Rick Rolled: Rick Warren on the fast-track to becoming the next Billy Graham.

The Reverend Rick Warren wants us to lead "purpose-driven lives." We, of course, would love to do this, but every time we turn around some member of the clergy, like the Rev. Warren, is quite purposefully pissing on our leg — metaphorically and metaphysically speaking, of course.

From what I can tell, Warren's main purpose in life seems to be selling copies of his book The Purpose Driven Life. Because he has sold so many copies (20 million to date), he is now apparently qualified to be a major political player. He has, as everyone knows by now, been picked by President-elect Obama to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Warren leads a mega-church (called Saddleback) in Orange County, Calif., a bastion of extreme Republicanism whose last big gift to Washington D.C. was Rep. Robert "B-1 Bob" Dornan. Dornan's idea of a witticism was, "Don't use the word 'gay' unless it's an acronym for 'Got Aids Yet?'"

Warren would make Dornan proud. Because he is on the fast track to becoming America's next Billy Graham — the preacher who blesses the bombs — Warren warrants closer scrutiny. His past statements seem to indicate that he holds some rather un-Christian attitudes toward, among others, homosexuals. He has equated homosexuality with child molestation and incest and he has been quoted as encouraging George W. Bush to "take out" foreign leaders who are "evil." Indeed, he all but advocated national policy in this exchange with Sean Hannity on Fox News: "The Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped ... that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers."

And, of course, God chose Warren — and George W. Bush — to determine who those "evildoers" are. At the same time that he rattles his saber, Warren affects a sort of kinder, gentler Pat Robertson vibe, sporting Hawaiian shirts on the pulpit and tragically-hip facial hair and paying lip service to global warming and literacy. His "style" just reeks of pandering, a way to soften the image of evangelical extremism.

And the media plays along.

The reaction to Warren's pick for the inauguration is being spun as "an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals," as if they deserve any deference after eight years of their tomfoolery. It is also seen as political code on Obama's part, that says, "Don't worry, I'm no dirty hippie like all those angry bloggers." As Atrios, one of the best of the Angry Bloggers put it, "Often punching hippies in the face is politically smart ... anti-gay bigotry is very centrist!"

To those of us who are sick of being punched in the face, the Warren pick is all of a piece. The demonizing of "liberals" over the past decade by the likes of Hannity, O'Reilly, Malkin, Limbaugh, Savage, Coulter, et al, has created a dangerous atmosphere that short-circuits any honest political discussions. When Coulter says liberals should be killed, this is seen as valid political commentary. But when liberals oppose the pick of Rick Warren, they are laughed at and ignored. As Bush told one detractor early in his first term, "Who cares what you think?"

On July 27 of this year in Knoxville, Tenn., a God-fearing gay-hating man armed with a shotgun entered a "liberal" Unitarian Church during a kids' production of Annie and opened fire, killing two people and wounding seven others. After his arrest, he told police that "he targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed." The shooter was a professed fan of Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage.

The story quickly faded away. Shooting liberals is so centrist, apparently.¦

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