Anti-Catholic "oppression" and Edwards' netroots outreach

From 365gay:

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, demanded that Edwards fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

"John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots," Donohue wrote in a statement. "He has no choice but to fire them immediately."

If Viacom had not pulled everything from The Colbert Report from YouTube, I'd have the little clip here from Bill Donohue about how most of the anti-Catholicism in this country is from the political left.

But this is an interesting quotation nonetheless. There's been a brouhaha among conservative bloggers about hiring editors of Shakespeare's Sister and Pandagon to the Edwards campaigns. They tried to make the whole thing about saying a few naughty words (check out Michelle Malkin's juvenile post about Marcotte's language), but I think they're really just jealous that they're stuck supporting a party based on elitism that will be hard-pressed to hire bloggers and that the left-wing blogosphere has been hundreds of times more effective at supporting political campaigns.

Anyway, here we have this accusation from Bill Donohue, who is the leader of the Catholic League (Catholic version of Focus on the Family), that, when taking Marcotte and McEwan's actual statements into account, amounts to saying that anyone who disagrees with the political pronouncements of the Catholic hierarchy is anti-Catholic. That's pretty much what he said on The Colbert Report as well.

That's pretty extreme.

He goes further in another statement today responding to The View, saying that show is anti-Catholic because co-hosts Joy Behar and Rosie O'Donnell said that celibacy is not part of the human condition, and that's why it's hard for the Church to get new priests and why some of them turn to molesting children. He calls them bigots in the end. (He goes for bonus points on this one for blaming straight Behar's comments on lesbian O'Donnell: "Ever since O’Donnell joined ‘The View’ in September, the show has gotten out of control.")

What's his point? He can't possibly believe the American people are actually going to buy that the most powerful and richest religious organization in the world is oppressed. I think what he's after is much more nuanced: watering down and confusing the idea of oppression. If everyone is oppressed, then we don't have to care. If everyone is a bigot towards everyone else, then we can throw up our hands and give up on sorting it out. Seriously, that's the best defense that they have.

Of course, if he wants to see an example of something that proves a materially oppressive hierarchy, here's a bit.