The Last Page

The big question used to be, when did you leave the Communist Party? And the answer was always, too late, because the questioner had either left before you or had never joined. In this campaign season, the question is, why didn't you leave your church and disavow your pastor earlier? For a while, it was posed only to Barack Obama, not to other candidates who, over the years, had attended churches or accepted endorsements from pastors who were antigay, did not believe in equal rights for women, or subscribed to theories of Armageddon that required Jews to disappear from the face of the earth. These other candidates carried the protective armor of whiteness, which Obama lacked, so their protestations that their faith was personal and that they shouldn't be held responsible for the statements of others were taken at face value. Only Mormon Mitt Romney took almost as much heat. Some on the left treated Hillary Clinton's membership in a conservative prayer group as if she were in a bizarre cult, while the rest of the country, where prayer groups are common, could have cared less. Relentless exposure of the anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and anti-Islamic beliefs of two of John McCain's supporters finally forced McCain to reject their endorsement weeks after Obama had to distance himself from his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.