CNN Lou Dobbs endorses Obama Waffles...well not actually

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Click "play" to view the interview with the creators of Obama Waffles and hear their "defense" of this very offensive product. They pause and look a bit guilty when the interviewer asks if they realize that Obama has been a long-standing member of the Church of Christ while their product paints Obama as a Muslim. Of course they surely don't believe or imply that Muslims are terrorists. And I bet they would defend the right of any American Muslim to worship freely. Just as they certainly don't believe that all US citizens of Mexican descent are illegal aliens.
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Lou Dobbs loved the spoof on Senator Obama and bought a box of "Obama Waffles" at a vendor booth stationed at the Values Voter Summit this weekend. Reportedly he said, "My wife will love this!" as he posed for a snapshot. This image was posted on the ObamaWaffles.com website but has already been purged. UPDATE: Bob DeMoss says now, not really, Lou Dobbs didn't really endorse Obama Waffles. Whose waffling now? Bob says he handed Lou the box and then posed for a picture with him, but Lou didn't buy the box. But Bob admits he had the picture on the website blog but took it down because he didn't actually ask Lou Dobbs for permission.

So...let's see, did he ask Barack Obama permission to use his image? Or Michelle? Or John Kerry? So why wasn't the picture of Lou just considered political satire? Call it satire and comedy and I guess you can spew your message and call it a right of free speech. But when you sell a product at a convention, the convention has the right to boot you if you prove to be offensive. Do two rights make a wrong? I guess they did when they created Obama Waffles.

According to AP reporter, Joan Lowy, Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.

This was posted by Jesse Taylor on Pandagon:

Looking into the gentlemen a bit more, I ended up fixating on Bob DeMoss, the swea...the one with the awful...the one on the left. Bob, you see, isn’t just a “freelance writer”. He’s written a series of Christian teen literature with Tim LaHaye. Yes, Left Behind Tim LaHaye. Meaning, of course, that this wasn’t just some guy shilling his flash-in-a-pan election year product, but he’s a full-on foot soldier who has the full faith and credit of the fundamentalist movement.

Just what is the Values Voter Summit? It was a conference held by the FRCAction the legislative action arm of the Family Research Council this week starting Thursday, September 12th ending today, Sunday the 14th.

This was their appeal to churches:

You may be asking yourself just what is this War on Judeo-Christian values? Is there a war against the church in America?

David Limbaugh, the younger brother of Rush Limbaugh sure thinks there is and he has a form on his website where you can report your personal experiences in this war.

There are some grounds for this thought. Let's look back in history a bit to 1960. Madelyn Murry O'hair launched a lawsuit Murray v. Curlett which led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling and ended the practice of daily prayer in American public schools. O'Hair later founded American Atheists and became so controversial that, in 1964, Life magazine referred to her as "the most hated woman in America." (Wikipedia)

This ushered in a time in America when every public institution felt a litigious fear of prayer, public displays of the Ten Commandments and Nativity scenes and even the public recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag which contains the phrase, One nation, Under God.

This led to the establishment of fundamentalist Christian schools across our nation where parents could be assured that their children could pray in school. However if their children wanted accredited high school diplomas, many states required that evolution be included in the study of science. This was a direct affront to the creationist belief in the origin of life. The home school movement thus grew leaps and bounds where parents had almost complete control of their children's curriculum.

With the politicization of fundamental Christians and their rise in the Republican party along with Christian schooled and Home-schooled students now proving their access to higher education, one would think that the vision of a War on Christianity would subside. As long as Roe v. Wade is in effect the war will be waged. And as long as Gay and Lesbian Americans seek to be included in the legal definition of marriage, the war will be waged. As long as the so-called "Liberal" media or what is now more commonly called the MSM (main stream media) provides content that does not support and endorse a Christian values life style, the war will go on.

"We are not coming up against just human beings to beat them in elections. We're going to be coming up against spiritual warfare." (Pat Robertson at a 1994 Christian Coalition national strategy conference)

The question is really who is waging this war? A case could be made that the Religious Right has understood the Bush Doctrine all along and maybe they were the progenitors of it. For it would seem to many that they are preemptively waging a war to defend their fundamentalist view of Christianity. One must assume that the Family Research Council motto, Defending Faith, Family and Freedom is more than just deft alliteration. It is a commission. But is it also a statement of reconstructionism?

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. - Frank Schaeffer

They allowed a vendor to sell a product that included racial slurs and defamed the Muslim religion so we have to ask what they mean by defending Faith. It could not mean the faith of all Americans. And when they talk about Family of course, that would not include the family as lived out by all Americans. And then we get to Freedom. Do they defend the freedoms as described in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

The Obama Waffles is just one hand grenade in the War. And they are running a Sarah Palin special, buy two get one free for just $19.98. This is supposed to emulate the type of frugality Sarah would bring to the White House.


The bottom line, as the old adage goes, "follow the money." Who benefits monetarily from the War on Christian Values? It creates great fund raising opportunities for any and all organizations involved. And the right wing movement has discovered that although both are filthy, Politics and Money are like two peas in a pod. Not to mention all the books that are written by right wing "pundits" making them rich, rich, rich. Yes, war can be good business.

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Last week, while the media focused almost obsessively on the DNC's spectacle in Denver, the country's most influential conservatives met quietly at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy. - (firedoglake: James Dobson picked Palin)

Statement issued by FRCAction:

Well this is refreshing...the following statement was issued by the FRCAction organization after they were alerted to the offensive nature of the Obama Waffles packaging. Vendors have to apply for a space at the convention, but either the convention organizers previewed the material and didn't perceive the negative implications or took the vendors at their word that it was satire and all in fun and didn't take the time to view the product.

We strongly condemn the tone and content of materials that were exhibited by one of the vendors at this weekend's Values Voter Summit. The materials represent an attempt at parody that crosses the line into coarseness and bias.

The exhibitor contacted our reviewer just days before the Summit by email and described material that sounded like it was devoted to political flip-flops on policy issues. When the content of the materials was brought to the attention of FRC Action senior officials today, they were removed and the exhibit was dismantled by the vendor at our insistence. It is our responsibility to fully vet materials that are offered at any event we cosponsor, but we are deeply dismayed that this vendor violated the spirit, message and tone of our event in such an offensive manner.

The Values Voter Summit represents a coming together of many long-established organizations that work across denominational and ethnic lines to celebrate and promote the family and a culture of life. We reject any communications that divide and distract us and frustrate these principles. Bishop Harry Jackson's High Impact Leadership Coalition, Gary Bauer's American Values, and Alliance Defense Fund join us in rejecting this material.

What was the response of the creators of Obama Waffles? Typical.

More about waffles:

racist waffles - Huffington Post

Reconciliation Blog - Help my unbelief

I confirm that I am a private citizen and in no way officially connected to the Barack Obama campaign other than personally being in support of the Obama candidacy.

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