Someone dropped the ball at the AP recently. And I mean REALLY dropped the ball. This venerable organization that I have, until now, respected very much has gone ahead and played spokesperson/cheerleader/sympathizer with the soldier funeral protesters who are constantly marring the burials of American GIs killed in action. While I’m focusing on this group as part of the unfortunately vocal and publicized true face of Christianity, don’t think that my disgust for this group and the AP for supporting them is unfounded. Here is a quote from Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, the founder of this “church”:
[quote]”We’ve got a job to do. Our job is to cause America to know her abomination. We’ve got to put the cup of the fury and wrath of God to the lips of this nation and make them drink it.”[/quote]
“The cup of the fury and wrath of God” Hilarity like that can’t just be made up on the spot. Someone worked on that gem for a good while before finding the comedic sweet spot. Because when I think of God, not only am I dumb enough to think that the all-powerful deity of legend actually spends time hating on individual humans for things like sex, I’m also gullible enough to believe that God is so lacking for a reliable spokesperson that he calls an ignorant redneck conservative pool of santorum like Fred Phelps to duty.

On the plus side, Congress hasn’t been totally inept like it has been on so many other important issues. Phelps and Friends will soon be running headlong into state and federal laws prohibiting his little parties. I’m just disappointed that it took so long, and that organizations like the AP decided that instead of reporting on the events that they would basically gift a hateful group like this with an “article” like they did.

That piece was written so strongly pro-Phelps that I can’t help but wonder if some editor wasn’t on vacation while a reporter took advantage and published a forbidden piece that otherwise would have been refused. That’s the only explanation I can think of for the Associate Press to be running that article. It’s so full of opinion and lacking anything that even looks like an opposing viewpoint. Hate like that deserves no platform like the one the AP generously donated to “the cause”. But who knows, maybe the reporter is a member of the church who can’t really make it to all the chanting and sign-waving in front of the memorials for fallen soldiers, so he decided that his mandatory donation could be encapsulated in this ass-kissing “expose” of Fred Phelps and his family/church/mobile-mental-hospital.

Maybe I am over-reacting, but if that piece outraged you like it did me, be sure to let the Associated Press know how you feel by writing a letter to the editor and expressing your thoughts.