White House: No Religious Cover-up at Georgetown

[Psephos]

Source: ABC News

The White House is taking some heat today from conservative and Catholic bloggers who noticed that while President Obama delivered remarks on the economy at Georgetown University Tuesday, a monogram that is a symbol for the name Jesus was covered up behind him.

CNSNews.com, a conservative web site affiliated with the Media Research Center, reported that the gold “IHS” monogram inscribed in Georgetown’s Gaston Hall was covered by a piece of black-painted plywood.

The White House denied that there was any effort to specifically cover up religious imagery or symbols and noted that on the wall directly behind the president there are two religious paintings and there is other imagery throughout the hall. "Decisions made about the backdrop for the speech were made to have a consistent background of American flags, which is standard for many presidential events. Any suggestions to the contrary are simply false,” White House spokesman Shin Inouye told ABC News.

Georgetown officials said that the White House requested the backdrop and asked that all signs and symbols behind the stage be covered up. “In coordinating the logistical arrangements for the event, Georgetown honored the White House staff's request to cover all of the Georgetown University signage and symbols behind the Gaston Hall stage in order to accommodate a backdrop of American flags, consistent with other policy speeches,” said Julie Green Bataille, associate vice president for communications at Georgetown.



Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/04/wh-no-religious.html

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I haven't seen the inside of a church in a long time, and won't for a long time to come. However, this does remind me a little of Ashcroft's ridiculous draping of the bare-breasted statues of Justice. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm

IMO, if you're going to be the Attorney General, then you don't try to hide the adornments of the Great Hall of Justice with drapes. If you're going to speak at the Catholic University of Georgetown, you don't place a black plywood fig leaf over a symbol of the university's raison d'etre.

Are statuary breasts and religious symbols so ooga-booga powerful that they will turn us into zombies? lol Hyperbole aside, this was just politically dumb.

I don't appreciate anyone trying to censor what is "appropriate" for me to see. I will make that decision myself.

[Windy]

1. Much ado about absolutely NOTHING!!!

[biopowertoday]

2. It would have been good with Obama's Sermon on the Mount that day......

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/04/14/business/econwatch/entry4944206.shtml


April 14, 2009 1:54 PM
President Obama's Sermon At Georgetown
Posted by Daniel Farber | Comments 13


(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

President Obama can't turn water into wine, but he is determined to change sand into rock. In a major economic speech today at Georgetown University, Mr. Obama invoked the Sermon on the Mount -- likening the economic foundations of the previous administrations to sand that is easily blown away:

"There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit. But the second is known as the wise man, for when '…the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house… it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.'"

Click here to read Mr. Obama's full remarks.

"We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity – a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad."

The question is whether Mr. Obama's economic recovery plan can turn sand into rock. He hasn't performed or promised any miracles. His administration has been persistent and dogged in its efforts to "clear away the wreckage" and create a new, 21st century financial system, "tough new rules for Wall Street," as the president said in his speech. .....

[RebelOne]

9. The RaptureReady fundies have their panties in a twist about this.

www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=89366

[SkyDaddy7]

13. You are so right

And I actually get a kick out of it! I just hope they don't go to blowing stuff up.

[Demeter]

22. The Question Is: Why Is Obama Throwing All the Rocks Away?

Jobs, baby, jobs!

[biopowertoday]

3. I agree, It was stupid for the WH to cover up the symbols.

[No Elephants]

10. The WH did not cover up anything. Read the OP again. This was Georgetown's

interpretation of a WH request to cover up all Georgetown signage.

[biopowertoday]

16. he said, they said. ..........

must have been a big misinterpretation huh.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. More manufactured fauxrage.

Yawn.

[get the red out]

8. Yep, after they teabagging and a good night's rest

the wing nuts needed to manufacture some more "OUTRAGE".

[TrogL]

5. that reminds me - is the drape off the statue of Justice?

[and-justice-for-all]

6. uh, so what...not important or relevent. nt

[get the red out]

7. Probably standard

I would bet it is just standard to cover up any distractions when creating a stage for the President. I can't see a relationship to this and Ashcroft's breast phobia.

[No Elephants]

11. Not at all.

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

12. They need to pay attention. There was religious imagery and

plenty of it.

[jwirr]

14. This is a damned if you do and damned if you don't event.

[marshall]

15. By coincidence all the signage is religious based

What do they expect from a Jesuit university?

The stained glass windows should have been covered up as well.

[hedgehog]

17. It sounds to me that the goal was to provide an uncluttered

background for the speech:

“The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they’ve done for other policy speeches,” she added. “Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn’t high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context.”

[Retrograde]

21. I agree: religious art can make for a cluttered background

It seems his advance people have pipe and drape they haul around to provide a camera-friendly background. At least it doesn't have those silly slogans the Bush people were so fond of.

[urgk]

18. I'm not sure how one makes the leap from the fact the symbol was covered

..to deciding the intent with which it was covered.

"I don't appreciate anyone trying to censor what is "appropriate" for me to see. I will make that decision myself."

Where did the idea come from that the white House was deciding what was appropriate for a viewer to see? Especially when there are other reasonable explanations -- the most probable being that there is protocol for what is displayed beside the President. I imagine that if Obama were speaking at a sports venue, the Presidential set decorating team might have covered up the Nike "swoosh" as well, without my being forced to assume that they were censoring what was "appropriate" for me to see.

For the record, I'd be against covering the breasts of the statues of justice as a matter of day-to-day operations, but if I were in charge of an Ashcroft press conference and they appeared on-screen someplace potentially distracting, I'd have covered them right up. Nobody needs bare boobs competing for attention. For better or for worse, they tend to win.

[RaleighNCDUer]

19. There IS a separation between church and state.

This is NOT like Ashcroft covering up Justice with drapes. This is simply a matter of not having the president give imprimatur to ANY overt religious symbols in a secular setting.

To do so is simply inappropriate.

[benld74]

20. Where in the H&LL were these so-called Catholic bloggers

when chimpmeister was in office killing people?

[cap]

23. Obama got his start working with liberal Catholics

why isn't this mentioned.... His community organizing was done in conjunction with the Catholic left....


God.... I am so tired of the conservative Catholics grabbing the microphone away from us liberal Catholics.

[onager]

24. George Washington would have told the whiners to f!ck off.

Figuratively. Or maybe literally, since The Father Of Our Country was famous for his profanity...a True Fact(tm) you won't find on any of those "America's Xian Founders" websites.

Using a seriously mixed metaphor, an officer in the Continental Army once declared that Washington could "swear like the very angels."

Anyway, more OT, sorta, Washington had personal problems with one piece of standard Xian symbology: taking Communion. He just flat refused to participate in it, and AFAIK, never told anyone why. None of his biographers ever figured it out, either.

Contrary to Fundie fictionalizing, Washington generally kept quiet about his personal religious beliefs. Apparently he believed everyone should do the same, especially nosy preachers:

"When the Congress sat in Philadelphia, President Washington attended the Episcopal church. The rector, Dr. Abercrombie, told me that on the days when the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was to be administered, Washington's custom was to rise just before the ceremony commenced, and walk out of church.

This became a subject of remark in the congregation, as setting a bad example. At length the Doctor undertook to speak of it, with a direct allusion to the President. Washington was heard afterwards to remark that this was the first time a clergyman had thus preached to him, and he should henceforth neither trouble the Doctor nor his congregation on such occasions; and ever after that, upon communion days, he 'absented himself altogether from the church.'"

(Later Abercrombie changed his tune and claimed that Washington started attending Communion after being publicly chastised from the pulpit. This may be the equivalent of "Darwin refuted evolution on his deathbed," but the whole episode is still murky and mysterious. A lot of the religious hokum about Washington only came out after his death, from "biographers" like Parson Weems--who also made up The Gospel of the Cherry Tree and The Parable of Throwing The Silver Dollar Across The Potomac.)

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_3.html