The Bully Pulpit
Using interviews with
Fischer, his friends and his critics, Jane Mayer fashioned a picture of a man
whose own quotes and actions completely damn him as a man of unwavering
bigotry: it gave exact, certifiable quotes from Fischer and named instances
that were documented in other sources. In all, The Bully Pulpit is almost
air-tight in its supported facts. Fischer himself even characterizes his own
character as "more conservative than conservative:
Fischer thinks that Islam is a violent
religion, and argues that Muslims should be stopped from immigrating and barred
from serving in the U.S. military. He believes that the country was a Christian
nation when the Bill of Rights was written, and therefore non-Christians "have
no First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion." He has said that
Native Americans are "morally disqualified" from ruling America, and that
African-American welfare recipients "rut like rabbits."
The Bully Pulpit
also points out that the research Fischer has used to discredit people has
been, in its turn discredited: Scott Lively (The Pink Swastika) and Paul
Cameron ("gays only live to the average age of 42") have been on his
radio show "program numerous times.
And so have a number of politicos: Michele
Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Mike Hucakabee and Rick Santorum, to name a few.
Of course, the few paragraphs about his own family history may have stung (his
mother ran off with the local bus driver) and he pointedly refuse to discuss
them with Mayer. These along with the comments by former friends who have been
disinherited by a man so rigidly fundamentalist he refused to believe religious
scholars at Stanford University where he graduated from.
He read the Old
Testament in ancient Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. He came to disapprove
of modern scholarship positing that the Torah had multiple authors. Fischer
hewed instead to the fundamentalist notion that the first five books of the
Bible were written entirely by Moses. The Bible, he believed, was the unerring
word of God.
But i t's doubtful that he
read either in Hebrew or Greek. If he had, he would have been astounded at the
discrepancies. This just shows that since his education did not fit his
ideology of fundamentalism, he rejected it instead of scholarship.
Back To Blunders:
Amidst the blunders of attacks on professionalism and talking down to his own audience, Fischer's biggest mistake was in allowing the interview to happen at all: his vain hubris could not conceive of a credible journalist culling quotes and facts, interviewing colleagues, critics and former friends and delving into family issues (since he is, after all the Director of Public Policy for the American FAMILY Association. His righteous arrogance did not allow him to do his own research on the articles Jane Mayer has written over the years (ten of which were nominated for Pulitzers).
"I'm congenial, I'm amiable, I'm convivial, but she wants to paint me a bully." The
video below is Fischer's full rant. The video beneath it is a pastiche of his
other statements and it proves t here is absolutely
nothing "congenial" "amiable" or "convivial"
about Bryan Fischer's steadfast Dominionist views, misogyny, homophobia or
bigotry. The videos don't lie.
And neither do the facts.
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