President Barack Obama made a pilgrimage Sunday to Billy Graham's mountainside home, concluding his North Carolina vacation with his first meeting with the ailing evangelist who has counseled commanders in chief since Dwight Eisenhower.
The 48-year-old president made the short drive to Montreat from Asheville, where he spent the weekend, to see the 91-year-old Graham and son Franklin, also an evangelist.
During the visit, which lasted about 30 minutes and included aides and advisers to both men, Obama had a private prayer and conversation with Billy Graham. The evangelist gave Obama two Bibles, one for him and one for the first lady, Graham spokesman Larry Ross said.
Franklin Graham said his father and Obama did most of the talking. They reminisced about their roots in Chicago – Graham went to Wheaton College and began some of his ministry in the region; Obama moved to Chicago after college and began his political career there. And they talked about golf.
"The conversation was very cordial, very nice," the younger Graham said. "When the president got ready to leave, the president prayed for my father, my father prayed for him."
Billy Graham PRAYED for him? Oh you just know that Sarah Palin is sitting somewhere hella pissed off and waiting for her hands to unclench so that she can tap out a message on her Blackberry to her Facebook writer telling them to unleash "Facebook hell" on Obama for daring to connect with Billy Graham and receiving spiritual guidance.
"He was just being polite to you! I am his favorite! Me, me, me, me, NOT YOU!"
It also looks like Franklin Graham did not waste the chance to whine to Obama about getting booted from the Pentagon prayer service.
Franklin Graham said he and Obama spoke briefly about the Pentagon spat, with the younger Graham saying that activists with an agenda were trying to pull all religion out of the military.
"I wanted to make him aware of that," Franklin Graham said. "He said he would look into it."
I have very little doubt that Obama already knew about it and secretly believes it is the smart thing for the Pentagon to do. I like how Franklin Graham seems to believe that just because HE was disinvited from the Pentagon Prayer Day that it means there is an effort to remove ALL religion from the military. As if he believes he was kicked loose because of his faith rather than his intolerance.
I hope that Obama ignores his request and lets Billy's boy learn this lesson the hard way.
And though I have more respect for Billy Graham than I do his intolerant whiny ass son, I also remember that he had similar feelings about the Jews that Franklin now has about the Muslims. Feelings of Christian superiority run deep with these two and I have no idea why Presidents feel the need to pay homage to this family of religious prima donnas.
Dear President Obama, The RightWing Conservatives do not like you. They will never like you.
ReplyDeleteRick Warren is not your friend and continues to badmouth you, even after your generous invitation to him at the Inauguration.
Billy Graham will never be your friend.
Let's stop wasting time trying to make the Right Cons happy and move forward with Progress ... please.
Sincerely,
Your Base
Keep you friends close and your enemies ever closer. President Obama is a consummate politician.
ReplyDeleteYou are behind the times.
ReplyDeletePalin communicates directly with God now. And vice versa. She doesn't need an intermediary like Billy Graham. It's Sarah d'Arc, or Wasilla, dontcha' know.
ps And when she does need help she has her own Kenyan- the witch doctor!
Billy Graham is a creep. This is a man who pulled his daughter out of college after one year at Wheaton to enter into an arranged marriage with the son of a very wealthy donor. She "prayed" about it and decided it was god's will. What choice did she really have as a teenager? I'm so sorry Obama feels obligated to visit him. As bad as Bush & Co. were for our country, at least they realized that Graham, Dobson, and Robertson were a bunch of lunatics.
ReplyDeleteThe right thing for Obama to do would be to go back to Washington and abolish the White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives, and clean house at the Pentagon - the Evangelicals made big inroads there thanks to Bush the born again coke-head/drunk.
ReplyDeleteYour last sentence says it all (actually the last phrase of your last sentence).
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, President Obama is acting the statesman by placating an injured party in the humiliating dis-invitation to a National event that will see it's last sanctioned day under this Administration. He's also paying respects to an iconic image of fundy leadership and their tea-party base.
ReplyDeleteOn the other, it's flat out pandering to an extreme right religious cult leader that enjoys more mainstream props for all the Presidents before him that could not afford to alienate this base.
President Obama, this base will never accept you. You may win some grudging respect which is something in and of itself, but you'll always be the Kenyan born Muslim intent on taking their guns and Bible's away from Real Americans.
As a secular citizen, I am disappointed, but as an Inclusive American, I understand.
"I have no idea why Presidents feel the need to pay homage to this family of religious prima donnas."
ReplyDeleteThis is the phrase to which I was referring. This is really the big question here.
And Graham trotted out that hackneyed "they are trying to take religion out of..." BS. Freedom of religion includes, not only ALL religions, but freedom FROM having a prescribed or endorsed religion.
I'm from NC and old enough to remember when Billy Graham was nothing more than a street preacher on the traveling tent "revival" circuit 50+ years ago.
ReplyDeleteIt was only after he started cozying up to politicians, esp during the Nixon era, that he was able to shed the totally "fundie" aspect of his "ministry" by gaining some "respectability", but his core is still intact, after all these years. In fact, I was a protester among many when he and Nixon made a joint appearance at the old Coliseum in Charlotte, NC (his hometown) where a new "Billy Graham Library" just opened.
And, even though he allegedly lives a "humble" lifestyle, you'd never know it from the amount of criticism he gets from the mountain folks who live near his estate in Montreat close by Asheville. Ask them how much of his "charity" they received--fire and brimstone and eternal damnation were the only things he ever offered them. Today, his son offers $arah Palin his jet.
I dont understand why the Obama administration need talk to this man.They will never support him. And esther has her own main line to god thing going she dont care. The best thing the Dems could do is leave these folks on the side of the road to sell their snake oil.
ReplyDeleteI think President Obama is very aware of what Billy Graham and his oozy
ReplyDeleteson are. I'm sick of the religious stuff too. But the fact is, Obama is a politician. He would have been the first president not to have met with
these---ah--people since the Eisenhower administration--so he did, for thirty minutes. Deed done.
He went on from there to eulogize the 29 dead miners in W. Virginia.
That's real. Meeting with Graham--that's politics.
HA!..
ReplyDeleteBut, there is a bigger question that needs to be asked.... WHY is this a media event?? WHO gives a CRAP about O meeting with billy EXCEPT the one and only Swag-Hag that DEPENDS on the Graham family for some of her airline services !!
But, I can she her furiously banging out that blackberry message to her facebook scribes... what a predictable and blatantly self-centered, low-level life form...
Here's the thing - as an evangelical Christian, I understand why the President decided to visit Billy Graham. As a child growing up, I remember my parents admiring Graham very much and he was held up as a role model to us.
ReplyDeleteThe President is a Christian but he is also a statesman. It wouldn't have escaped his notice this whole Pentagon/Franklin Graham fracas. As someone eloquently noted above, he was there to placate the injured party. Like me, he is also well aware of the influence of the Graham family in the evangelical community.
I think he knows that he will never win their approval and I personally believe he doesn't care if he does or not. What he does care about, I think, is keeping the country from falling into sectarian violence. What I admire most about him is his willingness to go into the lion's den, so to speak, for the good of the country. No matter what these conservatives say in public, they can't help but love the attention from such an important man as the President.
What I wish he would do MORE of is to give the progressive/liberal base more of the same stuff he throws the conservatives. Maybe he is banking on us being more civil & rational, I don't know. (Yeah you heard that right, I'm an evangelical AND a progressive! Rare, I know.)
I believe that the President truly wants to unite Americans and I hope he succeeds. I am very very tired of the us vs them meme that is constantly trotted out by the Right and by The Quitter. She is so awful, I just she would disappear from the public stage.
Victoria - Thank you for the wonderful, thoughtful post. :-)
ReplyDelete-- Yvonne
yeah I was kinda disappointed when I read that obama was going to pay this guy a visit. but he's the president, and he's got to do what presidents are expected to do when there's religious nuts in the country and you need to diffuse their bullshit. he's a much better president than I would be. I wouldn't give them the time of day.
ReplyDeleteThe private Babygate Timeline has been opened up again, this time until sometime tomorrow, 4/26/10. More entries were added to both my blog and the timeline today, and the links on my blog have been rearranged for easier use. You can now access the timeline from either the Palin Babygate link in the post of the same name or the link list in the left column. All the SP commentaries are now listed under The Palinbot Stomp. Thank you.
ReplyDeletehttp://floydmorr.blogspot.com/
Obama is always ready, willing and able to alienate and disappoint the progressives who actually voted him in to office, while going out of his way to make nice with religious, sexist bigots like Rick Warren and Billy Graham.
ReplyDeleteWhy couldn't Obama be the first president to ignore Billy Graham? Plenty of U.S. citizens are extremely offended by Graham - I'm willing to bet there are more who are offended by him and his homophobic, anti-Semitic, patriarchism, then more who aren't. But Obama doesn't have the guts to stay away.
This progressive isn't making the mistake of voting for Obama again.
I agree with Victoria. We have to acknowledge that some things simply must be done, certain protocols respected even if we cringe to see them honored. I agree that he is not expecting the respect, love and support of the fundamentalists; he is simply acknowledging their right to exist and paying respects to one of their leaders.
ReplyDeleteBilly Graham is - and I cannot believe I am saying this - now regarded as the closest thing to a moderate these folks have. For me, he is just another snake oil salesman, but that is my personal opinion. I think he has been an inspiration for good works to many people. I simply won't go into why I think he has done great harm as well. His reign is ending; his torch is dimming.
We have to remember that President Obama is President of all the people of our country, not just the ones that agree with him or supported him.
GW Bush never understood this.
At least President Obama understands, and though some of the people he has to interface with are less than desirable to secular and progressive voters, he is still President and therefore must respect every reasonable outlook and citizen. The previous administration made us forget that obligation of the Office of the Presidency. I am glad to see President Obama restoring it in this way.
I deeply resent the Graham family's sense of entitlement to access the most powerful politicians we have when the average citizen could never have that access. However, he is not serving as the Obama family minister nor is he getting the same kind of access that he once did, and more importantly, neither is his son Franklin.
However, I think President Obama really just paid a courtesy visit to a very ill old man who has been received by every President who decades. Had he ignored Rev. Billy Graham when visiting so close to his compound, there would have been an uproar of indignation that could generate even greater resistance to the Democrats in the November election. At least this one aspect is no longer a weapon in their arsenal.
We all know it is not allegiance President Obama was giving Rev. Graham, it was respect. After all, even though I deeply disagree with the religious views he expounds, Rev. Graham has a worldwide network of followers and has devoted his life to what he believes in without calling for violence and the merging of church and state.
His son, Franklin, will never inherit the respect of his father because he is not the same kind of man or leader. He has already drawn much criticism for his material greed and self-serving ministry. He does not see the dangers inherit in merging church and state, and that will be his undoing.
LOVE your headline!!! Sadly, $P is probably comforting herself with the thought that she (and her ever-present family) spent more time with him and his family. "Politics Daily" reported that "Palin spent two-and-a-half hours at Graham's home, and some 35-40 minutes in private conversation with the evangelist."
ReplyDeletehttp://palinbabygate.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteSarah Palin babygate timeline, print it out to review it. Very shocking to see the dates of how she plotted her path. There is noway that baby is hers.No way Jose!
Billy Graham may represent a lot of ideals with which I disagree but it was more than just appropriate for President Obama to have met with this religious leader - Billy Graham was one of the few 'white' civil rights leaders of the 1960's - 1970's and a devout supporter of Martin Luther King.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder, however, if his passion for equality among men was passed along to his son.
(Well I've somehow really stuffed my ID here hahaha - OzMud)
I think this meeting with Rev. Graham will send ripples through the Evangelical community.
ReplyDeleteHis tradition of praying with every (bona-fide, Legitimate, American) President goes back to the 1950's..., and now that list includes President Barack H. Obama.
Also, too -- Sarah Palin should know that the Bible tells you to pray for your country's leader, not hurl insults at him. Evangelicals that I know are sickened by her vitriol.
Victoria paige I want twice as much as you have taken. Obama gives nothing to the progressives and everything to the condickheads.
ReplyDeleteYour lala land ideal is not worth the paper its printed on......yes i said that.
I cringe but I understand. Also, Anon progressive at 7:08 PM, who are you planning to vote for? I am also offended by Graham, but being a ideologue doesn't work in the real world. President Obama is doing what astute politicians do.
ReplyDeleteTRACK is BACK!
ReplyDeletehttp://nymag.com/news/politics/65628/index2.html
It just gave me the creeps when I read Obama went to pray with Billy Graham. I almost threw up when I read Franklin Graham was present, EEEEEW! They represent people who are trying to turn our country into a theocracy. They are a threat to democracy and freedom.
ReplyDeleteI think President Obama did the right thing. To have been so close to Montreat and not have at least made an effort to see Graham would have looked like a royal snub of the "Up Yours" variety.
ReplyDeleteRemember when Gov. Parnell had "something better to do" when President Obama was in Alaska? We were all infuriated by this arrogance.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011695550_alaskagov25.html
ReplyDeleteEven as some lawmakers were skeptical of Parnell, none said they missed Palin.
"The best thing she ever did was resign," said Sen. Bert Stedman, a Republican from Sitka and a major budget negotiator. "We're a lot better off, and she's better off. Everybody wins."
@anon 3:39
ReplyDeleteWell I cant believe I'm defending Billy Graham of all people but... your comment about how horrible it was for him to drag his daughter out of college and marry her off...
The problem is - you're not addressing the mindset of the era. It has not been that long in the United states history, that daughters being married off wasn't socially acceptable. In fact, it was the moral obligation of the parents for many, many years (especially in affluent/political families) to make sure a daughter was married to 'the right man'. Girls were meant to defer to their parents judgement. Parents were meant to look out for their daughters interests - as well as the family business, etc.
Even the Kennedy family 'married off' daughters and chose suitable spouses for their sons.
Do I think this is a sound practice? Absolutely not. But when making a judgement call on a man's actions of some 40-60 years ago, one needs to look at the society of the day and not interject our current standards. Billy Graham did what was considered at the time, the expected, honorable thing to do with his unmarried daughter. That actually speaks more to his having been a good man, not a rat.
-Ozmud
Its very interesting and very informative and i really like your approach.
ReplyDeleteI think President Obama did do the right thing...
ReplyDeleteThe rabid idiots on st sara's fb book were blaming POTUS for the dis-invite.
I'm not really agreeing that he went there but it had to be done. This Prayer Breakfast was started by "THE Family" and continues to be a "Family" event. So I'm glad it will be gone. POTUS as a constitutional Lawyer knows this as well, but has to be diplomatic and protocol and all that.
Plus it will make the right STFU about it.
"Billy Graham did what was considered at the time, the expected, honorable thing to do with his unmarried daughter."
ReplyDeleteOh, barf. What tripe! 40-60 years ago is 1950-1970. It was NOT the "expected" thing to select a spouse and remove a daughter from college. Of course, a daughter that meekly submitted to such an outrage deserves the hell marriage she undoubtedly got.
Billy Graham's money-grubbing ministry has certainly not earned him free points in public opinion about how he mis-managed his family.
I think it was a smart thing to do. It may not win him votes, but there are two sides here. It's not just about his going to visit Billy Graham, but Billy Graham's receiving him and praying with him, something from which, as an elderly man in poor health, he could easily have excused himself. Conservative Evangelicals will continue to have disagreements with President Obama, but it will be difficult to demonize him without making themselves look dishonest and sleazy.
ReplyDeleteThe ObaMAD Legend
ReplyDeleteHere's a suggested book title for anyone who will someday write about the hopefully short-lived, Obamaniac dictatorship:
"Double-Crossers, Cross-Dressers & Cross-Bashers"
(For more Obamagic, Google "Obama Avoids Bible Verses" and "Obama Supports Public Depravity.")