"They Are Powerful Garments."

From cnn.com

Just food for thought here:

The 2008 Canadian Federal Election will probably be remembered most for the blue sweater that Prime Minister Stephen Harper wore in a series of commercials that Reason Partners created.

The campaign was created to address the political opposition and media portrayal of Mr. Harper being “scary, cold and aloof” and at the same time attract more female votes.
With most political advertising these days, the emphasis is on defaming your opponent, often using the most unscrupulous means available.

We took the opposite approach by ignoring the opposition altogether and focusing instead on the truth and reality of Prime Minister Harper’s devotion to his family and his overall ideals, which are largely shared by most Canadians.

An optimistic approach and vision for the country.

The series of commercials worked right from the beginning, as the idea went massively viral.

It was mentioned in a pop song by the Barenaked Ladies, Billy Talent and K-OS. It was lampooned by comedians on and off the air. It was written about by fashion consultants. There were popular YouTube parodies. Not to mention, that it dwarfed all the other political parties ads combined on YouTube. It directly affected the sales of sweater vests in Canada. And it was the reference point for most media coverage during the election, including the NY Times and LA times.

It was integrated everywhere and into everything, including the Prime Minister’s campaign jet, nick-named the ‘Sweater Vest Jet’ by the media.

Perhaps the most memorable line during the English language debate was when the NDP’s Jack Layton said, “Where’s your platform Mr. Harper? Under the sweater?” Funny. But even funnier, as the CBC’s Rosemary Barton noted later in the campaign, “Jack Layton is now wearing a blue sweater.” And that, “Layton, pushing his bid to be Prime Minister this time round, is actually taking a page from the PM’s playbook. After a week away, one wonders if a sweater will ever just be a sweater again.” It was also noted that the Liberals, Stephane Dion and the Green Party’s Elizabeth May followed suit, err, sweater vest, as they both started wearing one in their respective party’s colour.

The Conservatives won the election. And for the first time, more women voted Conservative than Liberal. The Conservatives also had the best percentage gain in the popular vote versus the competition.

-Reason Partners

The quote in the title is from a friend of mine who wishes to remain nameless because he works for the man.

-Tim

Mitt recognizes faulty bootstraps, changes entire political philosophy

Sike! Gov. Romney still believes social safety nets are for the illusive "poor", definitely not for him or anyone he ever came in contact with before he entered politics. BUT! During the debate in Sioux City last night, Romney threw out this jab at President Obama:

"I think the president is going to ... go after me and say, 'You know, in businesses that you've invested in, they didn't all succeed. Some failed. Some laid people off. And he'll be absolutely right.' But if you look at all the businesses we invested in, over a hundred different businesses, they added tens of thousands of jobs. In the real world that the president has not lived in -- I actually think he doesn't understand that: that not every business succeeds, that not every entrepreneur is lucky enough to do as well as the entrepreneurs that I described ... I myself have had the chance of leading four different organizations. Each of those was highly successful, in part because of hard work, in part because of good luck.

As Liz Lemon might say, "What the what?" Hard work is only part of the #winning equation? He goes on to point out the president's handling of the GM bailout resulted in the closing of factories to save the company, which is what Romney did in his business pre-politics life, which is why the president doesn't understand economics? That part doesn't really matter (or make a lot of sense). What matters is that he recognized that sometimes, you can try your darnedest, and fail. Sometimes, you tug on your bootstraps, at they just pull right off.

As Christians, we can see the causes for such a footwear malfunction: systems of injustice and oppression which give all the "luck" to some people, at the cost of keeping others chronically in debt, jobless, and homeless. Jesus knew this, too. How could the people he healed even begin to live a life of integrity when the religious institution and the Roman Empire thrived off their required submission? We are compelled to respond as Jesus responded, to heal the individual and the community, to extend humanity to people in every capacity of life.

We live in a country where success is a commodity, and luck a privilege. While Mitt Romney might have accidentally stumbled upon inequality, he only scratched the surface of disenfranchisement in the United States. There is a reason some people have all the luck.

Theology <-> Politics

I need not discredit philosophy by laborious criticism of its arguments.  It will suffice if I show that as a matter of history it fails to prove its pretension to be "objectively" convincing.  In fact, philosophy does so fail.  It does not banish differences; it founds schools and sects just as feeling does.  I believe, in fact, that the logical reason of man operates in this field of divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism, or in politics, or in an other of the wider affairs of life, which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand.  It finds arguments for our conviction, for indeed it has to find them.  It amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words and plausibility.  It hardly ever engenders it; it cannot now secure it.

-William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

I'd just as soon argue that theology, too often, does much of the same.  So back to my age old question: Does our theology inform our politics, or does it merely serve to, as James puts it, find arguments for our convictions?

-Tim

Who is spreading the "religion is private" rumor, and how can I stop it?

Whenever I come across someone opining on the question of religion in America, I'm interested, because I myself get pretty opine-y about that very subject. And when it comes up in a national media outlet, say, the New York Times, I get my hopes up, because the Grey Lady has standards. However, I was fairly disappointed this morning when I read Eric Weiner's opinion article, Americans: Undecided About God?.

Weiner invoked the growing "spiritual, but not religious" (which is like nails on a chalkboard for this writer) contingency in the United States, blaming religion's effort to influence the political sphere as the catalyst for the trend.

"Their idea is that we’ve mixed politics and religion so completely that many simply opt out of both; apparently they are reluctant to claim a religious affiliation because they don’t want the political one that comes along with it."

I'm not sure I can swallow such a hypothesis. People are turned off by "institutional religion" (*see "spiritual, but not religious") for many reasons: hypocrisy, perceived exclusions, rigidness, promotion of antiquated practices, etc. That a specific denomination (as it seems Weiner is actually speaking of, rather than Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, as a whole) supports certain public policy is an outgrowth of a particular understanding of theology. No religion exists neatly packaged apart from human existence. Teachings compel concrete responses. But Weiner seems to long for a more sterilized understanding of God:

"Religion and politics, though often spoken about in the same breath, are, of course, fundamentally different. Politics is, by definition, a public activity. Though religion contains large public components, it is at core a personal affair... There lies the problem: how to talk about the private nature of religion publicly."

This guy has traveled extensively as a correspondent for NPR, won a Peabody award, and written a book about finding God, and yet he still states rather cavalierly something at which a first semester seminary student would gawk. Religion is a private affair?! Nothing could be further from the truth. Christianity (the only religion on which I can speak with any sense of authority) introduces a way to live in a community that reflects God's mercy and grace. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism (as emphasized by Dr. Barry Bryant) spoke of piety, the love of God, and mercy, the love of neighbor, as twin components of the Christian faith. You cannot love God without extending compassion and justice to world around you. Whether Weiner likes it or not, religion is public.

He ends his article waxing poetically about a religion for the non-religious, yearning for a "Steve Jobs of religion" who can "invent a new way of being religious." Well, Mr. Weiner, the individualistic fulfillment you crave exists within the confines of modern consumerism and capitalism, but you are correct in assessing that you won't find it in the Bible, or most any religious text. I feel as though you might be looking in the wrong places (read: the television) for the religion you seek. That new way of being religious exists around you, in churches, shelters, agencies, seminaries, and many other places where people are attempting to live in the world as an expression of God's love. And as it turns out, that way of being religious is not new at all.

Mitt Romney Believes in America and So Should You!!: Part 2

***This is part 2 of a post on Mitt Romney's campaign ad, "Believe in America." If you haven't yet had a chance to read part 1, you can scroll down and find it on the right hand side under "Blog Archive."***

So as it turns out, Romney’s campaign voluntarily admitted the full context of Obama’s comments in a blog post written by Gail Gitcho, a Romney spokeswoman, the very same day the ad was released:

“Three years ago, candidate Barack Obama mocked his opponent’s campaign for saying ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.’ Now, President Obama’s campaign is desperate not to talk about the economy…Now, the tables have turned – President Obama and his campaign are doing exactly what candidate Obama criticized. President Obama and his team don’t want to talk about the economy and have tried to distract voters from President Obama’s abysmal economic record.”

From this statement, it seems that Romney’s campaign is suggesting that their ad is actually pointing out the hypocrisy of 2008 Obama’s criticism of McCain in light of the fact that 2011 Obama is ‘desperate not to talk about the economy.’

But am I honestly supposed to accept that Romney’s campaign sincerely believes the American public would pick up on that subtle, highly implied criticism in a 60-second TV ad? Or, just as unlikely, that more than a few thousand voters will read Gitcho’s full explanation of the ad? No. The reality is that the Romney campaign’s intention was to make Obama look bad in the eyes of the general American public, while pre-empting the response from the Obama camp and generating extra media attention in the process. A media strategist might say that they achieved their goals. But as a citizen interested in seeing more honesty and integrity in our politics, I am irritated—though sadly, not surprised.

Look, I’m not trying to make Obama into a saint on this matter. His 2008 comments on McCain’s campaign strategy were sensationalized and somewhat decontextualized in their own right. We can debate who was more deceptive, but the bottom line is that we need to learn to think for ourselves. Rather than take politicians’ words at face value, we need to critically examine their statements, their sources, and their motives. It is the responsibility of both the public and the news media to avoid being manipulated by highly-paid political strategists and well-crafted rhetoric. 

We are accustomed to throwing up our hands and saying, “That’s politics for you!” We label idealistic (or worse, naïve) those people—like me—who believe that we can cultivate a political system grounded in honesty and transparency. But collectively, we have the power to hold accountable those who prevent this very system from taking root.