Alan Lebetkin

After two days of scouring every video clip and photo of the Beck rally 4 Jesus, the rightwing media has finally found black gold– i.e. the sole black person in attendance:

Never mind the 48-hour Where’s Waldo-like hunt that it took to find her. She’s black and she was there, therefore the rally now qualifies as “racially diverse.”

After this weekend’s shenanigans, I’m beginning to notice a consuming messianic shift infecting Beck’s flop-sweat marinated brain. He’s truly positioning himself as a savoir of souls, as long as you’re American and agree with him politically, and intensifying his efforts to widen and galvanize his audience. It’s kinda spooky.

The aspect of this movement to Christianize America that goes overlooked is the plight this will have on Atheists. Other religions will undoubtedly suffer discrimination from the intense whitewashing of history, as is already happening to Islam, but they are at least capable of joining in the framework of the debate and pushing back under the notion of a shared deity. Atheists however are the queerest of the queers in this new era of fire and brimstone. As an Atheist, I fully respect other people’s beliefs and am frankly highly apathetic. Whatever Beck will say (who ought to know something about the dangers of religious persecution being a Mormon and all), the founders of this country were Deists who held a similar conviction in respecting and ignoring religion in the public debate. Once this whitewash is complete and we become a country “rooted in Judeo-Christian beliefs,” the ultimate persecuted minority in the new social order are the Atheists.  Polls already show that we’re more likely to elect a gay president than an atheist.  None of that is right to begin with, for gays and atheists, and none of that is actually getting better.