Christians, campaigns and CNN

As Deacon Greg rightly notes at his site: this is the sort of thing that gives Christianity a bad name. What a stupid, pointless, needlessly hurtful, thoughtless and inflammatory idea.

What kills me is that this pastor is personifying the sort of Christian who would scream “persecution” at the drop of a hat, but he has no problem calling for an overtly provocative act against another religion.

But I have to wonder about Rick Sanchez, here. His points are not badly made, but I wonder why he showcased this fellow at all? As one of the deacon’s readers points out:

While I don’t support the burning of the Quran, I can’t help but wonder where CNN and Rick Sanchez were when we had the atheist college Professor Paul Z. Myers desecrating the Eucharist on posting pictures of the act? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall Sanchez grilling Myers in a CNN interview. It gives credibility to the statement that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice.

Just so; I have to wonder whether Sanchez highlighted this story because a) it feeds into the public perception of Christians as intolerant and stupid and b) it is fodder for a potentially huge story: the inevitable fatwa against this man and the tensions his ideas will foment. Is Sanchez stoking this little twig in hopes of reporting on an eventual conflagration down the road?

I wouldn’t bother asking that, but Sanchez has more than once struck me as a guy who gets almost giddy in anticipation of big, horrible stories. I’ll never forget watching CNN a few months ago, when a tsunami-watch was in effect for Hawaii (the famous day when Sanchez wondered what 9 meters meant “in English”) my husband, who rarely pays attention to news, listened to Sanchez’s almost manic reportage/anchoring and said, “he almost seems too eager for a tsunami to hit, doesn’t he?”

In fairness to Sanchez, there were people all over the world (including us) waiting to see what would happen. But it’s worth asking, if not about Sanchez, then about journalists in general: do they sometimes highlight these stories because they anticipate a dramatic response? After all, it’s quite true that an interview with a scientist over his desecration of the Eucharist would be very unlikely to provoke much more from Christians beyond their prayers for him. Nothing exciting or news-worthy about that!

Puts me in mind, a little of Newsweek’s making a cover-story of an inaccurate report of Korans being “flushed”. The flushing (or-non-flushing) of Bibles would never be anyone’s idea of a cover story.

Interesting. Your thoughts?