Southern conservatives? Inoculated at birth

South Carolina’s Gov. Mark Sanford is contrite about his extramarital affair. He plans to tour the state asking constituents for forgiveness. In South Carolina, he will probably get it.

In Southern Baptist-steeped South Carolina, public repentance is a tradition. Weepy evangelists, altar calls, redemption pageants and encounter weekends are deeply rooted in the culture.

There is a joke Southern towns share about having a church on every street corner. It is also a competition — several claim the informal title of “Buckle of the Bible Belt.”

In this culture, it is a time-honored ritual to answer a tearfully delivered altar call at the end of the church service. The repentant rise slowly from their seats and shuffle humbly to the front of the church — or stadium, in the case of a Billy Graham crusade — for a humiliating public cleansing, to shed their own tears and accept Jesus as their personal savior. Or to accept him again. Or to receive forgiveness, prayers and the laying on of hands after “backsliding.”

Church audiences love testimonies — sordid, public confessions of a life ill-spent before finding God. Personal testimonies featuring all the forbidden fruits — alcohol, sex, drugs, and rock and roll — allow them to vicariously partake of guilty pleasures right out in public.

In church, even, and without taking their clothes off.

Returning to the faith after some really good sinning was entertainment in these parts long before the VCR.

Decades ago, I caught a piece of a late-night, AM gospel talk radio show out of somewhere in Georgia. The host was interviewing Demond Wilson, the actor from the 1970s TV sitcom, “Sanford and Son.” After the show went into reruns, Wilson had become a minister and was on the radio to talk about his new ministry.

But the host didn’t want to hear about that. He wanted to hear about Wilson’s life as a rich Hollywood celebrity. What about the wild parties? the host wanted to know. What about the sex and the drugs?

Wilson explained that he and his wife weren’t really party people. He played tennis, he said, with some star (whose name I can’t remember). But basically, he went to work and they had largely kept to themselves.

The host kept at it. He kept pushing.

You could hear the anxiousness in his voice. He’d expected some really quality sinning, but this more was like coitus interruptus.

“But when did you really hit bottom?” he asked a couple of times. This guy hoped to hear how Wilson had found Jesus after coming to in some strangers’ bathroom after a drunken orgy, a needle still in his arm. You know, a really good testimony.
He never got it. Wilson just decided one day that he would rather give up acting and serve God.

The radio host was audibly disappointed.

What has any of this got to do with Gov. Mark Sanford’s Argentine junket? Inoculation.

For conservative politicians, the testimony has morphed into “inoculation politics,” e.g., falsely accusing opponents of personal failings they themselves share. Accustom the public to your neighbors’ faults so as not to look as bad in case you are caught indulging them yourself.

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” Paul wrote in Romans 3. Anybody who has ever been to a revival meeting knows that one.

Sinning. Everybody does it. But unlike a godless liberal, a good conservative who confesses his sin publicly is eligible to be welcomed back into the fold. Just one of the boys.

“Hallelujah, brother!” as Dwayne Hickman once said.

Southern-strategy Republicans learned that lesson well. Man is sinful by nature. The Mark of Cain. It’s old news.

Soon enough, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada (and of the Promise Keepers) will be old news. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (of The Fellowship), too.

But unlike Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-FL) men’s room affairs, Mark Sanford’s Argentine junket sounds like really good sinning.

Already, fleets of tabloid photographers have arrived in Buenos Aires, hoping to give us a glimpse of just how good.

Thus, when Sanford contritely strikes out on his political redemption tour of South Carolina, pious sinners anxious to hear all the details will probably forgive him his sins. They’ve already been inoculated.

TOM SULLIVAN
Asheville
•
Tom Sullivan is the founder of BlueCentury.org. He blogs for Campaign for America’s Future and Undercover Blue and holds degrees in philosophy from Furman University and in mechanical engineering from Clemson University.

N.C. GOP Chair Tim Johnson

Why is news media largely ignoring election of N.C. GOP’s vice chair?

Buncombe County Republican Party Chair Tim Johnson has been recently eviscerated through print, radio and television media outlets in WNC for misconduct in his marriage 12 years ago.

The district chair of the Republican Party and others were active participants in this questionably timed effort to undermine this gentleman’s candidacy for state office.

In spite of the negative publicity, this gentleman went to Raleigh and handily won the election for vice chairman of the North Caroling State Republican Party. Not bad for a guy, unlike the rest of us, who made mistakes in his younger years.

When public humiliation was the theme, this gentleman made front page of WNC’s largest paper. When, the very next day, he won his special seat, he received a brief left-hand column insert.

The Republican Party has elected a black male to the second highest seat in the state party.  That deserves mention — more importantly, this gentleman deserves recognition for stepping through the hurdles with great courage and perserverance.

CARL MUMPOWER
Member, Asheville City Council
Asheville

Calling U.S. health care system ‘free market’ termed erroneous 

EDITOR’S NOTE: A copy of the following letter to the Asheville Citizen-Times was sent to the Daily Planet and is being reprinted here because of its relevance to the current health-care debate.
•
In a recent Asheville Citizen-Times editorial on health care (“We need serious debate on health care reform, not political theater,” Jun 24, 2009), the writer claims to be unable to decipher how efficient capitalism can be bested by inefficient government. That, of course, does not mean that question is undecipherable.

First, we do not have a free market in healthcare. This industry is heavily regulated. The problems we experience in healthcare derive from a long history of politically-driven government interference in that once-proud industry.

The truth is that the government, with its hands already in your pocket, competing with counterparts the private sector is the antithesis of competition. It is the direct negation of fair competition. It is in reality a pathway to coercive monopoly that ultimately squeezes private providers out of the market. Which, of course, is what this administration and the supporters of government-run healthcare want.

In 2003, Mr. Obama said, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare plan. But we may not get there immediately.” And as Chicago Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said in April of 2009, “a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer.”

This is not how a free market competes, this is how the Mafia competes.

TIM PECK
Asheville

Rep. Heath Shuler accused of being hoodwinked during Sri Lanka trip

Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letter was sent in reference to a June 6 protest by North Carolinians for Peace, a nonprofit organization, for which the author urged attendance outside Rep. Heath Shuler’s office in Asheville. The author is a Tamil-American, who has been living in North Carolina since 1983.
•
Congressman Heath Shuler was in Sri Lanka recently, presumably to check out the situation in the northern part of Sri Lanka, after the recent war.

Contrary to what the congressman said at the press conference sponsored by the Sri Lankan government, the displaced civilains and war casualties are interred in camps which have been comapred to concentration camps.

The 200,000 civilians, (including women and children) are being held there, under the pretext of protecting them, live in apalling conditons as attested by humanitarian aid workers and a few international reporters (British Channel 4 news) who have managed to visit the camps.

There are reports of abductions, rape and beatings, mainly carried out by the Sri Lankan army and the para-military.

Also, there is a severe shortage of food, medicine and water. Infectious deseases are spreading, and there are no doctors on site to care for the sick, the injured and the dying.  The children in the camps and the surrounding areas have no access to school, because the schools have been taken over by the army. The civilians are under the constant watch of the Sri Lankan military and para-military.

I feel that the congressman was taken on a guided tour, and he is obviously under the impression that the civiliamns are well-looked after.

No media or humanitarian workers and definitely no visitors are allowed in these camps. In addition, people coming in search of relatives are not allowed to visit nor bring food.

SUBI RAJENDRA
Wilmington