Joel Connelly’s column today (headline: "Hutchison goes to church and prays—so what?") is off-base in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start.
So I’ll start with the obvious: His characterization of me as a "militant secularist" and "anti-religious bigot" is silly and inaccurate.
Connelly wrote:
In this era of political correctness, evangelical Christians and Catholics remain fair game for those who call themselves freethinkers.
Guilt by association, broad-brush smears, demeaning sarcasm — tactics used by the right-wing screamers on Fox News — get borrowed by the secular left in Seattle. [...]
The name-calling against Hutchison reads like a Karl Rove playbook adopted for use by the left. "Religious Wingnut" read a recent headline in The Stranger. Underneath, scribe Erica Barnett (now with Publicola) huffed about Hutchison’s donation to "anti-choice nut job Mike Huckabee," her being a director of the "creationist Discovery Institute," and her "Bible-thumping speech" at the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast.
A breakfast prayer was used as proof of Hutchison’s nuttiness: "God created the magnificent universe and the world we see and the glorious beauty around us . . . Christ himself is the creator who made everything in heaven and earth."
Based on these words, Barnett accused Hutchison of wanting to teach religion in science classes.
Susan Hutchison
OK, ignoring the irony of Connelly criticizing "name-calling" while calling me a bigot, a militant secularist, a Karl Rove wannabe, etc., let’s look at what I actually wrote, and what evidence I actually cited. (Incidentally, the actual headline of my story , "Closet Case: Susan Hutchison can run be she can’t hide," does not contain the words "religious wingnut"—Connelly appears to have fabricated that one out of whole cloth.) Since it’s fairly common for people quoted in the press to say their words were taken out of context, I’m going to provide the context, with no cuts or deletions (and one bold added for emphasis).
From my story about Hutchison, written for The Stranger :
But don’t let Hutchison’s nonpartisan pretenses fool you. She’s a partisan Republican with a long history of working for and donating to right-wing causes.
Hutchison has given thousands of dollars to Republican candidates (including anti-choice nut job Mike Huckabee), she has served as a board member for the creationist Discovery Institute, she almost ran for state senate as a Republican in 2005, and she delivered a Bible-thumping speech at this year’s Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in which she sneered at "activist atheists" and evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins for "believing they can get by just fine" without Jesus.
Contrary to what "evolutionists" like Dawkins believe, Hutchison told prayer-breakfast attendees earlier this year, "God created the magnificent universe and the world we see and the glorious beauty around us… Christ himself is the creator who made everything in heaven and earth."
It’s one thing to believe in God (as plenty of public officials, including outgoing county executive Ron Sims, do); it’s quite another to advocate the teaching of religion in science classes and to condemn scientists for being scientists.Hutchison’s creationist beliefs dovetail perfectly with the Discovery Institute, the right-wing think tank where she served as a board member. Best known for pushing "intelligent design," the Discovery Institute encourages public schools to "teach the controversy," an attempt to put evolution and creationism on equal footing in science classes.
How you read that—particularly the part about belief in God having nothing to do with one’s qualifications or lack thereof for public office—and get to "anti-religious bigotry" and the claim that I believe Hutchison wants to teach creationism in public school "based on the words" in the prayer I cited is beyond me.
Let’s be clear: For many years, Hutchison was a director at the Discovery Institute. You can argue, as Connelly does, that "intelligent design"—the idea that the world and everything in it had a Creator—and creationism are two different things, but that’s not really the issue here. I believe that neither creationism nor "intelligent design" belongs in science classes, because they have nothing to do with science. Does that make me a "bigot," as Connelly says? So be it.
Would I call Mike Huckabee an "anti-choice nutjob?" For PubliCola? Probably not. However, I certainly stand by the sentiment, and will happily back it up with documentation: Mike Huckabee, in addition to believing that the government should take away a woman’s right to choose with no exceptions for the life or health of the woman, even opposes basic birth control . That is a fringe point of view. I take offense at the notion that I’m a "bigot" for believing that I deserve autonomy over my own body and refusing to vote for people who would take that right—established by the U.S. Supreme Court 36 years ago—away.
As for the "Bible-thumping speech," I think my story, including the context Connelly selectively excised, speaks for itself.
Incidentally, Connelly also tore into blogger David Goldstein, calling Goldstien "brazenly sexist" for referring to Hutchison as "Suzie." Problem is: That’s how Hutchison frequently refers to herself, and what associates and friends call her. Can it be sexist to refer to women by diminutives? Absolutely. Was it in this case? I don’t think so.
Connelly is Catholic, and I have no problem with that. However, unlike Connelly, I believe that the public discourse is best served by airing a whole variety of views—including those of Jews, agnostics, and people who don’t believe in God.
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Joel “I can’t answer a question without referring to Dixie Lee Ray and Scoop Jackson” Connelly and David Horsey are adamant defenders of “Sue” Hutchison, probably because she was the flirty hot chick amongst the liberal good ol’ boys at the MSM mixers throughout the roaring 80s and 90s.
“In this era of political correctness” … huh, Joel?
“P.C.” was the hot button debate, circa 1994-1999.
Since then: Family Guy, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell, Sarah Palin, Larry David, Entourage.
All mad popular.
Come on, Joel. Taking up the “I’m oppressed by political correctness” is a pour and stir column from a bygone era.
In fact, I’d argue, it’s been “culturally correct” to be anti-politically correct for about 10 years now.
It was good to discover you again, Erica. I have missed reading your editorials. I think you work very hard and it shows.
Why are you reticent to use the expression “anti-choice nutjob” on Publicola but not at The Stranger? What’s the difference?
Joel is an old-school troll. Instead of posting ad hominem attacks with poor reasoning in the comments of blogs, he has a soapbox to do it from!
Nice comments, but other than “code” did you make the case Huckabee was a “nutjob” because his opinion on abortion is very fringe; however, I read that some poll or another (and I hate polls) showed most Americans disliked abortions. Hardly fringe opinion, IMO.
You should be against abortions and we all should. Unfortunately, that seems the way this is played out in public discourse.
The real issue is what should we do if we are against abortions. Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama say to make abortions few and unneeded. The other side is to ban abortions.
However, it seems that “code” is that we are all for abortions when most of us are not.
@6,
What you describe, people aren’t into abortions, is accurate, but look at what Erica wrote:
“Mike Huckabee, in addition to believing that the government should take away a woman’s right to choose with no exceptions for the life or health of the woman, even opposes basic birth control” are fringe opinions.
Erica:
Suggest you edit rants and check facts. I am an Episcopalian, not a Catholic. Doug, learn how to spell: It was Dixy Lee Ray. And note file soon to be on our web site: Sen. Henry Jackson is endorsing from the grave.
@4: It’s a calmer way of expressing the same opinion. Our goal is to start conversations, not be provocateurs. We definitely don’t pretend to be unbiased here, but I don’t think throwing around terms like “fuck” and “nutjob” makes an argument stronger (and can make it weaker).
Oh Joel your constant blusters and diatribes only endorse that which everyone already knows – the worst thing about Seattle is the reporting and its reporters. Google and Wikipedia are not primary sources. I still hope to return to the day of investigating reporting where colunmnists and reporters did not run with stories just for the sake of getting the big headline. Front page, above the fold used to mean something.
Please stop writing irrelevant pieces about road construction and correlating every single tidbit of information to Chicago and New York style politics.
Sincerely,
Your dying readership
Ok so there is a little misdirection in this article. There is a blog post (http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/04/14/susan-hutchison-partisan-republican-religious-wingnut) that does refer to Ms. Hutchison as a religious wingnut. While it was not the title of the article quoted (Connelly’s error) it is not an error of attribution. In other words it is reasonable to believe that it is Ms. Barnett’s opinion.
And according to the logic of this article it is ok to refer to anyone who believes something outside of the current mainstream thought as a “nut job”.
But ultimately my confusion is how one could use obviously loaded words and phrases such as “Bible Thumping”, nut job and sneered, and then be surprised when someone takes offense. Doesn’t mean your characterizations are or are not accurate to some degree, but by using these sorts of loaded words you are indicating a bias (basis of all bigotry).
@11,
Part of what undermines Connelly is that he uses inflammatory language right back.
@12,
No doubt. I tried to go to great lengths not to defend Mr. Connelly. I agree that the bias cuts both ways, but if there is ever going to be reasonable discourse someone has to stop painting with that big ol’ broad brush.
@8: Well, you know… all the same to us militant atheists or whatever.
(You gonna correct your error about my headline?)
“Sincerely,
Your dying readership”
Ouch!
ECB and Josh–
Defensive much???
And this is why I hate Joel Connelly. Its a shame the PI did not take him down with them.
The fundamental question is does a person’s religious belief affect their political positions. If it does then of course they are relevant to deciding who to vote for. This is not just a question of whether she is a christian. Christians beleive all kinds of things. But if she is a fundamentalist, as her speeches and associations suggest, then that is highly relevant to the election. I know religion has gotten a privileged position for a long a time where any criticism of it was forbade, but while I don’t buy that in general I certainly don’t when a person is running for office.
She was on the board of the discover institute, she has given speech attacking atheists, and she is no doubt very conservative.
Tell me, why is that not something perfectly OK to acknowledge and attack.
so a inside journalism question for y’all…as a columnist, what obligation, if any, does a writer have to respresent the truth? do editors fact check columnist? what responsibility (or how much) should be placed at the columnist’s feet for misrepresentation/lies and how much at the editors?
I agree with @13, but it shouldn’t be the job of competing columnist/journalists nor commentors to call b.s. when something is published which, to me, seems so blatantly fabricated.
Joel Connelly is a religious nut. He believes in the Catholic church, a criminal organization, so what can you say?
@ 18: Columnists are opinion writers, not straight news writers. Their opinions are their “facts.” Editors have a duty to keep their newspaper/magazine/website away from slander country, but otherwise, it’s the columnist’s decision what to write. The editor can fire the columnist if there’s too much unpleasant flak (but probably won’t because it fires up readership).
Joel’s column looked like the kind of thing you write when you’re really mad, then think the better of and delete. Only he turned in to his editor. Joel’s perhaps more valid points involving our occasional need to remind ourselves to disagree respectfully with those on the other side of issues are completely undermined by his overly defensive ad hominem attacks on Erica and Goldy.
My biggest problem with Mr. Connelly over the years has been that he seems to fetishize centrism. Bipartisanship and let’s-all-get-along politics aren’t ends in and of themselves, and they often result in bad policy. He’s a liberal, no doubt, but seems to have far less tolerance for those just a little to his left on the political spectrum than public figures residing considerably further to his right.
Erica,
Joel WAS Catholic from Bellingham till he saw where the fashionistas such as the Bullitts were spending their time, St. Mark’s. Then he shed his roots for the chance to hang with people he could praise in his writing and then solicit their dinner invitations.
You, Erica, unfortunately, haven’t changed. The only thing Joel ever gets right is his disdain for the Stranger and its alumni. But even a broken clock….well, even you would know that.
No wonder why the PI is going under, it’s paying hack writers to pen opinion columns.
Joel Connelly has made a great contribution to Seattle journalism over the years, but he’s not aging gracefully or flexibly. As a pundit and commenter on the local scene, he has slid into that overpopulated category of Mossbacks and Grumpy Old Men. He’s overreacting in his defense of Susan Hutchison, who doesn’t really need it, anyway, because like Sarah Palin, she’s The Pretty One, and she’ll be swept into office by old Channel 7 viewers.
Erica, your comment about adjusting language from The Stranger to Publicola is an interesting one. Does it reflect an desire to raise yourself and Publicola from the other Seattle “urinals and urinalists” (the profane, pathetic and undisciplined Stranger; the ever-weaker, me-too Weekly; the blog sites that check and employ facts only casually, if at all) and actually earn some credibility?
That would be most welcome, since Seattle journalism and e-communication are in a wretched state.
As more and more printing presses, copy desks and editor’s in-baskets are sold for scrap, some important structures, processes, and characteristics are disappearing, too:
—City rooms, news rooms, and physical environments that housed communities of workers who shared disorderly spaces, crummy cafeterias, odd hours, and a professional ethic.
—Senior editorial judgment, earned through years of varied reporting, investigation, and editorial assignments, and used to mentor junior staff.
—Rigorous “technical” skills of copy editors, who exercised quality control for both content and style.
—Basic reportorial diligence and care, including a whole range of skills that were once the stock-in-trade of trained journalists.
The Seattle political journalistic style is the gossip column, with a hyper-hip cultural flourish. The latter assures all readers that the writer is whole-body tattooed, disfiguringly body pierced, and spends every waking moment in Belltown drinking, Twittering and texting to assemble a daily post.
Give us something better, okay? By, like, intelligent design?
Erica,
Thanks for letting us know that you “have no problem” with Joel Connelly being Catholic, although he isn’t. You are a model of tolerance, social justice and standing against bigotry.
Joel Connelly is to Seattle journalism as a bloated raccoon body is to the side of the road. That said, he does have a point…Josh and ECB have an almost preternatural obsession with dropping derogatory adjectives before the pronouns “Susan” and/or “Hutchison.”
Everyone who follows this website already knows Hutchison is conservative. No one who doesn’t know that checks this site. Thus, wouldn’t everyone be best served by reporting it straight?
@26,
Do you have examples of the “derogatory adjectives?”
I usually write “Conservative” or “Republican” or “former KIRO-TV anchor.”
Those seem pretty straight to me.
Josh,
I think we’re both right…by “derogatory” I meant words like conservative and Republican.
The first time I read your article in The Stranger, I thought it was great. Now, I think this is even better! What the hell Connelly? His article is based on the assumption that Seattleites equate religion with unqualified/stupidity, which is definitely not the case. I think it’s fair to say that most people opposed to Susan as KCE base their arguments on other grounds, or her belief in religion and not science/evolution. That part is a little scary, not the sole fact that she’s into religion. So am I. Just not in the same way, it seems.
Well, Erica you contradict by your very words in this blog your charges of inaccurate quotes against Connelly. You say you’re not anti-religious, yet you say creationism…which states that we are born from the Hand of God…does not belong in schools. I will agree you’re not anti-religious. Just anti-Christian. There is a difference, y’know. By the way, the 36 year old pro-abortion ‘right’ to abortion you allude to is not God-given, but ‘man’ given. Consider this: If a government says it is okay for a man to rape any woman who turns him on…because taking care of those urges allows him to ‘control’ his own body, that’s awful, isn’t it? But it’s the same as a woman who has an abortion to kill her unborn baby so she can control the urge to freak out over the result of her personal sexual act, because after all, she’s only ‘controlling’ her body. Yes, when it comes to local political candidates, you enthusiastically embrace the ones who advocate homosexuality, abortion, ‘global warming’ taxes and control over the people to ‘lead’ your government. No one denies your right to think and vote the way you wish. On the other hand, you and others who buy into the same ‘progressive’ (read: regressive) agenda seek to mute if not eradicate biblical teaching and using God’s Word as the guideline of law and schools…and candidates who feel God and His Word should be taught. Meaning, it’s groovy to throw the evolution theory in the little kid’s minds, but oh no, don’t you dare allow them to hear God’s account of how we came to be. What a cowardly way of thinking. What are you afraid of? The real tragedy here is the people who embrace this collective cesspool of misery, depravity, and hopelessness that you so staunchly defend. Why not ask God to show you His way? There’s no need to fear if you would only believe. Jesus says ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. NO Man (or Woman) comes to God except through Me. John 14:6. Babe, it’s the only way.