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Taibbi’s Texas project, Hagee’s “apology”
I visited this week with Matt Taibbi, a Rolling Stone contributing editor whose book, “The Great Derangement,” taps research he conducted by posing as a member of San Antonio’s Cornerstone Church, whose pastor is John Hagee. Peek at the column here or a book excerpt here.
Hagee, who had no immediate comment on the book when I called, has been under scrutiny lately for what some consider his anti-Catholic remarks as a minister. They’re getting special attention because he’s endorsed U.S. Sen. John McCain for president. This week, Hagee issued a statement interpreted as an apology in media coverage, though the statement I found on the Cornerstone is more an explanatory statement than a mea culpa.
“I am not now, nor have I ever been anti-Catholic,” Hagee says. See his press release here.
While my column focused on Taibbi’s time in Texas, his book presents some pointed commentary on doings in Congress that bear recall.
In one aside, the author describes the drone of an isolationist Tennessee Republican rising to speak on the floor of the U.S. House. Turns out that that Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr., assumed his post on the death of his father, who had been elected a dozen consecutive times. “Three hundred years from now,” Taibbi goes on, “the city of Knoxville’s congressman will be a Duncan opposed to the extension of foreign aid to Pluto.”
U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, gets a prime pasting in Taibbi’s recap of an effort by Barton after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans to say the disaster demonstrated an emergency need to lift longtime restrictions on air pollutants from plants built after 1970 as spelled out in the Clean Air Act.
After Barton mis-summarized the measure, Taibbi writes, a Massachusetts Democrat on the committee hearing the matter said that if he’d given a similar summary to his constituents at a Massachusetts gas station, they “wouldn’t leave me in one piece.”
“Well, what I do at a Texas gas station, when people ask if I’m Congressman Barton,” Barton replied, smiling, “is this… I just tell ‘em I’m his driver.” The comment drew laughs all around.
A couple more then-House members get mention: Tom DeLay, then the House majority leader, and Chris Bell, the Houston Democrat who raised ethics questions about DeLay in his lame-duck last months in the House.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Democratic politics, Elections, Journalism, Money, Presidential race, Republican politics, U.S. Congress, U.S. Senate
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By elise
May 14, 2008 10:25 PM | Link to this
Gardner and blog readers, if you haven’t read Taibbi’s wonderful piece “The Worst Congress Ever” — you really should. He’s a fantastic writer.