Notes from Evil Bender

James Dobson, still pissed with John McCain and increasingly irrelevant even to his own base, is upset with Barack Obama for being far, far smarter than Dobson is:

As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement’s biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.

[...]

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”

The problem here is really simple: Obama is appealing to the intelligent Christians, who realize that Christians differ on religious matters (shocking!) and that different people interpret the Bible in different ways. Dobson naturally hates this, since Dobson’s message is “do exactly what I say because I say God says so”:

“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.

This is pretty hilarious from a man who constantly uses Old Testament law whenever it’s convenient for his agenda. Not to mention that Dobson, as a Protestant, should really not be appealing to “tradition” for his model of biblical interpretation. After all, this was one of the huge reasons for the rise of Protestantism. They objected to the idea that tradition, and not the text alone, should inform one’s understanding of Scripture.

Then Dobson gets really good:

Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama’s argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion’s terms but in arguments accessible to all people.

He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the “lowest common denominator of morality,” labeling it “a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”

That’s right, folks. Dobson, who has a higher prominence-to-ignorance ratio of anyone this side of Kevin Federline, wants to lecture Obama’s Constitutional scholarship. And Obama’s offense was noting that we can’t persuade non-Christians by appealing only to Christian doctrine. Maybe Daddy D should read Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, to see how an intelligent Christian appeals to a diverse audience.*

“Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” Dobson said. “What he’s trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.”

FAIL. I count at least five lies and distortions there. Not a bad word-to-lie ratio, even for Dobson.

Of course Dobson’s real problem is that he’s opposed to Democracy. He wants to push his interpretation of the Bible on others, and when called on it, accuses his foes of wishing to silence him. In other words, he’s a typical wingnut, maybe even a “fruitcake.”

*It makes me feel dirty to even mention Dobson in the same sentence as Dr. King. But it’s perhaps appropriate, in that Dobson might be the Bizarro Dr. King–the idiotic reflection of King who represents most everything that’s wrong with Christianity, while Dr King preached a message that even an atheist like me could appreciate.