Washington D.C., Jan 13, 2009 / 09:53 am
In his first lengthy article explaining his position after the election of President Barack Obama, Professor Douglas Kmiec is accusing “right wing Catholic bloggers" of distorting his position, attacking him personally, and potentially poisoning the relationship between the Holy See and the future administration of President Barack Obama.
In the article entitled “A Tangled Web. The Election & the Blogosphere,” written for Commonweal magazine, Professor Kmiec explains that “as the author of a book whose title asked Can a Catholic Support Him? –and whose contents answered with an enthusiastic ‘Yes, we can!’- I have felt the animosity of those with an insatiable desire for political payback.”
“I’ve been subjected to unrelenting personal attacks launched from right-wing Catholic keyboards-blogs (and bloggers) so coarse and uncivil they make the insults of talk radio sound like actual journalism,” writes the law professor.
“Further –he argues- the lack of civility that rules the right-wing Catholic blogosphere has infected mainstream Catholic journalism as well. In a syndicated assessment of the 2008 election, one usually thoughtful conservative columnist employed the following descriptions of Catholic Obama supporters: ‘decadent,’ ‘tribal,’ ‘immoral,’ ‘certainly stupid,’ ‘mindless,’ and in need of basic ‘adult education.’ And those were all in a single paragraph! Such highly concentrated rhetorical venom is not calculated to invite discussion.”