In May of 2008, Sally Quinn of the Washington Post’s On Faith site went on PBS’s Charlie Rose show and decried Barack Obama’s decision to distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, since Wright was an incredible man being ruined by "latent racism." She even blundered into expressing that this shaming of Wright "has been absolutely devastating to me -- to him, sorry."
Apparently, Rev. Wright is a far holier man than the pope. Quinn was raining fire on a Vatican City "under siege" on MSNBC Monday afternoon, trashing Pope Benedict as Richard Nixon:
This is the Vatican’s Watergate. The Pope is Nixon. I mean, if you look at the signs, and the way they’re behaving, it’s exactly the same way. They’ve done something terrible. They’ve denied it. They’ve accused their accusers. The Pope this weekend talked about this being "gossip" and they weren’t going to be intimidated by it, but the fact is it’s been a coverup, and a crime, and a coverup.
Quinn insisted "The pope is going to have to resign," which brought more Watergate comparisons:
SHUSTER: What point will that come? Is there, to use the Watergate analogy, are there a group of high-ranking cardinals or Catholics that would go and say for the good of the church "Okay, we’ve reached a point that we need you to step down."
QUINN: Yes. That’s exactly what happened. Barry Goldwater led a group of Republicans to the White House and sat down with Nixon and said, "It’s time to go."
SHUSTER: Who’s the Barry Goldwater, though, in this particular case?
QUINN: I don’t know, but there will be a point where this is hurting the church so badly on every level. I mean, the fact is, they have committed crime after crime after crime.
For Quinn, it doesn’t matter who is the "they" in this criminal conspiracy. Every allegation of priest abuse is automatically a papal offense. She turned this subject back around to politics:
Imagine the president of the United States knowing about child abuse and rape, and covering it up year after year, and not firing people, and demanding people be secret about it. And having that come out? That person would be impeached, and thrown out of office.
Alright, let’s go there. Where was Sally Quinn and David Shuster on the matter of Samson Obama, the half-brother of the president denied a visa in the United Kingdom as he traveled home from the president’s inauguration in 2009 over allegations of teen sexual assault? Mr. Obama told the police is name was "Henry Aloo." Was there a coverup there? If so, it was conducted by the entire American media elite, if we’re going to use Quinn’s hyperbolic tone.
But Quinn insisted Pope Benedict has to resign or the church will be "under siege." This is an interesting term to use on MSNBC, which would normally suggest that Quinn is encouraging anti-Catholic violence – if she were a conservative talk-show host instead of a liberal media figure. She predicted:
I think ultimately they will realize that this could be devastating to the Catholic Church if this pope doesn’t go, and if they continue to cover up. They have got to open the windows. They have got to expose the scandals. They have got to punish the people who are responsible for the scandals. And until that time, the Catholic Church is going to be under siege. This is only going to get worse. I don’t see that there’s any possible way out except for the pope to resign and for someone else to step in.
Sally Quinn is very crudely political, a person who also declared Sarah Palin was a rotten Christian. It would not be hard to suspect that she doesn't think one can be a conservative and a good Christian.