The Preacher and the Candidate

Imagine this scenario: A preacher endorses a candidate for president. Then we learn the preacher has, from the pulpit, made inflammatory and un-American statements. Yet the mainstream media totally ignores the preacher’s remarks and never pressures the candidate to repudiate them.

Impossible scenario? That depends on whether the candidate’s name is Barack Obama or John McCain — and whether the preacher’s name is Jeremiah Wright or John Hagee. The media’s remained silent about Hagee, even though his public statements are just as outrageous as anything heard from Jeremiah Wright.

Hagee called the Catholic Church “the Great Whore” and “an apostate church” and says that, because Hitler grew up a Catholic, the church is responsible for the Holocaust.

Hagee claims God sent Hurricane Katrina to level New Orleans and kill 1,836 people because the city had allowed gays to schedule a gay pride parade. And McCain’s preacher once asked about women: “Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? … You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

My question is not: How could a Christian preacher say such hateful things? But: Why did the media pay so much attention to one preacher — and zero attention to the other?

Visit Mr. Press’s website at billpressshow.com.