The racist Reverend Wright wanted God to "damn America." Jesse Jackson called New York City "hymie town." Various Evangelical preachers have been heard to utter some pretty nasty comments here and there, as well. So, flawed as we are, apparently being religious doesn't preclude a venomous diatribe now and again. And now comes hate wrapped as political commentary from another supposed person of faith, this time in Newsweek. Wendy Doniger is a columnist for Newsweek's "On Faith" beat and is also the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. But that doesn't seem to have made her less of a venom spewing, wiled-eyed Republican hater, unfortunately. Naturally, like all women such as herself, all her hate is directed at Governor Sarah Palin -- also showing that these sorts of women aren't interested in helping strong women to public influence but only their kind of mindless ideologue is acceptable.

Doniger starts her hate-filled rant in All Beliefs Welcome, Unless They are Forced on Others with what will shortly turn out to be a lie compounded by a blind assumption based on no proof to shore up her claims that Sarah Palin's exclusively allows her religious beliefs to direct her public actions.

"I am on record...," Doniger begins, "as not objecting to any candidate's religious views." And then she goes on to bash Palin exactly on terms that would seem to make the lie to her claim of a hands off attitude. And now for the hate and a lie neatly wrapped up in one paragraph (and it isn't the first lie this so-called religious scholar tells here):

But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people. In both sex and religion (which combine in the debates about abortion), Sarah Palin's views make me fear that the Republican party has finally lost its mind.

You see, Sarah Palin has never"inflicted" her religious views on the public. Naturally, we see that this slanderous septuagenarian obviously has nothing but hatred for those Republicans she is so fearful of and she has allowed her superstitions to overtake any sense of reality or reason.

Then, Doniger tells an even bigger whopper, a lie that has been repeatedly debunked even by her own extremist left agenda driving media.

As for sex, the hypocrisy of her outing her pregnant daughter in front of millions of people, hard on the heels of her concealing her own pregnancy (her faith in abstinence applying, apparently, only to non-Palins), is nicely balanced by her hypocrisy in gushing with loving support of her teenage daughter after using a line-item veto to cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska.

Palin absolutely did NOT "cut funding" to the program that this woman is citing. In fact, the $3.9 million that Palin gave was for a special project and the regular government funding for the program went up three fold under Palin's leadership. There simply was no cut.

Then we get this obvious stupidity form a person that is supposed to be not only religious, but a university professor, so presumably a smart person!

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.

Of all the thin arguments, this line of criticism, that Governor Palin is somehow "not a woman," that has been coming from these anti-human, leftist hatemongers is one that speaks most damningly against their sanity (much less their intelligence).

Aside from the sheer illogic of the thing, Palin is not a man in drag pretending at "having a womb," the intellectual vapidity of this line of attack makes anyone who utters it look so blinded by ideology that common sense cannot hope to penetrate. Not to mention that hatred and vitriol is obviously so balled up inside such a person as Doniger, that her family should seriously consider mental help as a solution to what ails her. Perhaps some medication is necessary here.

But what isn't called for is this woman's whirling dervishness to be taken for serious commentary. In fact, I'd suggest that there is little to separate the acidic hate this woman displays for Palin and Republicans from that of an extremist Muslim bent on Jihad or the most fervent Nazi or racial supremacist's panicked and senseless views.

Next up with her foolishness, this nut tries to claim that Palin has somehow used religion as a cover to "destroy the environment" and that Palin justifies the death of "people who will be shot with the guns" based on her religion. These are baseless claims uttered by the unhinged.

And then another lie comes from the poisoned pen of this shrewish spinner of tall tales:

An even wider and more sinister will to impose her religious views on other people surfaced in her determination to legislate against abortion even in cases of rape and in her attempts to ban books, including books on evolution, and to fire the librarian who stood against her.

Lies, lies and lies. All easily checked with this little thing we like to call the Internet. But, apparently, this partisan hellion can't be bothered to actually check out the rumors from the DailyKos she spews forth uncritically.

Lastly, this... OK, I have to say it... this idiot then tries to make the case that Joe Biden, despite that he claims to be a serious Catholic, is right to vote in favor of abortion because... get ready... because "It's in the Constitution."

Joe Biden's views are most relevant to the question at hand, since, as a Catholic, he shares much of Palin's embryological theology: he believes life begins at conception. But he has gone out of his way to insist that he would not impose his personal views on others, and has indeed voted against curtailing abortion rights and against criminalizing abortion. That is the right answer. It's in the Constitution. It's not in the Bible, or the Qu'ran, or the Bhagavad Gita. It's in the mother-lovin' Constitution.

I have had a copy of the Constitution of the United States on my table next to my computer for decades, now. I've read the thing through many times and used it for reference even more.

I have never one time seen the word "abortion" in that document. If our irreligious Newsweek religion commentator can find it for me, I'd be grateful for her "insight." I don't fear her being able to do so, however.

What I do fear, though, is a media that allows this sort of unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth, crap to be presented as serious commentary on either religion, politics or the state of American culture. This woman's work needs to be either shunted to the sort of crazed street pamphlets to which its style deserves, or scrawled in crayon on the walls of a rubber room in one of our better institutions of mental health.

Other than that, she seems like a wonderful person, our Wendy does.

(Photo credit: U of Chicago)