Jon Stewart, Don Imus, Howard Stern, Keith Olbermann, Dan Savage, Brad Hirschfield, and Tom Shales Weigh In On Brit Hume’s Comments
by Danny Fisher
Over at Shambhala Sun Space, our friend and editor Rod Meade Sperry posts reactions to the Brite Hume thing from Jon Stewart, Howard Stern, Dan Savage, and Don Imus. In particular, Imus’ comments are interesting: whereas most reactions have been about Hume’s proselytizing, Imus is more concerned with his misunderstanding of Buddhism. Olbermann also makes the amusing point that Hume should probably avoid making comments about redemptive abilities of one religion over another unless he has actually practiced all of those religions.
Elsewhere, the Washington Post‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tom Shales weighs in, saying that Hume owes Buddhists a public apology. Also, at the Post‘s On Faith section, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield offers an unusual reaction, in which he basically says (in the words of On Faith’s official “tweet” about the piece): ”What’s wrong with Brit Hume telling Tiger Woods to turn to Jesus? Nothing but liberal overreaction.” He misses what is the main point of this whole flap for me (and I presume many others), though: the denigration and misrepresentation of the Buddhist traditions by Hume.
Agreed. Brit Hume’s comments are nothing new. It is simply another manifestation of neurotic attachment to one set of metaphors that are assumed to have exclusive claim to truth. The ignorance and arrogance should be called out as just that. Forget the apology. It’s not Hume that matters. It’s the millions that think in the same way about their own traditions and create thereby a framework for hatred, antipathy, violence, and inhumanites of so many kinds.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. Appreciate it.
I don’t mind if he doesn’t apologize as long as he takes refuge.
I thought Dan Savage had some of the best points.
[...] One blogger even addresses Hume’s inability to represent the Buddhist faith, calling Hume’s comments “the denigration and misrepresentation of Buddhist traditions.” Notice, of course, that no one will actually state why Buddhist traditions are valid. We are instead meant to understand the implied wisdom of the contemporary spiritual zeitgeist. [...]
I recoil at the idea of someone “owing” someone else an apology. People shouldn’t be pressured to apologize to someone else. An apology, to be sincere, must come only from a realization that what someone did was wrong.
Thus, Tom Shales should be stripped naked and forced at gunpoint to apolgize to the country on a live broadcast, while the Pulitzer he was holding in front of his privates is taken from him.
“Brit Hume’s comments are nothing new. It is simply another manifestation of neurotic attachment to one set of metaphors that are assumed to have exclusive claim to truth.”
As a Christian I don’t “assume” the faith to be true, I tested its truth claims. Christianity passes.
Just for the record, the vast, vast majority of historical scholars, including skeptics, agree that a person named Jesus really lived and was killed on a Roman cross, that his followers believed he rose from the dead, that his brother James was a converted skeptic, and that a man named Paul went from persecuting the faith to spreading it, and that he wrote most of the letters attributed to him in the Bible.
When that many experts agree on something, we have a term for those views: Facts. And it isn’t illogical to draw the conclusion that the best explanation for those facts is the physical resurrection of Jesus.
Other religions fail. Islam, for example, claims that Jesus did not die on the cross (Koran, Sura 4:157-158). Their evidence? One guy with a vision over 500 years after the fact. That is not what we base history upon.
Neil is not wrong. The “problem” with Brit Hume’s words is that he spoke as a Christian instead of as a reporter and that he doesn’t understand Buddhism. And, that it is a bit more than ticklish to be suggesting, over the air, that anyone change their relgion.
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