Dobson’s Head Explodes

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


James Dobson is just plain bizarre:

An anguished James Dobson prayed Wednesday for a sign from God, telling his Christian radio listeners he was questioning his early endorsement of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.

Dobson, founder of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, is one of the most prominent religious conservatives to back Miers, citing his trust in President Bush and a confidential briefing he received about her from the White House.

But in his regular radio broadcast Wednesday, Dobson prayed he was not making a mistake.

“Lord, you know I don’t have the wisdom to make this decision,” Dobson said. “You know that what I feel now and what I think is right may be dead wrong.”

As near as I can guess, Dobson endorsed Miers early on because she was an evangelical, and hailed from a fairly conservative congregation in Dallas, the Valley View Christian Church. But evangelicals are hardly a monolithic bloc, even evangelicals at conservative churches; occasionally you get all sorts of closet liberals, compulsive gamblers, people who think sex and abortion are just fine and dandy, and people who don’t care all that much about faith and are just there for the company and coffee bar, all lurking in the pews. Harriet Miers, for instance, has been organizing radical feminist conferences in her spare time, probably not something high on Dobson’s list of approved behaviors. Furthermore, as Jon Cohn reported yesterday, the Valley View Christian Church itself underwent a schism of sorts recently, with the Flintstones wing of the congregation breaking away, leaving a more progressive pastor to take the helm, and since then, most of the church’s truly fire-breathing positions have been moderated or abandoned. All very mysterious.

So, you know, Dobson really might not have the wisdom to make this call, and he really might be dead wrong when he endorsed her. But who knows? This only emphasizes how stupid this whole “stealth nominee” idea was in the first place. It was bad enough when a prominent religious conservative had “secret information” about Miers that no one else in the public sphere had. But now it seems that even Dobson doesn’t know for sure. So the Senate is supposed to assess this nominee how, exactly? The only thing anyone can be truly confident about is that she’ll be a pro-administration hack who will, one assumes, happily and irresponsibly vote to expand presidential wartime powers when the opportunity arises. For that alone she deserves blanket rejection, but beyond that, there’s just a whole lot of senseless guessing here.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate