by Steven Salaita, Antiwar.com, 22 December 2008
Barack Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren of Orange County’s Saddleback Church to give the invocation at his inauguration has sent the liberal blogosphere into a frenzy of apprehension and indignation. Warren is an advocate of Proposition 8, the measure that repealed gays’ right to marry in California. It is no doubt a poor choice by Obama, but the outrage arising from the liberal-Left misses a number of crucial points, primary among them the fact that Obama’s selection of Warren may be in poor taste but it is in no way a betrayal.
In fact, none of Obama’s Cabinet or advisory selections have been betrayals, although such an accusation is in vogue among increasingly jittery liberals. “Now it has officially gone too far,” declares Sarah Posner in the Nation, displaying a bit of the ceremonial righteousness that only the pious can muster. Warren is “a poster boy for kinder, gentler 21st century bigotry, and Obama shouldn’t validate him with this lofty symbolic role,” notes Joan Walsh at Salon.com.