The Washington Post explicitly advertised for Rev. Raphael Warnock’s Senate candidacy in a splashy profile on the front of Monday’s Style section. There was a huge picture of Warnock with the sun shining off his face. It felt like a follow-up to the latest New York Times gushfest on Sunday.
New Post reporter Clyde McGrady lamented that Warnock's opponent, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, called him a "radical liberal" 12 times in a recent debate. He mocked GOP ads:
Over action-movie-trailer music and lo-fi lighting, a grim-sounding narrator explains the “threat” Warnock poses to the republic: Raphael Warnock attacks our soldiers. Warnock attacks our police. . . . Raphael Warnock is radical and dangerous. [Italics theirs.]
The large headline read:
A CAMPAIGN FOR HIGHER GROUND
Warnock’s identity as a Black preacher becomes central to his Senate bid
McGrady begins the story with a Warnock campaign rally playing the song "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder, and he ends the story with the sentence: "At the moment, the reverend seems content in the role of visiting politician, passing through on his way to higher ground."
Inside on C-2, the headline quoted Ralph Huling, a black minister ally of Warnock's:
‘The man is not radical’: Pastor leans on faith in Senate bid
This is a bit of a clash with the text box about six inches underneath, quoting Alex Moreschi, a white Episcopal minister, who claimed faith is not a conservative ideal [italics theirs]:
"At its heart, Christianity is a progressive movement. It is a radical movement for the health and security and love of neighbor. And I see Rev. Warnock representing that."
There's not really a clash in the text. Huling said the candidate's "not radical," and then added “The man is just a proponent of change." By calling for Medicaid expansion, Warnock is simply asking America to live up to its ideals, Huling claimed. “If that is radical, then we need more radicals.”
The Washington Post tweet pushed Warnock as a master of the moral high ground whose campaign "might mean convincing voters that God is on his side":
Raphael Warnock’s campaign for the moral high ground https://t.co/pkytL6RBZk
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 2, 2021
McGrady happily forwards the preacher's contention that Jesus is a liberal Democrat: "The preacher sprinkles his calls for affordable health care with biblical allusions, reminding voters that Bartimaeus, a blind man healed by Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, 'suffered from a preexisting condition.' To this point, Warnock testifies on the need for Medicaid expansion and cheaper college tuition. Audience members punctuate the applause lines with cries of 'C’mon, Rev!'”
Just like the Times, the Post insisted the "Black church" tells "uncomfortable truths" that whites need to hear: "The flamboyant, preacher-pol style that Warnock cultivated at Ebenezer may be alien to many Americans, including many White Christians. But it is deeply familiar to those who grew up in and around Southern Black churches. In those churches, preachers make it their business to tell uncomfortable truths about American life, including the shameful ways the country treats its African American citizens."
This is exactly the same patter that the liberal media used to defend Jeremiah Wright, that his wild conspiracy theories about the government getting blacks addicted to drugs and that America deserved the 9/11 attacks were somehow "uncomfortable truths." But Warnock's support for Wright in 2008 did not come up in McGrady's puff piece.
