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| Dan Darling |
The National Religious Broadcasters group today whitewashed the firing of senior VP-communications Dan Darling after he expressed support of getting COVID-19 vaccinations during an Aug. 2 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
The group issued a statement to say it has neither a policy nor official position on the vaccines. It prefers to take positions on issues of direct interest to its members, as if the potential life-and-death choice about the COVID-19 shot does not impact its audience of 141M people.
"While individual NRB members have wide-ranging views on the subject, the association has not weighed in on the question of the personal choices being made with respect to vaccines, because this is outside the scope of NRB’s public policy engagement," it said in the statement.
And here is where the NRB gets loopy.
"NRB’s neutrality on vaccines and other Covid-19-related mandates should not be interpreted as neutrality, or a lack of concern, about their impact on religious liberty.
"We have seen, and the Supreme Court has confirmed, that many Covid-19 mandates have treated religious people and institutions in an unequal manner."
The executive committee unanimously adopted the following motion:
“After review, The Executive Committee affirms in every particular the administrative actions taken by the CEO in the termination of [the dismissed employee].”
The committee then took a cheap shot at the media coverage of the Darling affair.
“The Committee considers the runaway media narrative that developed in the aftermath of the dismissal to have been inaccurate, incomplete, and almost incomprehensible given the objective facts of the situation."
It vowed “to move forward speaking with one voice on issues related to Christian communicators’ ability to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through every medium available.”
My hunch is that Jesus would have taken the COVID-19 vaccine (though The Almighty really did not need one) to encourage his followers to follow suit so they wouldn't spread the Delta variant.
If a pitcher strikes out 18 guys during a game, announcers do not rush to interview the poor slob who earned a Golden Sombrero (four whiffs). They rush to talk to the pitcher.
Similarly, Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AR), a former Marine who served in Iraq, wants to know why cable TV gives high-profile platforms to former generals who were responsible for waging America’s forever war in Afghanistan.
They are wearers of the Golden Sombrero for their puffing up non-existent US progress in Afghanistan
“We heard time and again from these Generals that Afghanistan was turning the corner. Same generals are out there claiming the outcome could have been different. Please stop listening to Petraeus and McMaster to start,” Gallego tweeted.
The Phoenix Democrat told Politico:
“The biggest frustration is the fact that the D.C. media elites don’t see what we see. They see these guys as heroes and as these all-knowing geniuses when we know better. But nobody listens to us because we don’t have the gold-star lapels.”
Gallego also took aim at think tanks, who distorted our nation-building boondoggle.
“Combat ops only ended because the Taliban had agreed to stop attacking us because we agreed to pull out. This is the problem with think tankers, they forget that the enemy has a vote when it comes to warfare.” he tweeted.
Guys like Gallego deserve more cable TV facetime than the generals and think tankers.
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