Why Katie can't be trusted
Fred Clarkson at Talk to Action links to a provocative article posted at Media Transparency by Rev. Dr. Andrew Weaver on the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). If you care about religious freedom or the state of democracy in this country I encourage you to read this real eye-opener. If there ever was a conspiracy in this country to undermine the American way of freedom, then the IRD and its cohorts are surely at the center of it.
Dr. Weaver, a United Methodist minister, reveals the influence of powerful neoconservative Catholics, led by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, who drive the IRD agenda "to neutralize and overturn the social justice tradition of mainline Protestant churches". These aims are carried out through public attacks against mainline Christian and Jewish leaders, and through funding and support for so-called "renewal" groups within Protestant denominations whose fundamental purpose is to take over the leadership and assets of those denominations and eliminate their involvement in liberal and progressive causes.
As I noted in a prior post, the Star Tribune's resident neoconservative social commentator Katherine Kersten was (until very recently) a member of the IRD's Board of Advisors. Her views on every social and politcal issue — from environmentalism and immigration to same sex marriage and welfare — mirror exactly those of the IRD and its wealthy sponsors.
Nobody seems to know why Kersten is no longer on the IRD board. Perhaps her new employer had something to do with it? According to one source, the Strib hired Kersten to 'counterbalance' its supposed liberal bias, after TCF Bank CEO and former MN Republican Party head Bill Cooper withdrew his bank's advertising from the paper in a dispute over articles by columnist Nick Coleman. Kersten, who in addition to her IRD role was a director and fellow of the Center for the American Experiment (CAE), another Republican propaganda outfit, had no journalistic experience prior to joining the Strib, and her appointment was widely criticized as a politically expediency.
I'm only speculating, but perhaps the Strib felt Kersten went too far in her June 5 attack on the United Methodist Church, which I commented on here. Perhaps they quietly asked her to resign from the IRD so that she would not appear so blatantly to be a paid political mouthpiece of a right-wing thinktank. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the newspaper's audited paid circulation is in decline (per latest ABC figures), especially for their Sunday edition, and they can't afford to lose too many more subscribers? Kersten was probably told to tone things down a little and stick to bashing gays and Mexicans for a while.
Comments
Posted by: Mark Poole | August 23, 2006 11:48 AM