Deal Hudson
Today I sent the following e-mail to the ombudsman of PBS, Mr. Michael Getler asking for an apology and correction from Bill Moyers.
August 20, 2007
Dear Michael Getler,
Bill Moyers owes Karl Rove an apology.
If he can’t bring himself to do that, he is obliged by journalistic ethics to issue a correction.
On August 16, 2007 Bill Moyers posted on his blog a tirade about Karl Rove entitled "My Fellow Texan."
I don’t think anyone, regardless of their political perspective, would disagree with my characterization of Moyer’s posting as a “tirade.”
But that's not the problem.
The next day on "Bill Moyers' Journal" on PBS he let Rove have it one more time.
In both his broadcast and his blog, Moyers repeats a rumor that Karl Rove is an agnostic.
From Moyers:
"At his [Rove's] press conference this week he asked God to bless the President and the country, even as reports were circulating that he himself had confessed to friends his own agnosticism. He wished he could believe, but he cannot. That kind of intellectual honesty is to be admired, but you have to wonder how all those folks on the Christian right must feel discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a secular skeptic, a manipulator."
Moyers, a seasoned journalist and former White House staffer himself, relies on "reports were circulating" as the source for his characterization of Rove's religious beliefs.
After reading Moyer’s blog and watching a video of his broadcast, I alerted Karl Rove via e-mail that Moyers had described him as an “agnostic.”
This was Karl Rove’s reply, once again via e-mail:
"I am a believing Christian who attends his neighboring Episcopal parish church. People have taken out of context a quote in which I express admiration for the deep faith of colleagues that so clearly informs their lives as a statement that I am not a believer. I am; just not as good a Christian as some very fine people I have been honored to call friends and colleagues."
Unlike Moyers, I went to the trouble of finding out where these “reports” came from.
I discovered a September 5, 2006 PBS radio interview with Rove biographer ("The Architect") Wayne Slater, a reporter for the Dallas Morning News.
Slater explained to "Fresh Air," "He [Rove] is, in fact, an agnostic. He has told a friend in high school that he grew up in a largely a-religious household. He told a friend at the University of Texas, where some years ago he was teaching, that he would like to be a believer, but he was an agnostic, and he couldn't be otherwise."
When Slater was asked by the interviewer whether Rove was still an agnostic, Slater replied:
"I know that he felt that way two years ago. I don't know of any reason to think that he has changed that view. He certainly hasn't told me that he has. It's certainly possible. I think the evidence and the history is that he remains something of an agnostic, though he sees the Christians, and not just Christians but also orthodox Jews, to some extent, as a valuable voter source. With Rove, it's about winning. With Karl Rove, it's how can you put together a team and a constituency or a cluster of constituencies that delivers you 50 percent plus one of the vote? And that's what it's all about."
(I can't recall whether Slater makes the same claim about Rove's agnosticism in "The Architect." I will check that out. But his book is not cited anywhere as a source for this claim.)
The only other source is a May 7, 2007 interview in New York Magazine where Christopher Hitchens quoted Rove as saying, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”
Some bloggers subsequently started calling Rove an atheist, others an agnostic.
Hitchens, I infer, relied on different, unnamed, sources for his claim since he doesn't mention Slater in the New York Magazine interview:
Hitchens was asked:
"Has anyone in the Bush administration confided in you about being an atheist?
He replied:
"Well, I don’t talk that much to them—maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to a few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”
This suggests Hitchens has heard it from Rove firsthand or from someone else who has, but not from Slater.
In any case, none of these journalists, including Bill Moyers, ever asked Karl Rove if he was an agnostic.
Meanwhile, my request of August 18, 2007 to Bill Moyers that he apologize to Karl Rove has gone unanswered (see comment #67).
So I come to you as the ombudsman of PBS to ask for a correction, at least, to what was broadcast on August 17, 2007 “Bill Moyer’s Journal” and posted on his blog.
Thank you,
Deal Hudson
Harl,
You are speaking as though Moyers intentions were an honorable inquisition as to the sentiments of religious people being hoodwinked and exploited by a political hack with selfish ambitions.
Moyers is maligning an honorable man's reputation by saying Rove has admitted he rejects the concept of a formal religion and has used the Crucifix as a prop.
Rove has publicly explained to Moyers that he practices his religion in the Episcopal Church on Sundays and the statement Moyers is using has been taken out of its rightful context.
If you have not as a Christian sought and obtained help that came by way of Mr. Rove's influence, then you are at the whims of the clueless armchair pundits as a constitutional freedom. Best of luck to you, but I suspect you affirm an individual's right to present facts that clearly demonstrate that it's Moyers who is clearly using you as the tool.
i.e., your and Moyer's constitutional freedoms don't give you license to give a false witness and scream God Bless America without being called to the table of truth.
Posted by: Carol McKinley | August 25, 2007 at 02:27 PM
Having read both your, and Moyer's, side of this issue, I am not troubled by Moyer's words, but I am surprised by your personal indignation at his statement. I understand the idea of standing up for a friend and a colleague, but to demand that anyone recant their views, because you believe differently, but can provide only different sources, no better ones, seems to undermine the idea of free speech, and the idea of information exchange in general. A difference in opinion is in fact what I look to the media for.
Where there is a difference of opinion, or of interpretation, I would hope to find debate and conversation, but instead you seem to have reverted to a more simple viewpoint of, I'm right and you are wrong. This is much too simple a way to look at this. There is a very legitimate question in Moyer's comment. How does the religious community feel about a man who, might have just been pretending?
While I do not personally feel one way of the other about this issue, I do feel that this attitude is one the permeates much of our current political and social world and, I fear, is leading us to much darker days, where the freedom to think contrary is not only frowned upon, but punished.
What I read in your comments is desire for revenge, not physical, but a desire to slander Moyer’s because he has formed a different opinion than your own. I think that all leaders, and all people in general, have a responsibility to question, but also to listen to varying viewpoints. All ideas that lay unchallenged grow stagnant. So I guess I am hoping to encourage a conversation about what it could mean if Rove was using his religiosity as a tool. After all stranger things have happened.
Posted by: Harl Asaff | August 24, 2007 at 06:13 PM