Meltdown with Keith Olbermann

OLBERMANN: But wait, there’s more. At her church, the pastor says, the people speak in tongues and are preparing for the rapture. And there’s tape of her talking about this, like this year tape.

Another day, another Sarah Palin story. This time it’s about her church and god’s will to put up a pipeline across Alaska and how you can pray away the gay and the rapture. There’s videotape and unfortunately for the governor, it ain’t videotape of Debbie, Harry and Blondie.

In our number one story on the COUNTDOWN, Sarah Palin, messenger and messiah. The governor, in June of this year, addressing a graduating student—graduating class of students at her one time church, the Wasilla Assembly of God. Here she recalls how one pastor set the stage for her to win the gubernatorial election.

Meanwhile, for the past six years—meanwhile, for the past six years, Mrs. Palin has been praying at the Wasilla Bible Church, which is now—is my mic now open? For the last six years, Mrs. Palin praying at the Wasilla Bible Church, which is now promoting a seminar that will turn, it says, gay people into straight people. According to the brochure, “you’ll be encouraged by the power of god’s love and his desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality.”

Oh, no, I’m not going to say it. For the record, the governor has not made any public statement about the pray away the gay movement, nor yet about the report tonight from the former pastor there and a fellow parishioner that worshipers not only believe in the rapture and that Governor Palin has spoken of Alaska as being a refuge for that supposed lifting up of those true believers, but also that they speak in tongues, in other words, in word or sounds neither they or anybody else understand, kind of like Fox News.

We just had one of those presidents, and it hasn’t worked so out. Listening to her, and this doesn’t just apply to the tape we just saw, but throughout the ten days of Sarah Palin, she’s Elmer Gantry. She’s Amy Simple McHockey Mom. Which group is larger, do you think? Do we have any idea, those who will look at those tapes, whose eyes will then roll back in their heads and in tongues they will say, I like this woman or this candidate, or Americans who will then shout a three-word question, beginning with what the—

Now, here’s an interesting thing from this church. What about this converting gay people into heterosexuals? Where does that actually stand on the list of good idea, bad idea in the public persona at this point, in this advanced stage of our civilization?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26626083/

Keith Doberman…I mean…Olbermann asks a very good question here: Which group is bigger?

Of course Olbermann only hangs out with fellow liberals, so, for him, the bigger group is the group he hangs out with. Tally the population of Berkeley, Hollywood, San Francisco, Harvard Yard, Upper Manhattan and the Beltway, and that pretty well sums up the “bigger group”—in his far left arithmetic. .

At this point in the election cycle I have to wonder who is inflicting more damage on the Obama campaign, the right-wingers or the left-wingers?

It looks to me as if white Obama supporters are doing more damage to his campaign than the vast rightwing conspiracy could ever accomplish.

The funniest thing about this attack is the way it unintentionally exposes the rift between black Obama supporters and white Obama supporters.

In this riff, he’s attacking prayer, Pentecostalism, pretribulational premillennialism, and heteronormative values. Olbermann represents the Hitchens/Dawkins wing of the party.

It’s obvious that Olbermann has never spent much time inside a black church. Just for starters, the largest Pentecostal denomination in America is a black denomination: COGIC. And that’s the official position. That doesn’t count gazillions of independent Pentecostal storefront churches. Anyone who knows anything about black Christianity in America knows that Pentecostalism is a dominant force.

Likewise, has he ever seen a typical black church service in which parishioners come forward to be prayed for? Has he ever seen how they’re prayed for or what they’re prayed for?

In his secular ignorance, Olbermann launching a full-frontal assault on Obama’s core constituency: the black voter.

Where does that leave Obama? It puts the Obama campaign on the defensive. It drives a wedge between black Obama supporters and white Obama supporters, forcing the Obama campaign to offend one key voting block or another.