Newsweek's Eleanor Clift got a much-needed education about the Founding Fathers and gay rights this weekend.
After she predictably gushed and fawned over President Obama's inaugural address on PBS's McLaughlin Group, syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan scolded, "If you think the Stonewall riot in a gay bar in Greenwich Village can be traced all the way back to Bunker Hill and the Founding Fathers, you don't read what the Founding Fathers believed or say" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths, that all of us are created equal, is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall, just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this Great Mall to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone, to hear a king proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on earth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, HOST: On Inauguration Day, Monday, President Barack Obama gave his second inaugural address to the nation. It ran eighteen minutes and was delivered before a throng of hundreds of thousands assembled on the National Mall. Question: Was President Obama's speech unabashedly liberal? I ask you, Susan Ferrechio.
SUSAN FERRECHIO, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Of course. Everything he said from talking about gay marriage, immigration reform, all these things are part and parcel of the liberal agenda. It was, if anything, a lot of people were saying, I was reading, if you were reading Twitter at the time, people were saying, “Wow, this is surprising that he is willing to go right into gay marriage.” He's the first person in an inaugural speech to say the word gay. I mean, it was very liberal.
ELEANOR CLIFT: Well this is the problem that the Republicans face. If they think all these great issues of the day are solely the providence of the Democratic Party and liberalism, they are never going to win another election. I think the president did a great job rooting these ideals and these values in the great traditions of the past and references to the Founding Fathers, in talking what Dwight Eisenhower did and previous presidents.
MCLAUGHLIN: Hold on, Pat.
CLIFT: It was a stirring piece that will go down in history.
PAT BUCHANAN: If you think the Stonewall riot in a gay bar in Greenwich Village can be traced all the way back to Bunker Hill and the Founding Fathers, you don't read what the Founding Fathers believed or say.
Honestly, from what we saw last week, Obama could read the alphabet foreward and back for eighteen minutes, and media members such as Clift would call it "a stirring piece that will go down in history."
As for comparing Stonewall to Selma in an inaugural address, history will tell us how appropriate that was.
