Don't Ask About Gay Bishop, Don't Tell Anyone He Gave a Prayer at Yesterday's Obama Concert
If it seemed to you that there was something missing from yesterday's We Are One Concert at the Lincoln Memorial — I mean, besides entertainment value — then you're right. At least if you were watching it it on television.
A lot of people made a lot of big deal about the Obama team's decision to include a prayer by homosexual bishop Gene Robinson in one of its inaugural events, supposedly as somewhat of an olive branch to members of the LGBT community — angry that homophobic Saddleback pastor Rick Warren will be delivering the invocation at the actual inauguration — if not to adherents of the United States Constitution's frowning on matters of church and state.
So, where was Robinson yesterday. I saw a whole lot of dreck. But I didn't see an religious mythology dreck. What happened?
Openly gay bishop Gene Robinson delivered the opening prayer before the start of the concert, but the prayer was not included as part of HBO's broadcast.
Contacted Sunday night by AfterElton.com concerning the exclusion of Robinson's prayer, HBO said via email, "The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show."
…[I]t does seem that the network's position is that they had nothing to do with the decision.
Jeeze, if Barack Obama was gonna cut anybody out of his Imperial Victory Celebration, I think they would have been better served turning the cameras off during Bono's ten-minute salute to himself than the one gay guy who was allowed on the stage.
But — maybe, just maybe — the Obama team decided at the last minute that a prayer to the Sky God really had no place in a government event. And, if so, good for them.
Presumably, we won't be seeing any of Rick Warren's fire-and-brimstone rhetoric in tomorrow's event either, right?
Right?
(via Dan Savage)
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Robroy,
The speaker thing probably wasn't a malfunction. If HBO provided the audio towers then they probably would have had audio down while prepping the live feed. One of the last commands given before going live is "Bring up audio."
According to people on the mall that day, the sound was perfectly fine during the audio check and perfectly fine when the concert started moments after Robinson's invocation. Either HBO has the best/fastest audio techs imaginable or the sound did not malfunction.
Bishop Gene was squelched for one reason: he is a horse's ass…
http://tinyurl.com/obama101
*headdesk* Typical.
Oh come on people, this is an easy mistake to make.
I mean I can never remember whether 2:25pm comes before or after 2:30pm. Like me, PIC must be having a tough time with the whole big hand little hand thing. It also could've been that nobody started the cameras because the didn't see Gene. Last time I talked to him, I swear he was getting shorter.
Susan: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Obama isn't turning out be what he claims. I will no longer be watching tomorrow (Tuesday). Sad, but I'm done with talk. We need to get SERIOUS.
Actually, it gets worse (for Mr. Robinson and his groupies). There was a microphone or speaker malfunction so the people there only heard the last sentence of the god-lite invocation.