Obama’s former church (gasp!) helps its parishioners

June 7, 2008

Andrew Sullivan recently unveiled “The Hewitt Award,” named after “the absurd partisan fanatic, Hugh Hewitt,” which Sullivan extends to “the most egregious attempts to label Barack Obama as un-American, alien, treasonous, and far out of the mainstream of American life and politics.”

And Hewitt is definitely living up to his reputation.

Last night, Hewitt posted a couple of .jpg images under this text:

This is from the “Pastor’s Page” from the April 9, 2006, Trinity United Church of Christ bulletin. Barack Obama was a member of the church at the time. It is unknown if he attended services that day. Click on the image to enlarge.

Curious what he’d dug up, I clicked on the images, wondering how controversial it might be. The first page from the church bulletin was a message from Jeremiah Wright to the congregation, talking about a woman in the church who needs a kidney transplant. The next page was tax advice from the church on parishioners who might qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, along with a message about helping victims of Hurricane Katrina.

There was nothing even remotely controversial about any of this. Literally, not a word. Similar bulletins appear in houses of worship across the country, every weekend. Who on earth cares whether Obama “attended services that day” that day or not?

Or as Sullivan put it, “…Hewitt keeps posting images from TUCC’s church bulletin as if they contained something scary or shocking or revelatory. I can’t find anything in them even faintly remarkable. Donating a kidney to another member of the congregation? Instructions on how to get an EITC tax credit? Help for Katrina victims? Is Hewitt now muttering aimlessly in a dark room somewhere?”

Matt Yglesias added:

Yes, that’s right, Pastor Wright tried to help one of his congregants get a kidney transplant and if you put his former parishioner Barack Obama in office, next thing you know churches all around the country will be, um, trying to help people. […]

Mostly these circular letters seem me to be a reminder of why one might have long been a member of Trinity — most of the church’s activities seem to be basically unremarkable, socially conscious engagement with the community, precisely the sort of institution a rising local politician would want to associate himself with.

What Matt and Andrew don’t realize, though, is that the bulletin is proof of Wright’s nefarious kidney-stealing agenda. Oliver Willis has the scoop:

[T}his bulletin proves what we’ve believed all along: black people are harvesting our livers. Suddenly, the reasoning behind Obama’s run become clear: He’s not here for hope, he’s here for your liver.

I knew it….

Come on, guys. Don’t you know that churches are supposed to take your money, not give you anything.

How can these guys buy their Bimmers and Benzes, and air condition their dog houses (oh, and pay off the people they abuse).

Get with it here. That is a HUGE big deal. Christians acting like Christ.

An abomination!

  • “Is Hewitt now muttering aimlessly in a dark room somewhere?”

    He has been for the last 30 years.

  • Helping other people is want communists do. Its just like Tom Delay says, until he proves us wrong, Obama is clearly a Marxist.

  • Hewitt once again demonstrates his superior intellect by exposing a plot to undermine the profit margins of the medical insurance industry, thereby triggering an economic collapse and forcing overly-aggressive insurance underwriters, salesmen, representatives, technicians, telemarketers, and Dick Cheney’s Borg Implants to fail en masse.

    Hay Hugh…I’m laughing at the superior intellect….

  • I don’t want to go to Hewitt’s website; I’m afraid my ‘puter would “catch something” (like crabs) and I’m just not ‘puter-literate enough to cure it. So, can someone who’d been tell me, whether Hewitt leaves people to draw their own conclusions (a la Rorschach test), or does he write comments/captions to help one out?

    And, if the seond, what dreadful conclusion are we to draw from the one about Katrina victims?

    I “get” the kidney transplant one; like Oliver Willis, I, too, interpreted it as: “they’re after our white organs and it won’t end with kidneys, either” (tip: guys might consider *not* getting a penis enhancement).

    And I “get” the one about the Unearned Tax Credit; they’d spend it on gas for their limousines, to chauffeur their welfare queens around.

    But I admit that the Katrina one has me stumped. Anyone?

  • Hugh fancies himself as some kind of theologian. He has written several books on religion and ethics. He also did a series of television interviews with several personalities, like Thomas Keating.

    Now, I grant you, I am an amateur theologian at best, but what I have read of Hewitt on these subjects, I have forgotten more than he has ever known.

  • Totally OT (I miss the open thread on weekends)…

    The Votemaster, @:
    http://www.electoral-vote.com/
    has a fascinating bit about the efforts afoot to eliminate the electoral college. Not for this time around, of course but, maybe, one day…

  • Maybe it was the EIC instructions? Helping the ignert darkies milk the gummint? Just a thought – I didn’t want to sully my Firefox by going to Hewitt’s site either.

  • Don’t berate Hewitt, instead we should continually email him with our thanks for posting such positive images – sadly though, he might then stop posting them, despite their uplifting tone.

  • Incidentally, Duane R. Patterson, not Hugh Hewitt, actually posted the images.

    Devoid of context, it seems that Hugh’s audience is assembling any and all documents to crosscheck dates of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons with Obama’s attendance. One expects that they hope to dig up another Jeremiad to pin on Obama.

  • But…butbutbut…how do people who are not associated with Obama…doing good deeds that have nothing to do with Obama…hurt Obama?

    There must be SOME way…

    Mary?

  • Damn!
    Hugh is sooooo on the cutting edge!
    In my most wild, drunken stupors, I would not have thought of that.
    ;>
    peace

  • Well, isn’t that why Obama stayed with Trinity UCC as long as he did, and why he refused to condemn it? Because it helps people?

  • But I admit that the Katrina one has me stumped. Anyone?

    Well, let’s see. Soliciting aid for Katrina victims = accepting that the federal response was inadequate = noting that Bush fiddled (and McCain ate birthday cake!) while the city drowned and then did nothing afterward to help rebuild = exposing The Chimp’s failed presidency = aiding the terrorists. Of course.

    Or maybe it’s simpler: Soliciting aid for Katrina victims = highlighting the disproportionate suffering among the black population of New Orleans = inciting race warfare. Ah, that’s it.

    Gah. It scares me that I’m beginning to be able to think (such as it is) like those on the far right…

  • Well, jeez, helping people is a Marxist, communist, socialist, bleeding heart liberal concept.

    If you don’t have enough money HA! DIE SUCKER!

    It’s the Republican way!

  • How dare they act kind to others, christ was quite clear, you have to bring a sword and set people against each other, not be nice, you have to damn cities worse than Sodom and Gammorah, not be kind and charitable

    This church is radical, not following the will of their god

  • It’s the EITC that set him off. He probably thinks the church is encouraging its members to rip off the govt. That’s the conservative attitude towards the EITC.

  • This thread contains some Olympic class snark but I only ask that MsJoanne & Libra pay to replace my keyboard & monitor.

    It’s been said elsewhere but it bears repeating: Obama will drive the bigots and the lunatics out into the open like no other presidential candidate in our history. He”ll act on their tiny brains like LSD added to the prom punch bowl until the Huge Spewitts of the world run down the street stark naked save for a coating of their own feces and babbling about the radical commie n-words who want to steal his rectum.

    Keep your cameras handy!

  • Even the right wingnuts aren’t this stupid.

    I bet they had a bulletin that really DID have something moderately controversial and they uploaded the wrong one.

    They aren’t crazy in this instance, just bumbling idiots.

    But I could easily be wrong.

  • It’s all about stem cells – those heathens want to abort babies so they can cure cancer. From the first .jpg image:
    “He has had two stem cell transplants, and by the Grace of God, Richard has been in remission for over ten years.”

  • The handful of times I’ve visited Tonwhall.com, the articles I’ve read seemed fairly innocuous. The point, I believe, is to get posters to write ridiculous things in response, so that they can maintain an unbiased front.

  • Churches should serve like communes where the many can help the one and the one the many. Why would anyone be posting this stuff especially someone like Hewitt?

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