Politics

Forced to Bear Arms

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Ran across an interesting article digging into Congressional history to defend Obamacare. The current argument before the Supreme Court (as I probably inaccurately understand it) is whether or not the government can issue an individual mandate, i.e., can the government force an individual to buy something.

The article points to a 1790 law that mandated health insurance. Interesting example. But I’m so not interested in arguing about the validity of Obamacare (so not interested).

The interesting part of the article is when they point to a 1792 law that made gun ownership not just a right but a requirement:

In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms. Yes, we used to have not only a right to bear arms, but a federal duty to buy them.

That’s hilarious.

According to Wikipedia it was part of a Uniform Militia law, which raised up state militias as opposed to a federal army. White men were required to register with the militia and have a gun ready to go. It was never fully enforced and there was never widespread compliance.

Oh so wacky. I wonder how that’d go over today?

Sidebar: It’s funny what we expect out of our political system. Sometimes we act like certain things are anathema to our way of life, but it turns out it’s all shifting and moving, depending on the issue, the era and who’s in charge. Sometimes an idea seems historic and foundational (like “under God” in the pledge, added in the 1950s), but it’s not.

Sidebar II: We can’t talk about the right to bear arms without mentioning the awesome T-shirt (or pick your favorite permeation).

Business & Marketing, Politics

Political Communication that Works

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On election day, amid the frenzy of last minute plugs and flurry of civic-minded joy, I came across a simple little website that I just love. Before linking I want to qualify this for two reasons: 1) It’s full of the f-word, which might put some people off. So fair warning. 2) It’s all pro Obama, which might put some more people off. More fair warning.

But in spite of both of those things, I think the site is really cool. I share it regardless of politics and profanity because I think it’s an interesting idea. I actually waited until after the election to let the partisan nature wear off a bit. It’s still there, but it feels easier to look past today than it would have been on election day.

The site is called What The F*ck Has Obama Done So Far? and it’s just a slide show of one-sentence accomplishments. Each accomplishment has a source link and then a button to see the next accomplishment. It’s an ingenious little way to tell a story of simple achievements. Instead of drowning people in paragraphs of text on every issue, it’s just one little snippet of factual text.

Now I realize some folks will likely take issue with each bit of “factual” text, because that’s what we do, nit-picking every statement as spin and adding our own counter-spin. But I think the basic idea does what it needs to. Some sort of way to engage those nit-pickers and add a little more explanation or context might be helpful (but that might also ruin the simplicity of the whole thing). It’s not a perfect idea, but it’s a lot more effective than any political website I’ve ever seen.

Bottom line: I love the idea of taking something as complex and off-putting as politics and phrasing it in simple one-liners of actual accomplishment that anyone can understand. That’s powerful communication.

Politics, Society

Raggedy Edge, Women Vote! & Homeless Vet’s Home Impounded

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“So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don’t push me and I won’t push you.”

I think that quote from the beginning of Serenity sums up my life nicely right about now. Too bad I’m feeling pushed.

Moving on to better things.

Go Women
Today is the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. It’s hard to believe that before 1920 women couldn’t vote in this country.

Go Mark
And my friend Mark Horvath is traveling the country again, telling the stories of the homeless. Today he told us about Johnny (or is it Jimmy? Update: It’s Johnny), a disabled veteran who needs $350 to get his mobile home out of the impound. You can help by making a donation. Here’s the full story on what happened to Johnny.

Update: Johnny got his home back. Thanks!

(And wow, that felt like a disjointed blog post from 2004.)

God, Church & Stuff, Politics

American Mosques

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I don’t like blogging about politics. I did a bit too much of it in the last presidential election and it left a bad taste in my mouth. People tend not to disagree well and it gets ugly. When you mix religion and politics it gets even uglier. But sometimes I feel compelled to talk about. Being quiet and looking the other way doesn’t help anyone, so we need to speak up.

How sad is it that I hesitate to post this because of our complete inability to have ideological differences? This is what extremism accomplishes.

I’m talking about the current controversy over the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York City. You can already see the ideological sides lining up based on the language I used. I didn’t call it a mosque and intentionally noted that it’s “near” Ground Zero (two blocks away, in fact), and not “at” Ground Zero. (Now would that language be considered journalistically unbiased because it’s factual, or completely biased because it’s the language one side of the debate prefers?)

Personally, I don’t think an Islamic presence near Ground Zero is big deal. And a whole lot of folks have argued it better than I could, from Christians and Jews, to these couple defenses, to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to one of the women behind the project, to the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart.

In a nutshell, I think freedom of religion reigns. That’s what makes America great. If people want to argue that it’s too close and too painful and all the rest, I get that, but I respectfully disagree. There’s a difference between religious extremists who turn to terrorism and a worldwide religion of 1.6 billion people. Let’s not forget that non-terrorist Muslims died on 9/11.

And I think that’s where the problem begins. Some people don’t see a difference, and they see all Muslims as terrorists, or at least purveyors of a great evil. That’s why mosques across the country have been protested, including Temecula, Calif., Sheboygan, Wis.,  Murfreesboro, Tenn., and New Haven, Ct.

And if that’s the rationale—that freedom of religion doesn’t apply because Islam is evil—I don’t understand why these arguments are just coming up now. And perhaps those making these claims would say they’ve argued for this all along, but it just now seems to be catching on. If mosques truly are “jihadist recruitment centers,” isn’t that something for the FBI to sort out? (and it sounds like they’ve done that).

In the end, if someone truly believes that Islam is evil then there’s not much of a discussion to be had. And that’s perhaps why I hesitate to write this post—if any potential commenters believe that, then we’re not going to get very far. At the very least, let’s be up front about that (because too often we spend lots of time arguing before realizing our views are fundamentally divergent and we should just disagree and move on).

I find it depressing when Christians paint all Muslims with the same brush. Christian complain (loudly) when that happens to us, whether it’s the Crusades, the Inquisition or Westboro Baptist Church. And just as critics point to the Koran as proof of Islam’s ills, anyone can point to the Bible for all kinds of out-of-context horrors, be it perpetuating slavery or silencing women. Nevermind the flagrant accusations that Muslims are trying to spread their beliefs, claim political power or receive over-seas funding for new mosques. When Christians start using these arguments against Muslims, we don’t quite realize that atheists (or whoever) could employ the very same arguments against us (we forget how wacky our lingo sounds to those don’t agree with us).

It’s enough to work you up to a frenzy.

Which is why I love stories like this:

A small group of protesters took over a patch of grass across from the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley on Friday for a vocal but relatively tame protest against a proposed mosque, though they were greatly outnumbered by supporters from area churches who were there to support the Islamic Center. (LA Times)

Books, Daily Grind, God, Church & Stuff, Music, Politics, Society, Technology

The Crusades Were a Bad Idea: Let’s Not Do It Again

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Update: I’ve been Snoped. Ouch. It appears the stats in this video are of questionable accuracy. They’re not denied outright, but there are significant questions. Despite all the rhetoric (my own included), perhaps the real question this post should raise is how should we respond to news of the growing population of a different faith? I’d contend that the negative overtones of this video aren’t helpful. End update.

I saw what I consider to be a bat-crazy video today. Take a look and tell me what you think:

Continue reading The Crusades Were a Bad Idea: Let’s Not Do It Again →

Politics

Barack Obama in Africa

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One of the most bizarre and amazing things I saw in Ethiopia was the plethora of Barack Obama T-shirts. The President of the United States was everywhere. This felt so jarring because we weren’t in the United States.

One member of our travel group was wearing his own Barack Obama shirt and was approached by a local about it. The two even tried to negotiate a trade. When we were walking up and down a row of shops one of the kids who continually begged for money was wearing a T-shirt showing the Obama family.

In one store I saw a blaze orange T-shirt with simple black letters that said “Obama” across the top in all caps, then “Yes We Can” in the middle, and then “Yes We Can” repeated at the bottom in Amharic. It was so simple. And, unfortunately, too small.

I understand the historic nature of Obama’s presidency and how much of Africa is understandably head over heals to have one of their sons in the White House. But you don’t quite grasp that until you see it for yourself. And I imagine it has nothing to do with Obama’s politics, but it’s especially jarring when you try to imagine children anywhere outside the U.S. proudly wearing George W. Bush T-shirts four years ago. But I suppose children wearing any U.S. president on a T-shirt would have seemed absurd. At least until Obama.

P.S.: If anybody can find that blaze orange Amharic Obama shirt, I wear a large.