John McCain today finally denounced and rejected the endorsement of fundamentalist Pastor John Hagee. It wasn’t Hagee’s comments on the Catholic Church “the great whore”) or gays (God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans as punishment for a gay pride parade) that went too far for McCain. It was Hagee’s claim on a 1990s television show that Hitler was doing “God’s work” during the Holocaust by setting in motion events that forced Jews to return to Israel.
Now what about Rod Parsley? This political ally of McCain has decried Islam as a “false religion” and says it’s the historic mission of the United States to eradicate Islam. McCain has yet to reject the endorsement from Parsley, with whom he campaigned in February. It’s tough to figure out McCain’s moral universe. Attributing Hitler’s mass-murder of Jews to God–that’s a no-no. Calling for the destruction of an entire religion? So far, that’s no reason for McCain to reject an endorsement.
UPDATE: After McCain rejected Hagee’s endorsement, Hagee withdrew his endorsement of McCain. In other words, you can’t fire me, I quit.
BTW, McCain is also finally releasing his medical records–after postponing doing so for a year. But he’s making these records available for only three hours on a Friday before a holiday weekend–to guarantee less media coverage–and his campaign has sort of banned New York Times reporter Lawrence Altman, one of the leading medical reporters in journalism, from reviewing the records. Only a handful of media outfits selected by the campaign will be permitted to send reporters to a conference room in Phoenix to examine the records. And the Times was not chosen. None of the reporters will be allowed to make any copies of the records.
