Several weeks ago, FOX News anchor Gretchen Carlson accused FOX News CEO Roger Ailes of tanking her career in response to her rejecting his sexual advances. At the outset of this controversy, Todd Starnes, a FOX News radio commentator known for covering stories of interest to conservative Christians , penned a soliloquy to the embroiled executive, calling him, “the original gun-toting, Bible-clinging, son-of-an-Evangelical-Protestant,” and, “our general in the culture war.”
Today, after several more FOX employees accused Ailes of sexual harassment, he is no longer the CEO of the conservative news giant. He stepped out with a massive golden parachute of forty million dollars.
The most damning of testimonies against Ailes, came from Laurie Luhn, a woman who claims to have been at first one of Ailes trysts, and later the hub of other affairs, telling New York magazine that he told her, “You’re going to find me ‘Roger’s Angels.’ You’re going to find me whores.”
That’s a sad commentary on our culture war “general.”
Starnes seems like good, well-intentioned fellow, but, frankly, he should have known better.
FOX is known for it’s attractive female anchors, and, sources told Forbes, Ailes ensured they were oozing sex appeal. Not to downplay the women’s talent, but in this newsroom it is all housed in long legs, fair hair, and pretty faces.
When I first started paying attention to FOX news, one of my first thoughts on seeing blonde after blonde behind the anchor desk was, “someone has a type.”
But, Starnes clearly had no such misgiving, charging full-force into his praise of Ailes, and now, sadly, being forced to eat his words.
Conservatives, and even more so Christians, should glean a lesson from this man’s unbridled support of a corrupt man in a position of power, based only on what he hoped to be true.
Since the end of the Republican primaries evangelical leader after evangelical leader have spoken out to encourage their followers to vote Donald Trump for president. It is their right to do so, of course, and I understand their reasoning. Hillary Clinton as president is a terrifying idea.
But on top of endorsing Mr. Trump, some evangelical leaders and many every day Christians who have once again resigned themselves to voting for the “lesser of two evils,” seem to be trying to whitewash his very short shortcomings.One of the most well known examples is when Dr. James Dobson, a man I have immense respect for, stated that he knew Trump to be a recent convert to Christianity, only to walk back that claim a few days later.
A more recent example is the piece written by Wayne Grudem, a brilliant theologian and Bible translator, which claims that “Trump’s character is far better than what is portrayed by much current political mud-slinging,” but gives no basis for why he believes that to be the case.
In fact, earlier in his piece Grudem admits that, “He is egotistical, bombastic, and brash. He often lacks nuance in his statements. Sometimes he blurts out mistaken ideas (such as bombing the families of terrorists) that he later must abandon. He insults people. He can be vindictive when people attack him. He has been slow to disown and rebuke the wrongful words and actions of some angry fringe supporters. He has been married three times and claims to have been unfaithful in his marriages.”
In spite of this, Grudem calls Trump, “a good candidate with flaws.”
I believe that in this election, voters who believe it is their duty to hold their nose and vote for the “lesser of two evils” are under immense temptation to whitewash the lesser evil. It is a temptation we must resist.
The man that Grudem describes above, is not a “good” candidate for president; those are not traits that one would handpick for a leader, particularly as a Christian!
It’s one thing to hold your nose and vote for a less bad candidate, it is another thing to vote whole-heartedly for a terrible candidate that you’ve imagined into filet mignon.
If evangelical Christians are to go down in history for putting Donald Trump in the White House, let it at least be remembered as being done under protest, and not because we believed an unfaithful husband, strip-club and escort service owner to be the right man for the job.
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