Smart Progressive Politics and Not Smart Progressive Politics

I often read Americablog and find many of the posts timely, useful and well-informed. Most of the time, it's a great progressive blog. But it seems John Aravosis can't help shooting himself in the foot from time to time. Today the Pope was in Israel to do some fence-mending and Aravosis couldn't resist a little Pope bashing. Dumb politics. John doesn't understand that the more you emphasize the differences between groups and the more dumb things you say that encourage average conservatives to close ranks, the more you play into the hands of right wing authoritarian leader types. Here's what John wrote:

... Oh, and the BBC also conveniently forgot to mention the little fact that the Vatican has historically been accused of turning a blind eye to the plight of Europe's Jews during WWII. ...

Is Barack Obama responsible for George W. Bush starting the war in Iraq? Was FDR responsible for slavery before 1865? There's a way to put such things in context without generalizing and without blaming a current figure and certainly without getting snarky. Nor is it necessary to mention historical context in every single story.

In a story about David Duke last month, Aravosis made clear his obsession with the Pope:

...David Duke, was arrested in Prague for denying the Holocaust. It's a crime punishable by three years in prison. Too bad he didn't go to the Vatican instead. They'd have made him a Bishop.

I'm not a fan of Pope Benedict XVI but I have many friends and relatives, both conservative and liberal, who are catholics. Aravosis seems to be going out of the way to rankle those who are not even his enemy. The Pope and the Catholic Church are not above criticism but there's a right way to do these things and a dumb way to do it.

I keep thinking about the sea change about gay marriage. What changed? What happened is that millions of Americans saw ordinary people lining up at city hall in San Francisco to get married. While my wife and I enjoyed seeing on TV the characters in San Francisco's Castro district who some years ago dressed up like nuns with ridiculous makeup, I had to check myself now and then. It was clear that the media was partly defining gays as guys who dress up like nuns: it didn't play well in most of America. What changed is when Americans saw people getting married who looked like their neighbors, coworkers and relatives. This is something that Barack Obama clearly understands: we the people of our country may have differences but our similarities are far more important than those differences.

When Aravosis launches broad attacks against Mormons or the Pope, he is posing a normative threat that is guaranteed to crank up the authoritarian dynamic. Pure and simple, it's dumb politics.