Barbara McGuigan, EWTN & Lars Larson Cross The Line Again

The right-wing attack on Obama seemed to intensify today, which says a great deal considering the level of anger the far-right has reserved for him.

I heard Lars Larson say on his show that the press seat he had has been given away to Ebony or Jet. And according to Lars and a guest from one of Oregon’s reactionary think tanks, two African-American children going to school with the Obama kids may get kicked out of their private school if union-backed educational reforms go through. How Lars and his guest know this and how the kids and their families feel about being spotlighted in this way was not explained. Lars went on a rant about how Ebony and Jet should be pressured to ask about this at a press conference since they took his press seat. You could almost hear his guest rising to the racist occasion before his shock set in and emotions cooled a bit. Talk about a racist screed!

(Lars does have some great photos up from the recent antiwar demonstration in Salem, even if they are meant to incite right-wing rage and even if they don’t include our communist banner. View them here and remember that they're watching us at demonstrations.)

EWTN, national right-wing Catholic radio and tv broadcasting from Alabama, featured radio host Barbara McGuigan seething with rage and sarcasm in a nationally-coordinated move to embarrass both Obama and Notre Dame University today.

Notre Dame has invited the President to give a commencement address and receive an honorary degree in May. For the extreme “pro-life” crowd this is a betrayal by the Church hierarchy and worse. Their response is to try to pressure the university to rescind the invitation. Such a move would certainly set back relations between the administration and the Vatican and jeopardize progress on many fronts. Agitation from the right around the address and the honorary degree also serves to take attention away from the Pope’s blundering in Africa and his pending visit to Israel. The Pope’s refusal to fully acknowledge the Holocaust while in Israel and his recent rapprochement with anti-semitic forces in the Church are problematic for everyone except the far-right.

McGuigan says at one point in her radio program

You are acknowledging evil and you are giving it an honorary degree…

She goes on to say

Jesus acknowledged them alright, didn’t he? He acknowledged them with whips. Now, I know that that would be a drastic measure for what is taking place right here, of course. But in another way. Another way.

before being reined in by her producer.

So McGuigan is labeling Obama as evil incarnate—not his position or his actions, but him personally. And she is suggesting some sort of action: she mentions the whips and then backs down without explaining herself. If an incident does occur at Notre Dame, McGuigan and EWTN will bear moral responsibility for that incident. Listen to the show number 57 here.

All of this came on a day when the President gave a speech and took questions from the press about the economic crisis. The administration's plans are shaky and contradictory and unlikely to work without a major change in course. Still and all, the right went into the racist gutter rather than present an alternate plan with any detail to it today.