Bill Donohue’s Witch Hunt
Echidne asks a few good questions: why is William Donohue such a welcome guest in many political talk shows? Why does The New York Times allow itself to be used as his mouthpiece?
Donohue, as you probably know, is the sanctimonious blowhard who took to the airwaves in recent weeks in an effort to swiftboat the John Edwards campaign. He set out to defame the names of two women, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare’s Sister, who had begun to blog for the campaign. Donohue called Marcotte and McEwan “anti-catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots,” which sounds harsh until you realize that, as Echidne points out, he has said the virtually same thing about everyone from Ann Landers to Bill O’Reilly. At The Daily Kos, Ciccina has catalogued a comprehensive list of Donohue’s quick-trigger intolerance.
Given Donohue’s history of bigoted speech — which includes numerous examples of anti-semitic, anti-gay rhetoric — we should be asking The New York Times and other media outlets why they allowed themselves to be used in a campaign that eventually that put the personal safety of these bloggers at risk.
After all, it’s not as if Donohue has been secretive about his motives or desires. In a recent Women’s Wear Daily profile , Donohue bragged about his ability to manufacture controversy:
In December 2005, a reporter from the Washington Post asked the Catholic League’s president, William Donohue, if he was offended that President Bush’s season’s greetings card did not specifically mention Christmas.
“At first, it didn’t bother me,” Donohue recalled in a recent interview. “I said, ‘So what. All presidents have had cards like this.’”
But when told by the reporter that everyone from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clinton had at least one Christmas card where they mentioned something religious, Donohue pounced.
The following day, in the Post’s page-one story, Donohue rebuked the most conspicuously Christian president in 25 years for not being Christian enough. “This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture,” he said in the article.
“Good Morning America” booked Donohue for an interview. And the next year, the Catholic League’s president received an invitation to the White House Christmas party.
“Basically, I got rewarded for attacking him,” Donohue happily concluded. “Here at the Catholic League, we’ll give you an opinion on the weather if you want it.”
It’s this ability to manufacture controversy that has brought a moribund advocacy group firmly into the black and turned Donohue into catnip for the press. For talk show bookers and reporters on deadline, he’s a never-ending sideshow who comes ever ready to hurl expressions of indignation and opprobrium at anyone who might have offended him. As prejudice against individual Catholics has receded, Donohue has simply turned up the volume, taking aim at everyone who questions the church’s official positions on homosexuality, abortion and birth control, lapsed Catholics included.
Last year, Donohue urged Sony to put a disclaimer at the beginning of “The Da Vinci Code.” Then came Madonna - “Just when I thought we’d gotten rid of her,” he lamented - who yanked his chain when she decided to sing part of her concert against a cross. Just before Christmas, Donohue chewed out the film producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein yet again for their decision to open the horror film “Black Christmas” on Jesus’ birthday. It’s at least the third time he’s attacked the filmmakers, the others being for the movies “Priest” and “Dogma.”
“It’s not so much the plot of ‘Black Christmas’ that bothers us,” Donohue told the New York Post’s Page Six. “It’s the fact that the Weinstein boys are back again, choosing a title and an opening date to make their latest statement.”
Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for the Weinsteins, said of Donohue: “He’s helpful to have. He raises money by getting his name in the paper, the movie gets press and the columnist gets an item. Everyone wins.”
But the same thing that keeps Donohue in the press prevents him from becoming truly respectable within the religious community, where his antics are a source of frequent consternation.
Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College said, “He’s a thug. He reverts to bullying because he thinks that’s what the job entails.”
Rev. Mark Massa, a Jesuit priest and co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University, accused Donohue of being unable to differentiate between healthy debate and real religious bigotry. “Not everyone who criticizes the church is anti-Catholic,” he said.
The editors at the Catholic weekly magazine America seem to agree. In 2000, they chastised Donohue for denouncing movies he hadn’t even watched. “While being first may increase one’s chances of attracting media attention, there is a danger that the Catholic League reinforces the stereotype that the Catholic Church is at best unreflective and at worst unfairly biased and paranoid,” wrote Rev. James Martin. “In the long run, this may do more harm to the church’s reputation than a short-lived movie or play.”
Bitch Ph.D. argues that Donohue’s bullying tactics constitute abuse, and I’m inclined to agree: this episode has all the trappings of a Salem witch-hunt.
At the Frameshop Jeffrey Feldman has some specific suggestions about what we can do to prevent this from happening again the future:
- All Democratic and Republican Party leaders should jointly condemn the threats to sodomize, rape and murder of Amanda Marcotte by Bill Donohue and his followers.
- The IRS should immediately investigate the non-profit status of Bill Donohue’s Catholic League under the suspicion that his organization has violated its 501(c)(3) status.
- The Attorney General of the City of the New York should immediately inquire as to the connection between Bill Donohue’s and his followers who threatened to sodomize, rape and murder Amanda Marcotte.
- The FBI should track down the men who issued the threats to sodomize, rape and murder Amanda Marcotte .
- All media outlets must cease to invite Bill Donohue on the air.
Good suggestions, all. Here’s some information about implementing action number 2.
As Richard Blair points out at The All-Spin Zone, “Republican smear attacks against one Democratic candidate are attacks against all Democratic candidates.”
That this particular attack involved a widespread, misleading, defamatory personal campaign of harassment against two women whose positions Donohue routinely distorted, and that mass media outlets publicized without correction or contextualization, is an outrage.
It’s Salem all over again.
