It's too much to expect that Rachel Maddow will accurately report that many conservatives express misgivings about Pope Francis's leftist economics and willingness to wade into the political realm.
MSNBC's most earnest evening host prefers to depict conservatives as adorned with sandwich boards and sputtering incoherent warnings of doom in response to the pope's visit to the U.S.
On her show last night, Maddow gushed about political views shared by President Obama and Pope Francis while citing criticism of the pontiff from several Republicans and a Fox News pundit --
For all the issues on which this pope and this president disagree, right, for all the pope's religious conservatism on issues like abortion, for example, and gay rights, part of the reason this papal visit to the United States feels like such a big deal and such an important moment for our country whether or not you're Catholic is because of the ways this president and this pope really do see eye to eye on big and controversial issues, the ways in which these two leaders are aligned, which in turn explains how we ended up in a place where the country at large seems pretty psyched about this big historic visit by Pope Francis, and there are tens of thousands of people turning out to see him everywhere he goes and it may very well be a million people who turn out to see him in person in Philadelphia.
But maybe it's because of the large-scale alliance between our president and this pope on some big important ideologically charged issues. Maybe that's why, even for all this enthusiasm for this pope on this trip, the American political right is not that psyched to see him.
Maddow then showed a compilation of clips from Republicans critical of Francis, along with Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld --
CHRIS CHRISTIE: I just think the pope was wrong. And so, the fact is that his infallibility is on religious matters, not on political ones.
SEN. JAMES INHOFE, R-OKLA.: Everyone is going to ride the pope now. Isn't that wonderful? Well, the pope ought to stay with his job and let us stay with ours.JEB BUSH: I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or from my pope ...
RICK SANTORUM: I would just say this, that you know, the church has gotten it wrong a few times on science and I think that, you know, we are probably better off leaving science to the scientists.
GUTFELD: The most dangerous person on the planet is somebody who's seeking strange new respect from their adversaries and that is what the pope is doing. He doesn't want to be your grandfather's pope, he wants to be a modern pope. All he needs is dreadlocks and a dog with a bandana and he could be on Occupy Wall Street.CNN ANCHOR CHRIS CUOMO: So here's the moment -- you meet the pope, Pope Francis comes, there's a translator there and he says, oh, Mr. Trump, this is very nice and then he says, you know, I want to tell him something and the translator says to you, the pope believes that capitalism can be a real avenue to greed, it can be really toxic and corrupt and he's shaking his finger at you when he says it. What do you say in response to the pope?
DONALD TRUMP: I'd say ISIS wants to get you. You know that ISIS wants to go in and take over the Vatican, you have heard that? You know, that's a dream of theirs to go into Italy ...CUOMO: He talks to you about capitalism and you scare the pope?
TRUMP: No, no, I'm going to have to scare the pope.
Back to Maddow, looking barely able to contain her newfound reverence for Francis --
I don't think the pope is scared of any American politician, but with our country transfixed by this historic visit and the American right basically against him, this is a weird moment and a big moment and sort of, I think, an unpredictable moment in American politics and American culture. And to some people, it probably feels like the end of the world. But so far it's been really fun.
Actually it feels more like the end of summer, which it is. Otherwise the pope's visit doesn't feel much like the end of anything, not to this curmudgeon anyway. But getting Maddow to blithely toss out that "end of the world" line sure seemed like a good idea when suggested by an MSNBC intern during the news meeting.
Allow me to credit Pope Francis for at least one monumental achievement -- he has shown that a prominent public figure can oppose gay marriage and not get repeatedly maligned by Maddow as a knuckle-dragging bigot. Not yet anyway.
