COMMENTARY | MSNBC's Martin Bashir has offered a remarkable premise as to why Mitt Romney, whom he calls "Mitt the Mendacious," cannot be president. Bashir says Romney is a liar. The Book of the Mormon forbids lying. Therefore he can never be president.
Indeed, Romney is clearly going to hell for his lies, according to Hot Air.
Considering the fact that every Christian denomination, not to mention Judaism and Islam, frowns upon bearing false witness, how is it that Bashir has singled out Romney as being condemned to the infernal regions and not President Obama for his prevarications? Obama professes to be a Christian. Chapter 20, Verse 16 admonishes believers in God not to bear false witness, according to the King James Bible. And yet the president does this all the time.
In any event, Mediaite fact-checks Bashir, weighs him in the balance, and finds him wanting. Bashir has violated Jesus Christ's admonishment about judging not lest ye be judged. He also seems to have forgotten Solomon's point about a fool being accounted wise if he chooses to remain silent.
While mangling his facts and selectively citing a theology he clearly has no understanding of, Bashir is attempted to do to Romney what others have been accused of trying to do to President Obama. Opponents of Obama have been accused to trying to alienate him from Americans by painting him as a strange, exotic "other," because of his strange name and even stranger upbringing.
Bashir seeks to remind us Romney is a Mormon and Mormons have their own holy book they regard as a companion piece to the Bible. He is not being too subtle by hinting that Romney, besides being an alleged hypocrite, is a little weird because of the faith he follows.
The fact is, though, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a quintessential American church, born in this country, and whose early, painful birth took place in this country, and whose mythos involves the Americas. Mormonism is no more weird or exotic than any other Christian denomination or world religion, for that matter. It is just unfamiliar to a lot of people. It is a faith, though, that claims more than 14 million members worldwide. Thus, neither Romney nor any other Mormon deserves being marginalized by Bashir or any other member of the media.
