This thread is a response to the Jeremiah-Wright-thread.

First, I'm not really a fan of Wright, imho he's a loony.

Today I read about McCain and his spiritual Advisor in a German Newspaper, about McCain endorsing him, calling him his mentor and I saw the similarities between that and Obama-Wright.

So my question is what do you think about that guy? Should McCain stay at his side? What's the difference between him and Rev. Wright? Is he someone you would endorse.

Youtube:
YouTube - Rod Parsley, McCain's "Spiritual Guide" (Extended)
YouTube - Christian Crusaders;2008
YouTube - Rod Parsley on Fox & Friends, July 12, 2007

This is the first I'd heard of him, and I can't watch youtube where I'm at now. I did a quick wiki review and it appears he's basically your standard, non-denomination, Christian fundamentalist type - definately not someone I'd lump in with Wright.

I generally get here to the forums and (to misquote Apocalypse Now) I hate the sound of YouTube in the morning (or pretty much any other noise really)

That being said, Wikipedia paints him as someone in the television evangelist/fundmentalist camp, which rings alarm bells for me personally. Fundamentalists are whack jobs in my book, whether they pray to Allah or God Or Whoever.

Nonetheless, this Parsley guy is certainly not analogous to Wright other than they both profess Christianity.

What they have in common is that one presidential candidate hascalled them a mentor/spiritual guidance, respectively.

To be honest, I don't want to see Clinton's.

That's fair, but nonetheless, one simply isn't comparable to the other unless anyone but a militant atheist is unnacceptable as a candidate. Even then, Wright's craziness is beyond the bounds of religion into delusional conspiracy tin hat stuff.

By the way, I thought liberals were trying to hitch that Hagee guy to McCain; why the switch to this guy? what's with the change to the liberal playbook?

Never heard of Hagee before, and I never heard about parsley before he got mentioned in the conservative Newspaper I read the other day.

I don't know much about any liberal agendas in the United States, as the only American news site I visit on a regular basis is Breaking News | Latest News | Current News - FOXNews.com .

About parsley, it gives me the creeps watching this guy talking about the United States being founded to destroy Islam, being a christian country and demonising secularisation but that's probably just my POV. One of the things which makes me proud of the West is that almost every country is based on the separation of church and state. And I'm not sure what impact a president being a follower of people like parsley will have in times of religious tension like ours.

Still, it's America's choice, not mine.

I can't vote in your general elections, and I didn't vote in this poll. I don't like any of the three of them.

Actually I'm pretty happy only having to vote in two countries + EU, which is hard enough as I tend to gather as much information about every party as I can.

Granted, this Parsley guy isn't someone I'd hang out with, and I'm not defending him or McCain's relationship with him, I'll just make some observations.

First, I don't see any of this being a problem for McCain. The reason being, in a race between McCain and Obama, no one who wants to see Obama win, and that includes the majority of the "mainstream media" dares bring up pastors again. Sure, this Parsley guy has some issues, but nothing comparable to those of Wright. If the race were defined by who was closest to the craziest minister, Obama would be in deep shit, so its not a hill Obama supporters want to die on.

Second, for the reason above, McCain is fortunate that Wright exists. If it weren't for Wright, all you'd be seeing and hearing on the news is this Parsley guy. And, of course, it would be damaging for McCain, but no where near the damage Wright has and will do to Obama. The fact is, most Americans don't care much for Islam, so they aren't going to be that disgruntled about a preacher who doesn't like Islam. However, most American most definately do not like hearing "god damn America" and ridiculous accusations that the government injected black people with AIDS.

My prediction: with the exception of the hard core liberals, this dog won't hunt. (That means this won't go anywhere.)

Also, the relationship between McCain and Parsley is far different than the one between Obama and his pastor. From what I understand, Parsley is just a right wing guy with an audience who has registered his support of McCain, and one hand washes the other, so McCain has said some nice things about Parsley in return. With Obama, he's written about Wright, and how close they are, in his books. He's been in the guy's church for 20 years. Wright was on Obama's campaign. Parsley is just a supporter, and he'd be supporting whoever was the Republican nominee.

Just my thoughts based on what little I've learned of the issue since you began the thread.

I gather from news last night here that McCain has ditched Parsley (and another similar character name Hagee) publicly now - or at the very least distanced himself from them after some extremist statements.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...src=newsletter

I still don't think I've heard of this Parsley guy. Hagee, yes, not Parsley. Does your WP article mention him?

I don't think it does no - I heard about him rejecting both endorsements on TV media which I can't provide a link to in a post, so I Googled and quickly found that WP article to add some background. Later in the day, I heard more about it when I saw the Lehrer News hour on TV and Parsley was again mentioned as having been rejected by McCain regarding comments on Islam.

Searching now, I found:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/us-electi...183102637.html
and even something similar on Fox news:
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05...e-endorsement/
(had to dig for it on Fox)
It seems to have been reported online as an addendum to the Hagee story, rather than as a story in its own right.

BTW: until this came up I'd never heard of either of them - not being one to pay any mind at all to evangelicals and fundamentals of any persuasion

Ok, so where is the gotcha exactly?

Not exactly sure what you mean, but to clarify with further searching and examples:

From the AP:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...4N50QD90R21482
And from CNN:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...ersial-pastor/

I lost track and I'm too lazy to go back and read it again. Are you trying to make the point that all this says something good or bad about McCain?

I'm more disturbed by Parsley than Wright.

The reason is that Parsley is attacking Islam. Xenophobic Christianity is what got us in the big steaming shit pile we are in today (meaning the Iraq War).

OTOH Wright was damning the U.S. government. Read the context, his point was to distrust what politicians tell you. If people were a little more paranoid about what the Bush administration was feeding them, perhaps we wouldn't be stuck in a costly, unwinnable, and unnecessary war...

Am I biased because I voted for Obama? Perhaps not as much as you might think ... my first choice was Biden, then Richardson, then Clinton, then maybe Edwards. I only recently picked Obama over Clinton, when I saw how she was running her campaign.

The irony, is that in the long run, the Wright controversy will probably help Obama, since before, the whisper campaign was to paint him as a Muslim.

Neither really - more a comment on the general issue at hand in the thread. However it does indicate to me that maybe McCain either has better advisors than Obama, or - perhaps more likely - he learned from seeing what happened to Obama when he tried to defend his relationship with Wright.

Maybe. I don't really think McCain's "pastor problem" is even comparable to Obama's.

Why's that? Is it because Parsley's unacceptable statements were directed against Islam, and Hagee's against Catholics, while Wright's were were more directed against America as a whole?

That's not what I had in mind at all. The reason is that Obama sat under this pastor for 20 years, rubbed elbows with him an his ilk, contributed money to Wrights church, wrote a book about his relationship with Wright, had Wright working on his campaign, named Wright his mentor and spiritual advisor, etc.

Hagee and McCain had no such relationship. McCain just received an endorsement - probably an automatic one that would have been given to the GOP front runner.

I will say, all in all, Wright is much more of a whacko than Hagee, tho I wouldn't waste time with either of them myself.