Al een tijdje in de Amerikaanse blogsosfeer aan het brouwen, maar het begint echt wel bizar te worden:

Rick Warren is schrikkelijk populair, en ziet er wel hip uit (hij was op TED en alles: zijn ding, en dan het antwoord van Dan Dennet), maar ‘t is allemaal niet wat het op het eerste moment lijkt.

‘t Zou wel grappig zijn als wat bij Dispatches from the Culture Wars gezegd wordt, waar zou zijn:

Hmmm, as far as Warren goes, I can’t help wondering if this was an accident, a blunder, or payback by Obama for the ‘isolation booth’ scam during the ‘joint meeting at Saddleback.’ I’ll admit I’ve seen no evidence of his mind working that way, but a shrewd and subtle observer could have predicted this would happen — Obama is shrewd, but hasn’t shown much subtlety. This way Obama will get ‘church cred’ for picking Warren in the first place, Warren’s opinions have come under scrutiny, which gives him a black eye, and the controversy almost forces Obama to make a major pro-gay move — which he was likely to do anyway.

And, to carry the discussion over from yesterday’s thread, Obama is doing something a lot more important, symbolically and in real terms, than the Warren pick. There are very strong reports that the next Secretary of the Navy will be an openly gay man, William White. A gay man as head of one of the services says a lot more than whoever does the ‘god talk’ at the ceremony.