Bill Moyers: "Rove Turned Religion Into a Weapon of Political Combat"

(Hat tip: Custos Fidei)

Somehow I missed this report from NewsBusters about one of the most despicable figures to ever disgrace the American scene - Bill Moyers:

There are times when I hate being a media analyst, for I am often forced to view and review television reports and newspaper articles that literally make me nauseated while undermining my faith in journalists as a whole as well as my fellow citizens.

***
Alas, Bill Moyers was at it again Friday evening closing out his Bill Moyers Journal program on PBS with a monologue about President George W. Bush and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove that is guaranteed to sicken you as much as it did me.

In fact, my disgust over this abomination is so great that I care not to excerpt or highlight any of its contents in fear of ruining my weekend. As such, what follows is a partial transcript of this disgraceful refuse for your reading displeasure (video available here, h/t NBer mattm):

What struck me about my fellow Texan Karl Rove was that he knew how to win elections as if they were divine interventions. You may think God summoned Billy Graham to Florida on the eve of the 2000 election to endorse George W. Bush just in the nick of time, but if it did happen that way, the Good Lord was speaking in a Texas accent.

Karl Rove figured out a long time ago that the way to take an intellectually incurious, draft-averse, naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket and make him governor of Texas, was to sell him as God's anointed in a state where preachers and televangelists outnumber even oil derricks and jack rabbits. Using church pews as precincts, Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat -- a battering ram, aimed at the devil's minions. Especially at gay people. It's so easy, as Karl knew, to scapegoat people you outnumber. And if God is love, as rumor has it, Rove knew in politics to bet on fear and loathing. Never mind that in stroking the basest bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion.

At the same time he was recruiting an army of the Lord for the born-again Bush, Rove was also shaking down corporations for campaign cash. Crony capitalism became a biblical injunction. Greed and God won four elections in a row -- twice in the Lone Star state and twice again in the nation at large...

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
"Rove Turned Religion Into a Weapon of Political Combat."

Wait a minute. Bill Moyers has been accusing Republicans and conservatives of "turning religion into a weapon of political combat" LONG before George W. Bush and Karl Rove became prominent on the political scene.

Methinks that the "ordained Baptist minister" Moyers lost his religion long ago, and has turned into a Johnny One-Note in using his publicly-funded pulpit at PBS to decry the presence of religion (or at least traditional manifestations of religion) in the public square.


UPDATE
The folks over at Power Line apparently concur with my description of Bill Moyers as "one of the most despicable figures to ever disgrace the American scene". Here's what they have to say about Moyers:

Is Bill Moyers the most contemptible man in American public life? He gets my vote. He has an obsessive hatred of Christian conservatives, as we pointed out here and elsewhere. (Religious liberals, of course, are another matter altogether, because they agree with Moyers.) Now, Moyers has unleashed one of the most over-the-top tirades I've ever seen, against Karl Rove. It really has to be seen to be believed; check it out at Breitbart TV, one of the web's new and terrific news resources. (emphasis added)

UPDATE #2 (22 August)
Dale Price offers his take on the fraudulent hypocrite named Bill Moyers. This is a MUST read.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Feddie, on Behalf of Jimmy Akin, Tells Bill Moyers and His Lawyers to Go Pound Sand

Bill Moyers - Still An Idiot After All These Years