Liddy Dole's Desperate Bigotry : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)

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Liddy Dole's Desperate Bigotry

Posted on: October 31, 2008 9:09 AM, by Ed Brayton

Facing the prospect of losing the election next week, Elizabeth Dole is trying even harder to provoke some old-fashioned anti-atheist bigotry. Video of her latest ad below the fold.

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Comments

Pity that the Hagen counter-ad is essentially saying "I am not an atheist" and not actually addressing the use of calling someone an atheist as a smear tactic.

Posted by: Kurt | October 31, 2008 9:42 AM

Reminiscient of the 'Obama is a Muslim' smear. The response sadly seems to be 'yes, being an atheist is just a horrid thing, but I'm not one and how dare you imply I'm one of those people'. Here's hoping Libby loses and loses big.

Posted by: Dave S. | October 31, 2008 9:54 AM

This is the Jesse Helms Memorial seat, so I don't believe atheists or Homoshecktuuals are allowed to vote. I'll have to check about "Colored Persons".

Is "Godless Money" currency that doesn't have the "In God We Trust" bit on it? Or is it more like the "Unrighteous Mammon" Jesus was talking about?

I must be on Liddy's Friends and Family plan, because she's been calling me 15-20 times a day for the last week.

Kurt: Tasteful choice of screen name.

Posted by: kehrsam | October 31, 2008 10:11 AM

Sadly Hagan is handling it poorly. A better response would have been, "I don't share their views, but unlike my opponent would diligently serve the interests of all of my constituents regardless of their beliefs."

I'm not an atheist, more of a highly skeptical agnostic, but the more these bigots attack atheists, the more I am convinced that there isn't a God.

Posted by: dogmeatib | October 31, 2008 10:19 AM

Why is being an atheist such a bad thing? Is it simply that it stands in opposition to the prevailing belief system and perhaps questions that moral authority or am I just missing the boat.

Posted by: emc | October 31, 2008 10:20 AM

In many states Hagan could have used the 'I'm not an atheist, but what would be wrong if I was' argument, but not in North Carolina, which still has too many echoes of the Jesse Helms era. This was the best she could do if she wanted to have a chance of winning.

Dogmeat -- the fact is that she not only isn't an atheist, she's a Sunday School teacher and an elder of her Church.

And Dole has 'Bachmanned' her campaign fund considerably, to the point where her statement probably brought in the money to pay for the counter-ad.

Posted by: Prup aka Jim Benton | October 31, 2008 10:29 AM

In many states Hagan could have used the 'I'm not an atheist, but what would be wrong if I was' argument, but not in North Carolina, which still has too many echoes of the Jesse Helms era. This was the best she could do if she wanted to have a chance of winning.

I get very tired of everyone assuming that the south is homogeneous in their right wing Christian viewpoints. There is a strong and large progressive population in the south, including North Carolina. Yes they are not a majority but there are plenty of Christians in the south that don't buy into the prejudices extolled by Mrs. Dole.

Hagan should have explained her faith and taken the opportunity to keep atheists from being turned into pariahs by both the left and right in NC. Instead she fed into it.

Horribly mishandled when it could have been a win.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 31, 2008 10:37 AM

I's the reality of running for political office in North Carolina (or anywhere in the old South), I'm afraid. No matter what Hagan feels she has to say to get elected, she's still a vast improvement over her opponent, and if her election helps the Democrats reach sixty in the Senate, it'll be worth it just to see Dobson and his allies coming completely unglued.

Posted by: tacitus | October 31, 2008 10:37 AM

Don't you know what will happen to this country if our coins and bills don't say "In God We Trust?"

Don't you have any idea how often, particularly in these troubled financial times, Americans look to their currency for reassurance?

Don't you?

Posted by: James Hanley | October 31, 2008 11:47 AM

*boggle*

This is the first political advert I've seen this election season (I'm a Brit and live in London). If this is the level that is being used _on TV_ then I hate to think what is turning up on fliers, etc.

I'd like to think that type of vicious attack on the individual rather than the politics would either get laughed off or make people angry over here.

Posted by: David Durant | October 31, 2008 12:34 PM

And Dole has 'Bachmanned' her campaign fund considerably, to the point where her statement probably brought in the money to pay for the counter-ad.

Yep. I've given Hagan $$ now three seperate times (I gave some to Tinklenberg as well). I don't live in NC and until Dole's press release on this same issue a bit ago, I had never heard of Kay Hagan. I don't particularly like the way Hagan is handling this, but in this case I don't really care. I'm acting to punish Dole.

Posted by: Josh | October 31, 2008 12:38 PM

As and atheist, I have a good deal of understand for Hagan's adamant declaration of her Christianity in the face Dole's ads. From what I read, Hagan's faith is a big part of her self image and to be painted as something completely different must be particularly galling. If someone were to publicly portray me as a fundamentalist Christian, I would do all that I could to correct that misconception. Not because I think Christians are bad but because I want people to have an accurate view of what my values are.

Posted by: Ferrous Patella | October 31, 2008 1:26 PM

David Durant: As someone living on ground zero of this one (I'm in the extremely conservative mountains in the west end of NC) all I can say is that you're lucky to be missing this one. In addition to Kay Hagen being godless, I have also recently discovered that Hagen is a lesbian (unlabeled flyer and read over at least one country radio station), a communist (US Chamber of Commerce robocall), would disarm Christian gun owners (NRA robocall, but huh???), and does not believe in the right to own property (NC Assn of Realtors robocall, presumably regarding Kelo but it didn't cite any evidence). Everything except the black helicopters, in other words. Only a few days left!

Posted by: kehrsam | October 31, 2008 1:58 PM

Posted by: kehrsam | October 31, 2008 2:02 PM

So Kehrsam, what are you predicting will be the outcome of the Dole/Hagan battle? Does Hagan have any real chance?

Posted by: Josh | October 31, 2008 2:06 PM

Josh: Hagen has had a slight lead for months, and is going to benefit from the Obama campaigns voter registration drives down in the piedmont. Also, she won't suffer much from the "Bradley Effect" against Obama, since North Carolinians seem to like voting for white female candidates (the Governor's race is also two white women, as are several downballot races). I say Hagen 51-48.

Posted by: kehrsam | October 31, 2008 2:17 PM

(the Governor's race is also two white women, as are several downballot races).

Pat McCrory is a woman? I sense a looming scandal.

Posted by: Savagemutt | October 31, 2008 2:32 PM

I say Hagen 51-48.

That's essentially the way I've been viewing it. It will certainly be interesting, ja?

Posted by: Josh | October 31, 2008 3:01 PM

My bad, savagemutt, I was thinking of a different race and wrote governor.

Good dog!

Posted by: kehrsam | October 31, 2008 3:38 PM

The funny thing is, this ad dramatically demonstrates the need for the very political action committee it's demonizing.

Posted by: Taz | October 31, 2008 6:52 PM

I can't help wondering if Dole has ever read the US Constitution, especially Article VI, the very last phrase, where it says, quite clearly:

"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Has she read that, or has she, and most of the rest of the Rethuglican party simply chosen to ignore it?

Posted by: Blaidd Drwg | October 31, 2008 11:27 PM

I thought she handled the situation with a lot of class-unlike Libby. She answered back with the truth about herself-and did not denegrate any person or grup. Good for her! And I agree with those who said that she gave people a clear picture of what her values are.

I cannot wait until Wednesday morning-and Florida had better not let Chad "hang out!"

Posted by: Rev. AJB | October 31, 2008 11:42 PM

Blaidd Drwg,
You might be interested in this little nugget, from North Carolina's State Constitution, Article 6 Section 8; Disqualifications of office:

The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.

But while Dole's ads gave me a lot of sympathy for Hagan, Hagan's own actions in response pretty much killed every last shred of it.

According to this article, Hagan is now suing Dole for defamation, because she accused her of being an atheist, and that tells me everything I need to know about how Hagan herself views atheists. If I could, I'd obviously still vote for her, over Dole, but there's no way in hell she'd ever get any of my money, which (if I wasn't a foreign citizen, obviously) she probably would have if she'd taken the high road.

Posted by: Kaerion | November 1, 2008 1:12 AM

kehrsam:

Is "Godless Money" currency that doesn't have the "In God We Trust" bit on it? Or is it more like the "Unrighteous Mammon" Jesus was talking about?

In the case of the former, it's nice to know that we apparently were a "godless" nation before IGWT got imposed on all US currencies back in the 50's; as far as the latter, I'm sure that all of the prosperity gospel loons have all their stories straight by now in case divine retribution is coming anytime soon.

Here's hoping that the harridan in question loses big in this race; unfortunately, this is Helms' seat, which means that a pile of demagoguery like Liddy is just carrying on the ol' tradition of throwing as much shit as possible in order to continue ownership of the outhouse.

Posted by: Chris Krolczyk | November 1, 2008 4:11 PM

Liddy Dole:

Pro-family trophy wife

Childless career woman who thinks (other) woman should stay home and breed

Loyal wife who suddenly realized she doesn't live in Kansas with her husband, but really lives in North Carolina

Posted by: khan | November 1, 2008 6:40 PM