Ryan: Yep – Pat was a magnet for the media pre- 9-11 as well.

BTW, I wasn’t questioning your ethics or values personally. I’m just fed up with politics and politicians in general. Sorry if I was venting – I guess I should take up knitting or birdwatching or something less “bloodboiling”.

That can be easily explained. You didn’t get my “reasoning” apparently because what you figured my reasoning is is not accurate.

“1 Stephanopoulos is not a religious leader who is supposedly setting an example of good “Christian values”. Robertson should be your example of “hypocrisy”. He is an embarrassment.”

I’ve already condemend Robertson’s comments here (that link was also posted in this blog entry) and also here in the comments section. My quote in that comment was:

I don’t really think it’s right for a Christian man (especially one of influence) to go around advocating killing people.

So my thoughts on Robertson’s comments should be perfectly clear. And the media wasn’t jumping on Pat because as a Christian they didn’t think he should be saying those things, they jumped on him because he was a conservative – period – who said something stupid they could saturate us with news coverage of so they could paint social and/or Christian conservatives with the same brush. The fact that he is a Christian is just a “bonus” for the media. Stephanopoulos was a senior *advisor* to Bill Clinton, and he wrote an entire piece devoted to talking about assassinating Saddam Hussein. I hope you see the correlation between both GS writing his piece and Pat saying what he did. And I think it could be strongly argued that GS had more of an influence in Clinton’s admin than Pat did/does in GWB’s. Pat made a comment in passing. GS wrote an entire article on it. Now, we might have an “inside policy” on assassination of brutal dictators and what not but that’s not exactly something you want to go discussing in an op/ed piece.

“2. Because Liberals say (or do) something stupid or unethical, it makes it OK for Conservatives to do the same? They’re bad, so we can be bad too?”

No. This isn’t about moral relativism. It’s about media hypocrisy and how the media has different standards for which party they lay the heat on the most. The implication in their stories is that no public figure of Pat’s stature (Christian or otherwise) should go around advocating assassination. And they’re right. But they held Pat to a different standard than GS. Wonder why.

“Doesn’t anybody have any ethics or values anymore?”

I hope you’re not questioning my ethics or values. The meaning in my post was clear. I wasn’t invoking moral relativism, nor was I trying to say Pat wasn’t wrong in what he said. I hope *this* response will set the record straight on that for future reference.

1 Stephanopoulos is not a religious leader who is supposedly setting an example of good “Christian values”. Robertson should be your example of “hypocrisy”. He is an embarrassment.

2. Because Liberals say (or do) something stupid or unethical, it makes it OK for Conservatives to do the same? They’re bad, so we can be bad too?

Doesn’t anybody have any ethics or values anymore?