Actually, I'd have been delighted with Rev. Wright. But that's why I need to be kept away from ever assuming public office.

I look over my recent years and see I have cut off, and been cut off by, people with whom I have philosophical, religious and actual practical differences, leaving me a mite lonely (NOT COMPLAINING! lonely's better than fuming). But that's a luxury I have as a private person. i have tried in the context of organizations to get along with people I disagreed with, and I have to tip my hat to Obama for his demonstrated attitude thus far. I think shaking hands with Bush is far more disgusting than letting Warren strut his two minutes at the inauguration.

From huffpost -

In a few weeks, Barack Obama will be sworn in as President and be joined by two men leading prayers - Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery. Lowery is the 'dean of the Civil Rights movement', the man who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr. Lowery supports same sex marriage.

#### Sounds inclusive to me.

High five!

I really think he has a wise perspective on this matter. Click on my sig to get to his article.

(Of course, I do speak as a straight person who has no use for religion or marriage, and who lives in a country with gay marriage.... Not to worry, y'all will catch up eventually...)

with having the other, pro-gay, minister on too, I have been persuaded by the woman from Fire Dog Lake on CNN. Now I think Obama should have had four clergy on (none of them notably anti-gay) - a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim and (I would add) a secular humanist.

No matter what variety of cleric was invited, the result would be exclusion. That's one of the things about religion. A good reason (together with the separation of church and state thing) to have had an inauguration ceremony w.o. a cleric of any kind.

...then what's the big deal about extending the marriage thing to them??

A 'humanitarian' issue? Then be humanitarian...

Yeah - the second minister doing *something* at the inauguration... Are the right-wing sites and blogs complaining about a pro-gay minister speaking at the ceremony?

I can understand the people who are upset about Warren not feeling that things are balanced by the pro-gay (and black!) minister, but it's better than just Warren...

Oh. Gee, yeah, what if Obama chooses supremes the same way he chose Warren... Lord, lord...

are busy with family and turkey leftovers.

You make a very good point.

It seems that it's in the very nature of these programs that they have to be softball in order to exist.

What's the alternative? What would all the critics of Gregory here like to see instead - that is feasible?

Shooter242

That is feasible?

You have to be the dumbest person who has ever poster here. And that's really saying something.

-- omooex

----------It was I who asked what is feasible, given that it was pointed out that government people wouldn't come on the Meet the Press type programs if they were interviewed the way people here would like (or at least the way Gregory was being reviled for not doing).

I don't know from Shooter, but it sounds like you're dumping on him inappropriately. What's your point? (Or your solution to this dilemma being discussed?)

I think there is something to be said for seeing these people (Rice, Axelrod, etc.) up close and listening to their words, even if the interviewer was uncritical. The interviewing and the critiquing would have to be separate media functions, and it's unreasonable to expect that one person would do both (esp. on the same program). Probably unreasonable that they could be done by the same person on different occasions (I wouldn't come on your program and be treated nicely if I knew you were going to rip me to shreds later...)

My goodness, what a crabby bunch. I was extending someone's observation that the Meet the Press type programs have an inherent problem - that to get people on, you have to softball them. I'm not particularly defending anything, just mulling over what might be a solution to this problem.

I was suggesting that interviewing these people, however softly, had some value, and that the critique of what they had to say could be done by other people on another program.

The only way to have a hardball press would be if they all conspired to be no other way (so that government people either had to put up with it or not appear), and I can't see that happening.

demonstrates something about the Israel/Gaza scene - don't discuss, just lob rockets. (Thanks, Glenn, for at least discouraging Klytus's inane barrage of spitballs.)