Synonyms: action, ante, bet, challenge, chunk, fifty-fifty, fighting chance, flier, gamble, handle, hazard, hedge, hunch, long shot, odds on, outside chance, parlay, play, pledge, plunge, pot, risk, snowball chance, stake, toss-up, venture
Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist is playing with fire. Let's stipulate one thing right up front - this guy isn't stupid. Maybe deluded or deranged, but not stupid.
Why on God's green earth would Bill Frist, one of the most powerful men in America, align himself with a Reich wing fundamentalist telethon that's the broadcast equivalent of American Taliban Wankfest 2005? I just don't get it. The guy is supposed to be, above and beyond everything else, a politician. And I don't think anyone could argue that he's not going to be making a lot of new friends with his participation in the "Justice Sunday" gig. That he would align himself with someone as far on the fringe as Tony Perkins speaks volumes more than I or anyone could possibly write.
Chuck Currie, a progressive Christian blogger, takes on the entire concept of Frist's sellout (or buy-in, as the case may be) better than almost all of the outraged words I've read in the Left Blogzome this evening. I encourage you to click through to Currie's article, and offer your support. Here's a teaser:
...This purely political event disguised as a religious event is the most obscene use of religion in a political context since the Republicans declared last fall that Democrats planned to ban the Bible...
...Don’t be fooled into thinking Bill Frist or his right-wing allies represent Christianity. What they truly represent are political hacks willing to misuse Christian tradition for their own political agenda...
I'm very pleased to see mainstream Christians like Currie speaking up. We can only hope that in the coming few days, Dr. Bill Frist will have a Tom DeLay moment - and decide that discretion is the better part of political valor. We call on him to disavow this divisive (and unnecessary) use of a religious "event" to further the reich wing agenda. That Frist (or any Republican) would use the currently hypercharged political environment for their own ill-gotten gains is beyond the pale.
But not entirely unexpected.
