Rick Warren’s Weak Excuse for This Week…
April 13, 2009
...HE GOT THE VAPORS: Pastor Rick Warren raised more than a few eyebrows when he decided to skip out on George Stephanopoulos at the last minute yesterday. (His reps claimed he had to ditch because he was suffering from exhaustion--a certainly plausible doctor's excuse given all the energy he's had to expend to explain himself lately....) And don't even get us started on those ghastly fumes from the pulpit. Warren's scheduled appearance on "This Week" was likely going to be a must-see showdown for him to answer for all those lies conflicting statements he's made regarding his involvement in Prop 8 and his overall views about LGBT Americans. As Amy Sullivan writes at TIME's Swampland blog, Stephanopoulos was sure to be ready for him:
For a man who is arguably the most famous religious leader in the world after the Pope, Warren is surprisingly sloppy when it comes to speaking in public. He acknowledged as much during an April 6 appearance on "Larry King Live," saying that "Everybody should have 10 percent grace when they say public statements." But Warren needs more like 50 or 60 percent grace. [...] When it comes to gay marriage, Warren dearly wants to be a Southern Baptist who believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman--but also a man whose gay friends understand he's not intolerant. He appears to have missed the fact that the gap between those two impulses is what the debate over gay marriage is all about. That's not surprising, though, since as I wrote earlier this year, Warren also "wants to be both the universally admired pastor who speaks to the nation and the influential leader who mobilizes religious conservatives for political ends. But those are two inherently conflicting roles, and he cannot be both, no matter how hard he tries." Proposition 8 is just the most visible and recent example of Warren trying to have things both ways.[...]
It's a pretty easy bet that George Stephanopoulos had clips of all these comments cued up and ready to go Sunday morning. Rick Warren is a talented communicator and has inspired millions of people. But in trying to explain or reconcile those contradictory statements, he wasn't going to be able to wing it. Maybe the mere thought of trying exhausted him.
At least Stephanopoulos was polite enough to wish him a quick recovery. We wish he'd fess up to lying about his purpose-driven actions against LGBT families even sooner.
