Owen at Boots & Sabers has a post tonight entitled God & Politics. You know you are in for something good when he opens the post with, "Here's a post where I piss off everyone." To briefly summarize the post, Owen's belief is that politics and God should not be mixed, and therefore he found the prayer at Tuesday night's vigil at UW Whitewater distasteful. I see where Owen is coming from. My faith is personal to me, and I try not to mix it into my politics or here at this site. Just the same, I watched the events of Tuesday night in person, and what I saw I did not find distasteful, and I'll go into a little detail as to why.
First I'd like to start with UWW's College Repbulicans. This was as gracious a group as I've ever seen. The ones I spoke with wouldn't even criticize the Chancellor for his decision. I felt that they were trying to keep the politics of the entire situation to a minimum. As I understand it, they had even invited the College Democrats to join them in this vigil. I also commend them as setting the entire event up as a memorial to the 9-11 victims. This, in my humble opinion, helped diffuse the politics of the entire situation by moving the emphasis off of Ward Churchill and onto the individuals who were defamed in death by Churchill's paper. Was the event opened up by individuals who are involved in politics or political opinion? Yes it was, but I even would have to credit them for not getting into it with the much more political free spreech demonstrators. On top of that, these individuals happened to be leaders of the public opinion opposed to Churchill's essay. Did attendees cheer when these individuals made points they agreed with. Yes. At no point did any of these speakers divine God or even imply that God was on their political side in this matter. The prayer at the end of the event was quite tasteful.
This was the first event I've really covered live for this site, and I was struck by the way it was portrayed in many media outlets. Hell, even Sean, Dean, and I saw things a little bit differently, but the media accounts were sufficiently vague as to make this event look like some big political rally, and that is not the feel I got from this. Given that, I can see Owen's distaste. Given what I saw with my own eyes, though, I don't.
And Owen, if you really want to piss people off, ya got to prod 'em harder. I'm not even mildly irritated. :-)
2 comments:
Dang it. I'll have to try harder then ;-)
Jib,
Good work. Anything done near such an event is going to look political because of the very nature of the scene, not necessarily because it is political! I have joined this discussion over at: http://bloggerbeer.blogspot.com/ because this is an important issue.
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