Have you seen this video? At first, I thought it was a “Saturday Night Live” parody. But it’s not. Stuart Shepard, digital media director of a political arm of James Dodson’s Focus on the Family, is asking for viewers to pray for heavy rains of “biblical proportions” to shower down on Sen. Barack Obama and 75,000 spectators during his acceptance speech at Denver’s open-air Investco Field.
After a rain of criticism, Focus on the Family pulled the video and said the piece was a poor attempt at boyish humor. I don’t think Mr. Shepard was joking about getting people to pray for a washout in Denver.
The Religious Right needs to remember that pride is one of the seven deadly sins. To think that God would be interested in raining out the Democratic nominee for president shows a lack of humility on several levels.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Kurt // Aug 18, 2008 at 12:14 pm
So I click on the link provided for those who want to see the video, and I get:
Easy, tiger. This is a 404 page.
You are totally in the wrong place. Do not pass GO; do not collect $200.
Seems a little snotty, considering I was only FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS!
2 jim // Aug 19, 2008 at 3:12 am
Video link is broken.
3 Brian // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Hi Bill,
If you’re interested, I can connect you with the guy who shoots those videos, he’s a friend of mine. While I definitely think that Stuart was serious about praying for rain, all of his videos are for the most part meant to be at least a little humorous. Late last year they had another little bit of hubbub with a video they did called “Merry Tossmas”. The stoplight videos aren’t my cup of tea and I think that Focus should maybe be spending their political currency on things that more directly affect the family issues that the organization was founded on but I think that people might take this video a little more seriously than it deserves.
4 Iron Pol // Aug 19, 2008 at 8:42 pm
“It was a joke,” has become a standard response when a person or group is called to task for questionable or outright wrong actions/comments/etc.
I guess the one thing Focus on the Family has in their defense is that many people saw it and thought, “This has to be a joke.” But they weren’t sure, which leads me to believe it either wasn’t a joke and FotF was being idiotic, or it was walking to thin a line and they should have used more sense. Make it undeniably a joke or don’t say it.
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