October 27, 2010

Please send me your comments!

By Dave Andrusko

Good evening, and thanks for taking time to read Today's News & Views. Part Two updates you where we are five days from the mid-term elections, while Part Three is the good news that the "mainstream media" is finally picking up on the enormous negative impact of ObamaCare on Democrats. Over at National Right to Life News Today (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org), Wesley Smith writes "doctor shopping" to find physicians "willing to ignore safeguards to help healthy people kill themselves." Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon updates us on opposition to "tele-abortions" in Iowa while I reprint the lead story I wrote for the October issue of National Right to Life News. Please send your comments on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha.

This anti-Catholic, photo-shopped picture was part of a mailing sent out by the Democratic Party of Minnesota.

The rightfully indignant sentiment found in the opening paragraph of a story appearing in the National Catholic Register late Monday night read, "The most Anti-Catholic political ad you'll ever see." The reference was to a tasteless, boorish mailing that came courtesy of the state Democratic Party in Minnesota (known there as the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party--DFL) as an assault on a local Republican running for the state legislature, a guy who isn't even Catholic!

If you keep track of the spin during the day you heard the ad wasn't REALLY anti-Catholic, just dumb. Judge for yourself.

(Full disclosure. I come from Minnesota and was active in the DFL for several years. Like many other pro-lifers, I was ridiculed, marginalized, and treated as a fourth-class citizen in a party dominated by radical--and I do mean radical--pro-abortionist. Nothing the DFL does would surprise me.)

Although the news broke yesterday, the 10,000 copies of the two-page piece was actually sent out last week. It was a really nasty, mean-spirited hit job on Republican Dan Hall, who is a pastor, running against incumbent state Senator John Doll (D).

One page shows what any reader would readily assume is a Catholic priest wearing a button photo-shopped in that says "ignore the poor." (See below.)

When word spread through the blogosphere yesterday, Catholics were outraged.

Not only is the anti-poor label blatantly untrue, it was seen as just the latest in an increasingly bold attack on the Catholic Church.

"Sometimes there's a little subtlety to anti-Catholic political rhetoric but not this time," Matthew Archbold wrote for the National Catholic Register. "This is in your face anti-Catholicism."

When a local television station went to the DFL headquarters, the party refused to answer questions. By today, however, their line was established.

It wasn't anti-Catholic, we were told. If you look on the other page, it hammers Hall (derisively dubbed "Preacher Hall") for what it said was Hall's failure to speak out on a decision made by Governor Tim Pawlenty. The DFL claimed this shows that Hall "puts the interests of the powerful over the poor." And since the Catholic Church had spoken out, the inference from the DFL spokesman was, if anything, the party ought to be congratulated for being on the same side as the Catholic Church.

This misses as least three things. First, Hall "says he spent 30 year serving the poor."

Second, there is nothing on the second page of the mailing to clarify that Hall is not Catholic. The initial impression is allowed to stand: he is a Catholic priest and Catholic priests ignore the poor.

Third, another anti-Hall flyer has gone out from the DFL which even one apologist conceded "uses an even more explicitly Catholic image to tar the evangelical candidate" (see below). Even so, we're again told this is not anti-Catholic, only "anti-wise" or "confusing."

Yes, we can all agree both mailings are stupid. But unless you have stock in the DFL, you must also agree with Archbold, who responded to the apologists with a post on the National Catholic Register blog.

"So what I'm hearing in defense of the DFL is that the DFL simply didn't know the difference between Protestant and Catholic? The Dems have guys paid millions of dollars to create campaign messages and we're supposed to believe that the image of a Catholic priest was just a big accident, especially when in another mailer they used the images of a Catholic altar with big banners saying 'Vote.'"

Part Two
Part Three