Categorical Aperitif

I'm a little baffled by the reaction to the recent Barbara Ehrenreich piece on Hillary Clinton's "Family" connection from some normally judicious voices, particularly The Daily Howler and uggabugga. Channelling Kevin Drum, both accuse Ehrenreich of "character assassination"; uggabugga says she has "crafted a pure propaganda piece," and the Howler goes as far as to compare her to—it pains me to type this—Maureen Dowd ("a screaming nut-case"). Perhaps both of them missed Drum's addendum:

UPDATE: I just talked to Jeff Sharlet, author of the forthcoming book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Although he says that Hillary Clinton's connection with the Fellowship (aka the "Family") is fairly shallow, he also thinks it's quite wrong to characterize it as merely "a collection of Bible study groups." Hillary's association with the Fellowship is no scandal, he says, but it is fair to question her about whether she accepts Doug Coe's particular brand of elite-centered, post-millennial theology. More here.

What exactly are the Howler and uggabugga so excited about? Do they think that the claims made about the Fellowship/Family, or about Clinton's connection to it, are false? If so, they don't say so—and the Howler even says, "We’ve been interested in Jeff Sharlet’s work ever since his 2003 Harper’s piece" and adds that "We look forward to reading his forthcoming book." Do they think that the claims are not relevant? If so, then they're ignoring the specific context mentioned by Ehrenreich right at the beginning of her piece: the recent (and ongoing) flap over Barack Obama's pastor.

Some on the right have been trying to whip up a frenzy over some of Reverend Wright's remarks; some on the left have countered by trying to call more attention to John McCain's connections to prominent Bible-thumping loonie John Hagee. Given the level of interest being shown to both of these men's more controversial religious connections, how exactly is it out of bounds to point out that Hillary Clinton has some of her own? Do the Howler and uggabugga think that the connections between Clinton and this little-known right-wing "Christian" group are so tenuous as to not bear mentioning? Perhaps—but surely voters can decide for themselves what to make of connections like these (emphases mine):

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

[...] The Fellowship's ideas are essentially a blend of Calvinism and Norman Vincent Peale, the 1960s preacher of positive thinking. It's a cheery faith in the "elect" chosen by a single voter—God—and a devotion to Romans 13:1: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers....The powers that be are ordained of God." Or, as Coe has put it, "we work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

When Time put together a list of the nation's 25 most powerful evangelicals in 2005, the heading for Coe's entry was "The Stealth Persuader." "You know what I think of when I think of Doug Coe?" the Reverend Schenck (a Coe admirer) asked us. "I think literally of the guy in the smoky back room that you can't even see his face. He sits in the corner, and you see the cigar, and you see the flame, and you hear his voice—but you never see his face. He's that shadowy figure."

Do most voters know that Hillary Clinton pals around with people like this? I doubt it. Hell, after what the Rethugs did to her in the 1990s, I'm sure that many people still think she's some sort of lesbian witch. Will any voters care that she pals around with people like this? Some certainly will. And frankly, I think they have good reason to. After all, a government full of people who talk like this—

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. "A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation," says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. "I don't....there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer."

—has left behind it an ever-lengthening trail of corpses, a failing economy, and a thoroughly corrupted government. How exactly has Barbara Ehrenreich done us a national disservice by pointing out Hillary Clinton has longstanding and more-than-casual connections to people like these?

Though I must say that the Howler is right about the cheap "tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names" bit. I'll give him that one.