The Media's Fear of God
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Beat the Press
By Chris Weinkopf"Do most Americans realize just how fervent the President's evangelical faith is?"
So asks the New York Times' Alessandra Stanley, in her review of the PBS "Frontline" documentary, "The Jesus Factor," which examines the role of faith in George W. Bush's life and Presidency. Stanley believes that Americans would be distressed to know that Bush engages in such outlandish behavior as daily Bible-reading, prayer, and allowing his spiritual life to inform his political one. After all, she is.
Among members of the establishment media, Stanley is not alone. In its review, the Los Angeles Times describes the President as possessed by "a fervor that might take everyone, even [Bush's parents] by surprise." The New York Daily News calls "Jesus Factor" filmmaker Raney Aronson "impressively open-minded and objective," but concludes that, "based on the evidence presented, the same cannot be said of President Bush."
It's hard to imagine similar treatment of other major politicians. No one would ever suggest that Joe Lieberman is, well, too Jewish for the Presidency. Nor did the press ever much fret that being Baptist might have rendered Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton immune to critical thinking. The media typically portray Senator John Kerry's heterodox brand of Catholicism as a badge of honor.
But Bush is different--a devout, observant, conservative believer. As far as the establishment media are concerned, he might just as well be from Mars.
Still, "The Jesus Factor" goes to great lengths to portray Bush's faith evenhandedly. It is not the documentary that speaks ominously of Bush's "fervor," but its reviewers. Why could that be?
Well, consider what Aronson said, in an NPR interview, about people's responses to an anecdote in her film: "Secular people, when they heard that the President felt called to run for the Presidency by God, felt very alarmed. What I found on the religious side was, well, they weren't alarmed at all. In fact, they were comforted by this idea."
As with an inkblot test, reactions to "The Jesus Factor" say more about the viewer than the documentary itself. People with religious faith, and those who bear no animus toward them, found the program's depiction of Bush inspiring. Diehard secularists found it frightening. And while the American public might straddle that cultural divide, the media elite almost uniformly fall on the anti-religion side.
Even PBS can't avoid a certain sense of bemusement in its descriptions of these earnest Bible-thumpers. At times, its documentary takes on the same curiously detached tone of a National Geographic special on African bushmen, describing in fascinated detail the strange, alien beliefs that, to much of the American public, are simply part of everyday life.
The announcer explains, in that serious, public-broadcasting voice: "Conservative evangelicals consider the Bible to be the word of God, and without error…. To evangelicals, it is not their Christian denomination that connects them but a series of beliefs. One of the most important is committing yourself to Jesus Christ, or being 'born again.'"
You almost expect him to continue: "While the men are out hunting lions, the women fashion nose rings from the bones of small rodents."
But to the blue-state, secularized urbanites who dominate most major media, an evangelical--or, for that matter, a devout, conservative religious person of any kind--is truly a foreign creature. Thus the confusing, often contradictory reporting about Bush's faith. Depending on the story, he's either a self-righteous true-believer who won't let anything stand in the way of his mission from God, or he's a phony who invokes "the Almighty" to score points with the much-maligned Christian Right.
Yet for all the mainstream media's consternation over Bush's religion, the American public takes a decidedly different view. "The Jesus Factor" notes--to the dismay of some reviewers--that the two Bush Presidencies prove that a candidate can lose every other demographic and still win the White House on the strength of the evangelical vote alone. Lost on the producers, and for that matter, the critics, is an understanding of what that means: These odd religious creatures aren't radically outside the mainstream; they are the mainstream.
Yes, the American people know how religious the President is. The real question is, do most reporters realize just how "fervent" the American public is?
Chris Weinkopf is editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Daily News.
Published in One America September 2004This information was found online at:
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18139/article_detail.asp
